I think I came to Columbia just to attend this lecture series

misc, personal

Columbia’s Casa Italiana, as part of the Festival della Matematica in Rome, will be hosting what may be the most mind-blowingly awesome series of lectures every conceived. The program:

Tuesday, March 10th

11 a.m. at the Italian Academy
The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, Lecture by the Nobel Laureate in Physics Sheldon Glashow

2.00 p.m. at the Italian Academy
The (mis)behaviour of financial markets, Lecture by Benoît Mandelbrot

5.00 p.m. at the Italian Cultural Institute
Press conference

6.00 p.m. at the Italian Cultural Institute
Imaginary interview with Galileo Galilei, Reading by Claudio Bartocci and Piergiorgio Odifreddi

Wednesday, March 11th

9.00 a.m. at the Italian Academy
Statistical thinking is hard, causal thinking is easy, Lecture by the Nobel Laureate for Economics Daniel Kahneman

11.00 a.m. at the Italian Academy
The early days of game theory in Princeton, Lecture-interview with the Nobel Laureate for Economics John Nash and Harold Kuhn

2.00 p.m. at the Italian Academy
The elegant mathematical universe, Lecture-interview with Brian Greene

6.00 p.m. at the Italian Cultural Institute
Movie projection
Flatland. A journey of many dimensions: The movie edition
Director Jeffrey Travis, animator Dano Johnson
Edwin A. Abbott with Thomas Banchoff and the Filmmakers of Flatland

And the link.

My existence has just been validated.

[1 comment]

Past Tense

misc, personal

The trees here have never looked so beautiful.

It still hasn’t completely sunk in that at this time tomorrow I will no longer live in Piedmont. My bedroom will not be the room I’m sitting in right now but a closet somewhere in Manhattan–my bed will no longer my bed. From now on I will always be a guest in my own home.

As much as I railed against growing up in Pleasantville since I first realized that this place is not like most places, I am (finally) coming to appreciate how lucky I am to have grown up where I did. Sheltered–yes, but I sometimes a little shelter can be a good thing. Privileged, and I understand now that privilege is exactly that: not a reason to complain about being isolated from the real world or getting soft and spoiled, but a quality of life for which I should be genuinely grateful.

And the trees. This is a gorgeous city. My lasting memory of Piedmont will be of walking up the hill from the bus stop watching the sycamores burn green and gold as the sun sinks in to the bay. I will be higher up than the trees next year, looking out over a busy street rather than the green lawn I complained about so much. A beautiful view as well, but not the same.

I have been resolutely un-nostalgic about leaving this place, but that broke down at about 3:00 this morning as I was getting ready to make my final goodbyes. A little regret actually feels good; as I zip the last of my bags I’m finally able to admit to myself that I really love it here.

[1 comment]

Midrasha Graduation Speech

personal, writing

How can you say, “I am not defiled,
I have not gone after the Baalim”?
Look at your deeds in the Valley
Consider what you have done!
Like a lustful she-camel,
Restlessly running about [...]

Jeremiah 2:23

“Israel,” the prophet Jeremiah declares, “is a lustful she-camel.” In the company of so many complex and meaningful quotes from Pirke Avot Jeremiah’s dromedary is an admittedly unpromising way to start this graduation, but if there is one thing I have learned from Midrasha it is that wisdom manifests itself in the most unexpected places. So please bear with me for a moment.

Midrasha, too, is a lustful she-camel; like the camel, Midrasha has its ups and its downs.

And, having successfully convinced Rabbi Chester that I’m not doing anything obscene with this speech, let’s talk about lust. After all, Midrasha is nothing if it is not hormonal, and I would go so far as to argue that this is the defining characteristic of our relationship with our faith as much as it is with our peers. Yes, it is lust that keeps the women on Kesher retreats awake into the late hours of the night listening rapt as Emma Rosenthal reads the naughty bits of Cosmopolitan, and lust that causes the men of Kesher to try to join in those readings, but it is lust also that wakes us up early in the morning for services, and lust that has carried us to this stage today. The more time I have spent in this community the more I have seen that our ordinary teenage hungers pale in comparison to the spiritual hunger that brings every one of us back week after week. To look at a Kesher Havdalah service is to observe a group of students not thoughtfully committed to the practice of their religion, but caught up in a wild passion. We weep, we sigh, we moan: ours is a practice of tears and sweat and fire. There are teachers here to whose every word we cling desperately; there are lessons that keep us awake at night. We lust after Midrasha.

This graduation marks not only the end of our time at Midrasha but a fundamental change in the nature of our religious observance. The Hillels we’re going to be spending time in next year will not give us the same freedom or diversity of experience that we’ve so been privileged to have these past five years, and at some point in the future we’ll have to settle down and find another congregation of our own. But my hope at this graduation is that we never lose completely that lust that has held us captive to this place and these people since the eighth grade; that our Judaism is always passionate, always a little wild, that even as we go on our way, each and every one of us remains, at least a little bit, a lustful camel.

[10 comments]

Fuck you, Mr. Schwarzenegger

misc, personal

Last night I attended an event in Sacramento to honor “the extraordinary achievements of standout public high school seniors from across the state.” We were a group of seniors chosen seemingly arbitrarily from California’s public schools, invited to attend an event to receive a recognition nobody really understood. The event itself was poorly planned (no schedule for the evening was ever published, and we were forced to find our seats by searching the four tables assigned to our county for a name card), disorganized (we were kept waiting at the bottom of an escalator for half an hour while the security team swept for bombs) and excruciatingly awkward for most of the students involved. In the end, though, it was a well-intentioned event earnestly trying to spotlight the success of students across the state.

What was slightly less appreciated was the press release that was published this morning. This release contained the names of the 25 of us chosen for the “All-State Academic Team,” another recognition whose significance is still unclear. Rather problematically, the same press release also contained each student’s: (more…)

[4 comments]

The Annotated Birkat haMazon

misc, personal

It occurs to me that much of the interdenominational conflict that happens on Kesher comes about as a result of ignorance on the part of all parties involved (that’s all parties, TBAniks). Toward the end of mutual understanding, an effort will now be made to give people a central, official reference for that one prayer that presently causes so much strife and unpleasantness after an already unpleasant eating experience. (more…)

[7 comments]

Palmer Pleads Not Guilty

misc, personal

With county matches starting this evening I figured it was time for the yearly mock trial case summary (see last year’s). This case, which already has all the makings of a good Hollywood drama, doesn’t need quite as much fleshing out, but I’ve done my best. (more…)

[2 comments]

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]

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter application

misc, personal

Upon finally getting around to filling out my first application, I’ve had the rather nasty surprise of discovering that there’s just not enough fucking room. (more…)

[15 comments]

OMYHVH

misc, personal

The new Kesher bulletin.

has been designed.

to look.

like.

A MYSPACE PROFILE!!!!11!!11!!! AAAAAAHHHHHH!

It’s excruciating in its cleverness:

etgar’s details

About me:

Leave the hassles of pressure and daily life behind and have an awesome time with Midrasha!

[...] Who I’d like to meet:

9th-graders looking for a place to relax, kick back with old and new friends…. [sic] poets, musician, cross-country all stars [...]

etgar has 163 friends

And I should note, at this point, that the biggest picture on the etgar page features a number of seniors.

Too add insult to injury, they used the winged logo even after we begged them not to.

[1 comment]

Senior Portrait Photomanip Magic

misc, personal

One occasionally encounters outraged exposés (somebody check my French) of the heavy amount of editing that goes into magazine cover shots and the like. But, with the proofs from my senior portrait today in hand, I decided to indulge myself in a little photoshopping (or in this case GIMPing), just to see if I could make a difference in my own pictures.

The raw material:

This is a scaled-down scan of the pictures the photographers gave us to take home. The pixelation is a remnant of the screening of the original picture, and unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about that.

The surgery:

The letters were removed using the clone stamp tool to duplicate their background. As will be apparent, I gave up after only two letters (though I admit I rather like what is implied by leaving the rest of them on).

Birthmarks and pimples were similarly removed using the clone stamp tool

The skin was smoothed by duplicating the base layer, pixelizing it (averaging every 5×5 block) and applying a Gaussian blur with a radius of 10. This layer was then masked completely and brushed on over large open areas like the forehead (leaving edges intact and crisp).

Finally, both layers were collapsed and I let the GIMP automatically adjust white balance.

The result:

And lastly, a side-by-side comparison:

Lessons learned

1. This is really easy. The photographers have no right to charge so much for blemish removal.
2. By choosing not to mask the blurred layer but setting it at ~40% opacity, I achieve the sort of glowy effect that appears to be favored by Chinese pornographers (judging by the pictures in the Chinatown shop windows). In actual fact, doing this makes me look rather like that photo of Ting Hsu in the yearbook.
3. I’m beautiful just the way I am, but I’m sexy with only minor retouching (though we knew that already, didn’t we?)

Moral ambiguities aside, a thoroughly edifying project.

[2 comments]