If this line of study was a major, what would it be?

Harvard started back up this week, so Keith and I are busily shopping classes. MIT starts next week. One thing I love about this academic set-up is that my slate of classes don't need to add up to any particular major. When you see my list of classes, you'll understand why I say that. Here's what's on my short list this semester:

- Near East History from rise of Islam to the 11th century
- Czech Culture from Prague Spring to Velvet Revolution
- Decipherment (learning to decipher ancient texts - this looks so fun)
- Politics of Congress (taught by the professor that leads the program that all newly elected members of Congress take!)
- Quantitative Reasoning OR Psychology & Economics
- Women Writers of Imperial China
- Strategic Organization Design (my only MIT class this semester)

Bread slices back!

Have you ever heard of anyone getting a finger cut from a crusty ciabatta? Well, now you have! I have a quarter-inch cut on my knuckle...the knife was nowhere in the vicinty. It was the blasted crust!

I opted not to post a picture of the injury, instead you see a picture of the rather harmless looking perpetrator.

Do you know the way to San Jose...?

This was Keith at 4AM today heading out for the week-long fellowship field trip to Costa Rica. Look at what he's missing out on:

Inconvenient Beauty

Heavy snowfall blanketed the area Sunday and Monday with more headed our way tomorrow and on Friday.


Yesterday, the we couldn't get the car out, so we had to hoof it across town to observe a violin lesson (Miles wants to learn how to play). Snapped some pics of the lovely scenery we encountered. From a distance, the trees look like they are all abloom with white blossoms.

Fun with friends and webcams

We had our first SKYPE video call with Rosa & the girls today...it was so great to see them! Great idea Rosa...let's do it again soon!

Today a new Boston Tea Party begins...

(or alternative title: Ode to Joy)
Thank you Jen and Ryan for supporting my habit, you are the best!

Happy New Year!

We're back from a fantastic week in Floria. We had 80+ degree weather everyday, with only 2 minutes of rain during the entire trip. The wildlife in Florida is breathtaking. Thanks to EJ for all the insider tips!

Below is a little video snippet of Miles and Keith kayaking in a mangrove "tunnel" in the Everglades, the expert paddler ahead of them is yours truly. The space is pretty narrow and there is often very little clearance over your head, so it's often easier to just push off of the mangroves rather than paddling.


This slideshow has some of the better pics from our trip, including a decent shot of a mother alligator and her babies that we paddled past while kayaking.
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Snow, snow, snow

This car is parked in front of our apartment. Turns out there's been more snow this month than all of last season. The Massachusetts highway department has already spent its entire winter $24 million sand and salt budget.

You better watch out...

Jazz hands on the way - check out our dance moves. To understand why we're dancing, see weather conditions below (please note the "Feels Like" temp).

Current conditions for where we are:


Weather for where we'll be for the next week!

The Fellows

This picture was taken early on. I'll let Keith name everyone.

Technical difficulties

Miles made a few signs to ensure the message was clear to everyone.

You know the old "walked a mile to school in the snow" bit?

Guess what Miles and I did today? Actually I walked a mile in the snow to get him and then we walked a mile in the snow to get back home. We almost always walk home, there's just been much more snow lately!

BTW: Happy Birthday, Mom! Hope you got the flowers.

Hanukkah is over...

...but I just realized I forgot to post an action shot of the new menorah Karen gave us.

Q&A with Miles and Kari

Miles e-mailed my friend Kari, who works in Shanghai, the following question:

Hi Kari,

This is Miles. My friends at school said sticking up your pinky is a swear in China. Is that true? Thank you.

Sincerely, Miles

This was Kari's thoughtful response:

Hi Miles :)

That was a really good question. And in fact, I had to do a little digging to find out. Sticking your pinky up means you are referring to something that is "small". So most of my Chinese friends and co-workers have told me that it would depend on how you meant it to mean something bad or not. Does that make sense? I am sure you could think of some normal ways to use a pinky to indicate small and some mean ways ... probably the nice/normal ways are the best :)

Sincerely,
Kari

Gnome for the holidays

I was shopping on Newbury Street in Boston and saw this sassy gnome staring out at me. He was in a shop full of gnomes, fairies and other mythical creatures.

Remembering the last drops of fall color on the Mohawk trail

Yikes, it's December, our second snow has arrived and I'm just getting around to posting about our Veteran's day travels. For the long weekend, we went on a mini-tour of the Western Mass/Berkshires. In summer or prime leaf-viewing season, this area would be packed. But, with the arrival of the chilly pre-snow air and with most, though not all, of the fall color gone, it's very quiet.

Day one - Hadley & Amherst: After a very late start, we drove to Hadley where we had short, but very enjoyable visit with Jill Kaufman, her husband Av, and their two girls. Jill is a friend of Keith's from public radio, turns out Av is also a public radio reporter. They live in a sweet old farmhouse in Hadley. Av has lived in New England most of his life and has an incredible wealth of information about this region housed in his head. They are such smart, funny, and warm people -- we'll have to head back for another visit. Hopefully we'll get to see their pond and the local snapping turtles that live there.

Day two - Roadside Stops and North Adams
- Shelburne Falls: Artist community sort of like Mount Vernon, but more authentic somehow. Glacial Potholes. Delicious warm Apple Puff, tea, and coffee at Shelburne Falls Coffee Roaster. If you go there, don't waste time with cold apple puff...get it warmed.

- Mohwak trail gift shop: When you travel with Miles gift shops are a part of the equation.

North Adams : Visit Mass MoCA. The museum is housed in an immense old factory with lots of wide open spaces perfect for displaying large scale artworks.

I was excited to find a Strandbeest by Theo Jansen. Keith and I had previously seen his work online where you can see it in motion. The pieces depend upon wind for mobility, so at MassMoCA it lies there like a mysterious and beautiful washed up alien life-form.

Also was really intrigued by the work of Heeseop Yoon. She creates very large installations using black tape, vellum, and pencil. I haven't found a photograph that captures the gesture and depth that she is able to create with these simple materials. It's sort of like she combines sumi, mural art, and fine sketching.

There was a large Spencer Finch exhibit, that, with a few wonderful exceptions didn't work for me. Much of the exhibit was focused on accuracy of color and color of light(he uses a colorimeter to ensure this) ...and being somewhat colorblind, it was lost on me.


We spent the night in lovely Porches Inn. Miles and Keith enjoyed many rounds of their "swedish treatment" (where they swim in the heated outdoor pool then dash through the cold mountain air for a dip in the hot tub and then pool....then hot tub). The town was so shuttered up that only two restaurants in town were open. Fortunately for us, one was the excellent Gramercy Bistro.

Day three: Visit Williamstown (home of lovely Williams college), drive through Bershires, visit to Hancock Shaker Village.

Making stuff at the Fab Lab

About a month ago my classmate Alec Resnick told me about the MIT Center for Bits & Atoms (CBA) Fab Lab he works at in Back Bay. Yesterday we finally got to visit and we are hooked. You are looking at Miles' first creation.

He created it in a drawing program in Open Office and then "printed" it on a machine that used a laser to cut his design out of 1/4" thick plastic. Miles chose to use this thick white plastic from a wide selection of materials; he could just as easily have used some other material like wood, mirror or another color of plastic. There were a few little issues, but it turned out great for a first project. In addition to the ability to just make stuff, the atmosphere in the lab is really congenial and communal.

But the goal of the Fab Lab is much greater than to just let people like us make cool stuff, their goal is to bridge the fabrication divide. The fab lab concept and outreach is one of the most exciting things I've been exposed to at MIT, if you have a chance, watch this brief talk that Neil Gershenfeld, CBA Director, gave at TED about a year ago. When I viewed it, it took my breath away.

Fab labs have been opened in rural India, northern Norway, Ghana, Boston, South Africa, and Costa Rica. On the FabLabs site they list examples of what's happening at these labs:

• Fab Lab partners are working on creating mesh wireless, ad hoc networks in the Lyngen Alps of Norway to allow shepherds to keep track of their flocks from afar, and to allow fishermen to keep track of their boats at sea.



• At the Ghana Fab Lab, situated at the Takoradi Technical Institute, students are working on low-cost designs for mobile refrigeration and TV antennas.



• In Pabal, India Fab Lab users are making replacement gears for out-of-date copying machines, reliable tools for testing milk content and for diagnostics on
  human blood.



• At the Costa Rica Fab Lab young people are learning basic electronics and fabrication - by making functional objects with an array of sensors and actuators.



• In Boston Fab Lab users make jewelry, toys and crafts using recycled materials from the community. The projects are picked by the community based on urgency of needs and/or group interests.

All the labs have the same equipment and capabilities so it is possible to share digital designs and fabricated solutions between labs, Forming a network of intellectual property and idea exchange.

Thanksgiving in New York

Several months ago Keith's brother Jeff suggested a Seinfeld Thanksgiving meet-up in NY. So on Wednesday afternoon, we packed up the van and headed for NYC with a million or so of our neighbors. Our hotel was located on the upper west side, just a few blocks from the Macy's Parade Balloon Inflation and the Parade route. Someone told us that you can view the inflation the night before the parade and avoid some of the insane crowds of the parade.

Below is a picture of the scene. Note to self: when someone imparts information like this, be sure to run a battery of tests to determine if their idea of a lite crowd matches yours.


Even though it was crowded, we were able to get a close look



Thanksgiving morning, we watched the parade from w-a-a-a-y back, but it was still exciting to be there in person. Lots of people bring ladders to sit on. It was a gorgeous sunny day and unseasonably warm at around 65 degrees! I couldn't hear any details about this silver bunny, but he looked cool.


Other highlights: Thanksgiving dinner with no dishes to clean and lots of time to catch up with everyone, Walk through Chinatown, Museum of Natural History, Shopping in Soho (Miles' faves were KidRobot and Evolution), a beautiful night-time driving tour of the city courtesy of Dianna (and Deb), H&H Bagels, Zabars, a meal at Artie's...

It was a fantastic time and we hope to be heading back soon.

Update: Forgot to mention my one celebrity sighting. I'm pretty sure I saw John Mayer at the Soho Starbucks on Saturday. I didn't mention it to anyone because noone I was with would have cared.

Eeeek!!!

I must be reading the Indexed blog too much, because this is the first thing that ran through my head after an unpleasant encounter on the way home from my class the other night.

Well, it was the first thing after the shrieking and scurrying away into darkness.

We just refer to him as "the award-winning Keith Seinfeld"

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has just named their 2007 Science Journalism Award winners and Keith was the winner in the radio category for his "Electric Brain" series. I know I may be partial, but that series was really one of the most memorable things I ever heard on public radio.

About the awards (from their site):

Independent panels of science journalists chose the winners of the awards, which honor excellence in science reporting for print, radio, television and online categories. The awards, established in 1945, also include a prize for coverage of science news for children that is open to journalists worldwide...

Here is their blurb about Keith's series (from their site):

In a thematic series, Seinfeld of KPLU-FM in Seattle/Tacoma described the electrical properties of the human brain and how scientists are finding new ways to use those properties to treat diseases and injuries.

The judges were impressed by his clear, concise language and great use of sound in telling about important research in neuroscience. "While a drill whines in the background, cutting a hole in the top of a patient's skull, Keith Seinfeld carries his listeners into the story," said Jeff Nesmith, a Washington-based science writer for Cox Newspapers. "This kind of radio journalism seizes a listener's attention while it delivers an understandable account of complicated science."

David Baron, global development editor for Public Radio International's "The World" program, praised the "vividness of the writing, the clarity of the scientific explanations, the superb use of sound, the dramatic storytelling." He said Seinfeld's work "hangs together beautifully as a series, with each story building upon those that came before. Well conceived and brilliantly executed, 'The Electric Brain' is radio science journalism of the highest order."

The awards announcement is an interesting read because all of the journalism awarded is quite compelling.

Meet Ly, Fy, and Ry -- the Vimobot Revolution

Some facts about this trio (created by Miles):

• Ly has an orange eye and controls electricity. He is is 2,000/1,000,000th of a second older than Ry.
• Fy has a blue eye and controls heat. He is 2,000/1,000,000th of a second older than Ly.
• Ry has a green eye and controls water. He is the youngest.
• Their favorite food is raspberries. (note from Beth: I must talk with them about their diet, raspberries are very expensive this time of year!)
• They live with Miles.
• The reason behind their revolution is complicated. I'll update with more details as they become available.

Origins:
Last week we bought these design-it-yourself Vimobots on clearance at Urban Outfitters($1.99). Miles went right to work with the Sharpies to create these cute little fellers.

After an improbable 5+ weeks standing...

...it finally fell.

Miles decided to make a tall tower. We tried to tell him this design wasn't very stable. He proved us wrong. It was actually a demolition project that brought the structure down. During a playdate, giant plush microbes were strategically propelled at the tower until it finally fell.