Talent is everywhere

David Foster Wallace on life and education (profound)

The Luck of the Listserve

The Luck of the Listserve:

The Listserve brings online strangers together in an era oversaturated with friends
[...]
The Lottery of Babylon began innocently enough. It was a game, created by venal merchants, played by commoners, and its rules were simple: tempt fate, win silver coins. But as it evolved, it took on moral dimensions, dark corners, and ecclesiastical force. Although it will take a few billion more adherents to even begin chasing this mystical essence, we have a Lottery of Babylon among us today. It’s called the Listserve.
The Listserve is a mailing list lottery. Sign up for the Listserve, and you’re joining a massive e-mail list. Every day, one person from the list is randomly selected to write one e-mail to everyone else. That’s it. As of this writing, the Listserve has 21,399 subscribers. There has been one email per day since April 16th, 2012. Run by a group of Masters Candidates in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), the Listserve emerged from a class exploring new ways of creating conversational spaces online. There were other ideas: chain letters, or a message board for only 100 people at a time. But eventually email’s directness and ease-of-use won out. An email flies straight, circumventing the myriad distractions of other online gatherings, where some voices pack disproportionate clout (or, er, Klout)...............

Mortality

I went to work today feeling a little like an automaton - my tasks felt a bit rote, my actions a little prescribed. It was Monday (and it got better). But I found out halfway through the day that someone I know - but who is not geographically close - has a very serious illness.

Whooops, there's my feelings. Morality is something I'm privileged to not have to think about, except in terms of the characters on shows I watch and so forth.

I wish it didn't take something so tough to help us remember something so amazing.

Advice to a High Schooler

Different schools offer different resources, from the number of faculty to the size of the rooms to the connections of an alumni base. All of these schools - even the ones that might reject you - are looking for a class of students from diverse backgrounds, with diverse interests and abilities. Your admission is not about you - it's about the match. Sometimes there's space in a class for a particular talent, sometimes it's a bit crowded. I can't tell you how that will work in your case.

What I can say that is you are true to yourself, it will follow as surely as night follows day that you will find a place that fits you. (1) My place was at Williams - it matched me. Your place may be there or elsewhere, but you will find it. As to your butterflies - this is the first big decision in your life, and it's perfectly normal to be nervous. You will probably look back with the wisdom of extra years and laugh at your ignorance. I certainly have. But you have a legion of classmates in schools rich and poor in the boat with you. All of you will come knocking together. My hope is that you knock on all of the doors that you would go through. 

 

You asked if I had doubt. I did - I went on a grand college tour and didn't like any of them. What school was I to apply to? Into this breach stepped the marvelous propaganda that is the Williams College Prospectus, but I was lucky to have been on their list - and lucky that there was a school in the country that matched my values. There was no promise of that. I didn't even know where Williams was located in Mass - I thought it was near Boston and we missed it on the tour. I very nearly ended up at Georgia Tech.

But that would have been ok, and so it shall be with you. This is big - it's major - but it's only the start of your adult life. There are many bridges but the crossing is universal.

(1) - Shakespeare

Us, analyzed via Facebook

In Data Science of the Facebook World, Stephen Wolfram investigates us and finds a BUNCH of cool stuff. Go check it out.

 Over the decades I’ve been steadily accumulating countless anecdotal “case studies” about the trajectories of people’s lives—from which I’ve certainly noticed lots of general patterns. But what’s amazed me about what we’ve done over the past few weeks is how much systematic information it’s been possible to get all at once. Quite what it all means, and what kind of general theories we can construct from it, I don’t yet know.

But it feels like we’re starting to be able to train a serious “computational telescope” on the “social universe”. And it’s letting us discover all sorts of phenomena. That have the potential to help us understand much more about society and about ourselves. And that, by the way, provide great examples of what can be achieved with data science, and with the technology I’ve been working on developing for so long.

The FAA Furloughs

Cut Head Start?

Fine.

Cut programs for the neediest that have demonstrated positive impacts on the economy?

A-OK.

But cause some intermediate flight delays that affect people who can make phone calls, and Congress immediately gets to work.

That's wrong.

From one amputee to another

Your Monday Cry:
Marine amputees offer love and advice to Marathon amputees:

Honor

I realized today that I've forgotten all but one of the names, and most of the cases, of my four years on Williams's honor committee. That was by design - I tried to put them out of my head - but it's still odd to (not) think about it, because those experiences were so formative for me. I learned about how people act under extreme pressure, the impossibility of judgment in 51%-49% cases, and how rules interact with nessesary compassion.

I learned about secrets that "happy" people carry with them, some very dark, and I learned about the pain of depression. I learned what it was like to argue for stronger sanctions, and what it was like to stand alone for fewer sanctions. I learned the pain of secrecy when people assumed false things about me, and when I had to go along with false things others said to preserve their fraudulent stories about why they were headed off campus.

But mostly I learned what it was like to be part of a system much bigger than myself, and the responsibility of actors within those systems. So much of politics - macro and micro, is about maneuvering oneself into places and positions of responsibility, but once you're there, it's just work, and its weighty. It wasn't fun, but it was an honor to be so entrusted.

An Old Editorial of Mine from the Williams Record on the death of Osama Bin Laden

I turned 13 on Sept. 11, 2001. Sunday evening, eight years to the day after George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, I ran home to Susie Hopkins after learning that the man chiefly responsible for that event had been killed in a firefight.

We live, it is said, in a purple bubble here at Williams, isolated by mountains in every cardinal direction. Our lives are enabled and assisted through the efforts of hundreds of staff who provide us with security and services while we pursue our education. While the Internet has made true isolation less possible, we are sheltered here from hunger and the worst sort of injustices that have provoked the current Arab Spring.

Nate Krisoff ’03 departed from this shelter and entered the United States Marine Corps. The plaque commemorating his life and death on Dec. 9, 2006, sits alone above one of the back doors of Thompson Chapel, dwarfed by the long lists of names from other wars in which Ephs took greater part. He was a co-captain of the swim team, known for his one-liners and the blue and white Adidas tracksuit top that he wore everywhere.

After his death, his father, a surgeon, enlisted in the Naval Medical Corps to honor his son’s memory, serving a seven-month deployment at Camp Al Taqaddum, Iraq, among other places. I know of no other Ephs who followed Bill Krissoff’s example; Williams students are rarely found in today’s armed forces.

We serve in the government, yes, and I have no doubt that many ’11s, ’12s, ’13s and ’14s will leave this valley to accomplish great feats, but many of us will remain within the security and comfort that the privilege of a Williams degree will help to provide. We will not be able to claim the words of Professor of Rhetoric Carroll Lewis Maxcy’s 1926 eulogy:

“And some, in answer to the call of country, have gone out to battle for the common rights of men against the enemy. Some of them will not return to me, for they have given all they had, and now they rest at the foot of a simple cross or lie deep below the waves. But even as they passed, the music of the chimes was in their ears and before their eyes were visions of the quiet walks beneath the elms.”

I am not suggesting that Ephs commemorate Osama bin Laden’s death by enlisting in the armed forces; my own plans do not include military service, though I respect and honor my friends from home who made that choice. But I do suggest that we carry an extra obligation alongside our privilege: to serve not just the causes of wealth, power or fame, but to hold ourselves to a higher standard than that expected by society, the market or our peers.

Loyalty, kindness, helpfulness and their peer traits won’t buy season tickets at a Yankees game, but they are the lynchpins of a successful society: One of the great hallmarks of Williams is that I can leave my laptop out and alone in a common room without fear (though there are notable exemptions: take care!) or that we can toss our jackets on the stairs during First Fridays without requiring a coat check system to ensure that we get our outerwear back. In dedicating ourselves to building the better America that Nate Krisoff sought to protect (or for international students, the causes of freedom and justice that he sought to defend), we can honor his memory and those of the many others that perished on my birthday. We can turn the celebration at this death into a more timely and long-lasting benevolence that will pay dividends down the road.

Is this overly optimistic? Probably. I have no doubt that even on this campus, problems and struggles will continue for years to come. A Muslim chaplain will not solve all of the issues that Muslim students face, just as Campus Safety and Security can hardly prevent all thefts or sexual assaults from occurring. The United States will soon come down from its post-kill euphoria, just as the good-natured feelings of September 11 only persisted for about a month. Our task is to maintain those convictions, even when they are under the threat of convenience or malfeasance; there will often be no reward for doing the right thing, or even heavy costs like what Krissoff paid.

But regardless, let this not be a week about fireworks, politics or the celebration of a terrorist’s death. Let this be the week that we can be reminded which causes are worth dying and sacrificing for. We will not always uphold these values perfectly, but there are angels to guide us on our way.

The Blue Man Group's response to 9/11, relevant today

Gattis