AIPAC Dinner

misc

Tonight I crossed my first picket line.

It was a rather anticlimactic experience, actually. I had envisioned an angry mob of protesters waving their picket signs and struggling against the barrier; instead, there were a few sad-looking women holding Jimmy Carter quotes in the air and someone off in a corner with a Jordanian flag that nobody else seemed to want to associate with.

The actual gathering was enough to give heart to those lamenting the shrinking American Jewish community; I saw more yarmulkes this evening than I did in much of Israel. As a youth table, we and the JCHS delegation were put as far in back as possible to make sure we didn’t interfere with the proceedings and weren’t accidentally served wine. Even there we had a decent view of the stage.

(more…)

[8 comments]

PHILOMENA

code, featured, projects

PHILOMENA is a program designed to part write against a bassline based on an arbitrary set of rules. It contains a small declarative language for describing acceptable part writing rules, and can be used to generate both classical harmonic progressions and more unconventional harmonizations. (more…)

[1 comment]

Accepted

misc, personal

And the verdict is in…I am now a member of Columbia University’s Z. Y. Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science Class of 2012.

Emily made me promise that I would facebook my results tonight, and I just wanted to thank everybody for putting up with me and my “I’m not going to get in” whining throughout this process, and for believing in me when I didn’t.

David, I will give you your $5 tomorrow.

Leah, I now have an excuse to come pick up that jacket.

Also, congratulations to the ladies that just got in to Wellesley, and the best of luck to everybody else.

[14 comments]

Festival of Lights

misc

To quote one Adam Sandler:

Put on your yarmulke
It’s time for Chanukkah

It’s become somewhat fashionable among the socially-conscious, forward-thinking leftist Jews of our generation to bemoan the heavily commercialized Christmas clone that the Festival of Lights has become. But it’s not all bad. Here, to assuage your guilty Jewish conscience, is a list of reasons why the American Chanukkah, for all its flaws, is actually a good thing: (more…)

[3 comments]