Rome
May 28, 2002
Photos
When in Rome...
While I love going out to eat and we never had trouble finding a place
to go, one of the joys of being in Rome was being able to cook our own
meals when we wanted to. You can learn a lot about a city by shopping for
food.
Fish outside of a restaurant.
As tourists Sandy and I made our fair share of mistakes. Going to restaurants
and not being able to figure out what the specialties of the house were was one
of them. We went to this place and ordered pasta. Only later did we realize (as
we passed by this case on the way home) that we should have had fish. Luckily
we had enough time to go back and rectify our mistake. The fish was great.
The 'House of Sandwiches'.
A Gruff waiter.
Alleys, streets and stairs.
Forever.
A History of the City.
Our Neighborhood at Night.
Christmas Movie
January 4, 2002
Movie
My sister wasn't at home this Christmas, so we made her a movie so that she
could still be part of the Christmas fun.
Thirty minutes of raw footage and ten hours of editing have yielded this two minute movie.
Why Sandy and I thought it was important to have over 50 individual clips in a two minute movie
I'll never know.
You need to download the file and then play it using the quicktime player.
High quality video tapes can be made (we have the original digital source). If there is some interest we will do that.
Party Pictures
December 19, 2001
Images
On Sunday Sandy and I threw a Christmas party!
Merry Christmas
December 15, 2001
Tree
Nicolas and Sandra, Christmas 2001
Another Quotation
December 3, 2001
Text
When the community makes his office the measure of the
man; when in one of its citizens it prizes nothing but
memory, in another a mere tabularizing intelligence, in a
third only mechanical skill; when, in the one case, indifferent
to character, it insists exclusively on knowledge, yet is, in
another, ready to condone any amount of obscurantist
thinking as long as it is accompanied by a spirit of order and
law-abiding behaviour; when, moreover, its insists on
special skills being developed with a degree of intensity
which is only commensurate with its readiness to absolve
the individual citizen from developing himself
extensively—can we wonder that the remaining aptitudes of
the psyche are neglected in order to give undivided
attention to the one which will bring honour and profit?
True, we know that the outstanding individual will never let
the limits of his occupation dictate the limits of his activity.
But a mediocre talent will consume in the office assigned to
him the whole meagre sum of his powers, and a man has to
have a mind above the ordinary if, without detriment to his
calling, he is still to have time for the chosen pursuits of his
leisure.
-Friedrich von Schiller,
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
in
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Response to Post-Hypnotic
December 3, 2001
Graphics
I saw the show
Post-Hypnotic
in the
Huntington Gallery
at
MassArt
and was inspired to try to create my own "post-hypnotic" art.
I haven't nearly captured the intensity and boldness of the paintings; but, perhaps I have illustrated the painters’
interest in the interaction of bold colors, simple geometries and human visual perception.
Quotation
November 25, 2001
Text
Yet, I hasten to add, I've never regretted my years as a
mathematical hopeful. Learning some real mathematics,
even my tiny portion of it, has been for me the most
invaluable lesson of life. Obviously, everyday problems can
be handled perfectly well without knowledge of the
Peano-Dedekind Axiomatic System, and mastery of
the Classification of Finite Simple Groups is absolutely no
guarantee of success in business. On the other hand, the
non-mathematician cannot conceive of the joys that he's
been denied. The amalgam of Truth and Beauty revealed
through the understanding of an important theorem cannot
be attained through any other human activity, unless it be (I
wouldn't know) that of mystical religion. Even if my
education was meagre, even if it meant no more than
getting my toes wet on the beach of the immense ocean of
mathematics, it has marked my life for ever, giving me a
small taste of a higher world. Yes, it has made the existence
of the Ideal slightly more believable, even tangible.
-From
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture
, by Apostolos Doxiadis.
A few photographs
October 20, 2001
Images
I have only taken a few good photographs. These are some that I like the best.
