Wisdom Watch

positive Hon­ey­moon in the Mal­dives. Even more amaz­ing than I could have imagined.
positive Win­ter camp­ing at Mount Moosi­lauke with Feld­meier, Xmal, Zoz, and my amaz­ing wife. A real shock to the sys­tem after 8 days of float­ing in a warm ocean, but still a lot of fun.
negative Quit­ters. Within hours of being offi­cially pro­moted to man­age the EE group, my most senior guy quits. He claims it’s a strange coincidence.
neutral Vacan­cies. Is any­one look­ing for a EE job?
positive Wis­dom Watch returns to the Scot­tos­phere after a 3-year hia­tus. (But who still remem­bers circa-1997 Newsweek?)

March 10, 2013 March 14, 2013 ww by Scott 2 Comments

wisdom watch: college admissions edition

Thumbs Up MIT releases col­lege admis­sions results on Pi Day.
Indifferent Today’s appli­cants expect instant online noti­fi­ca­tion of their sta­tus. Remem­ber wait­ing to see whether it was a big enve­lope or a lit­tle envelope?
Thumbs Down The Inter­net.

March 18, 2010 March 18, 2010 ww by Scott 2 Comments

wisdom watch: short days and chilly nights edition

Thumbs Up New Bal­ance spon­sors increased snow-removal efforts along the Charles River run­ning paths. The results look very good! For this ges­ture they deserve to have their logo embla­zoned on the plow.
Indifferent The Garmin FR60 watch: the speed and heart-rate infor­ma­tion are nice (and finally cal­i­brated), but now the lap but­ton doesn’t work in sub-freezing temperatures?
Thumbs Up Salomon Gore-Tex trail-running shoes: supe­rior trac­tion on snow and ice and a water­proof toe box make win­ter run­ning notice­ably more pleasant.
Thumbs Up Time ATAC cli­p­less MTB ped­als: the first cli­p­less pedal sys­tem I have tried that does not jam with snow. Since my snow boots do not reli­ably fit into my usual toe clips, I am using these (along with my trusty Lake win­ter cycling shoes) on the fixie for the rest of the season.
Thumbs Up Ice cream: Still tasty, and the best part is, it doesn’t melt.

January 9, 2010 January 9, 2010 ww by Scott 1 Comment

wisdom watch

Thumbs Up Chi­nese food in China. Even with such fail­ures as chicken feet and fish heads float­ing in the soup, it’s con­sid­er­ably tastier over there.
Thumbs Up Hong Kong’s giant dis­plays of Christ­mas lights. Campy but spirited!
Thumbs Up Thanks­giv­ing. Excel­lent.
Thumbs Down Media cov­er­age of Tiger Woods. Seri­ously, who cares?
Indifferent Christ­mas: com­ing too soon?
Indifferent Blog­ging. Who has time?

December 6, 2009 December 6, 2009 ww by Scott No Comments

wisdom watch

Thumbs Up Har­poon Five Miler (June 6). Finally, a race for a cause I can support—two free pints of beer!
Thumbs Up The 100th Anniver­sary of the MIT Radio Soci­ety (June 7). I was once the pres­i­dent of this orga­ni­za­tion. A very unusual crowd! Seated to my right was Gor­don from the class of 1948, who was drafted in his sopho­more year and sent to Aus­tria to per­form SIGINT on Nazi com­mu­ni­ca­tions. On my left, Clay­ton, a Har­vard grad stu­dent study­ing the role of the Inter­state High­way Sys­tem on the spread of con­ser­v­a­tivism in rural Amer­i­can neigh­bor­hoods. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Thumbs Up The Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl (June 10). I’m get­ting my PhD in all-you-can-eat ice cream studies.
Thumbs Up Buzz Aldrin and the Boston Pops (June 11). The leg­endary fighter pilot, orbital mechan­ics expert, astro­naut, and moon­walker, look­ing sprightly and ath­letic at 79 years, nar­rated a Pops per­for­mance of Holst’s The Plan­ets syn­chro­nized to a stun­ning large-screen dis­play of sci­en­tific imagery from outer space. An unfor­get­table, stag­ger­ingly cool expe­ri­ence. “One small step for man?” This guy was stand­ing right there! On the fuck­ing moon! 239,000 miles away! The Pops really ran with the motif, also play­ing Also Sprach Zarathus­tra, themes from Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, Star Trek and Star Wars, and a hilar­i­ous Moon Med­ley Sing-Along (fea­tur­ing every­thing from “Fly Me to the Moon” to “Moon­dance” and “Bad Moon Rising”).
Thumbs Up Tak­ing pic­tures while my bicy­cle gets built.
Thumbs Up Sail­ing in Boston Har­bor. Give me a few more weeks and I’ll stop it with the acci­den­tal jibes.
Thumbs Down Jel­ly­fish. On a recent out­ing the har­bor was full of these crit­ters, includ­ing a small swarm that appeared to be chas­ing a sty­ro­foam cof­fee cup. (Mommy?)
Thumbs Up Chris Pias­cik at the Cho­rus Gallery (June 13). An art gallery attached to an urban bike shop? You bet. Too bad this place has a seri­ous hip­ster infes­ta­tion.
Thumbs Down Nar­ra­gansett Beer. The new PBR. This is not a good development.
Indifferent Dark­rooms. Years from now, in a time when chil­dren will ask their par­ents what film is, I will appeal to retro artiste sen­si­bil­i­ties by unveil­ing a cologne scented like ammo­nium thio­sul­phate. Mmm, darkroom!
Thumbs Up The 6th Annual Print­ing Arts Fair (June 21). Fan­tas­tic live demon­stra­tions of all types of print­ing. For a small fee one could type­set cus­tom sta­tionery on the Lino­type and walk home with paper (and sou­venir metal slug) just 20 min­utes later. A group of artists printed large-format wood­cuts with a steam­roller in the park­ing lot. Paper­mak­ing and book­bind­ing crafts were on dis­play. Dozens of art-house print­ers from around New Eng­land were hawk­ing their wares. Wet ink looks deli­cious. Type is a beau­ti­ful thing.

June 21, 2009 June 21, 2009 ww by Scott 4 Comments

wisdom watch

Thumbs Down Tax Day Tea Party at Long Wharf (April 15). Stum­bled upon this event by acci­dent. Actual demon­stra­tors were largely out­num­bered by cam­eras and weirdos. One woman was hold­ing a sign that read “Who is John Galt?”
Thumbs Down Pecha Kucha Boston 9. Dis­re­spect­ful audi­ence + only one good pre­sen­ta­tion = disappointment.
Indifferent Swapfest at MIT (April 19). A sure sign of spring. But for once there was noth­ing I wanted to buy!
Thumbs Up The 113th Boston Marathon (April 20). Watched for the first time. An inspir­ing dis­play of ath­leti­cism. Gave me irra­tional thoughts about want­ing to run one someday.
Indifferent Ratatat live at the House of Blues (April 20). Good music and trippy visu­als, but the band’s elec­tronic instru­ments are con­fig­ured to pretty much play them­selves. End result: just like the records, but louder.
Thumbs Up Bor­der Cafe. Always fills me up; never lets me down.
Thumbs Up Unaf­fil­i­ated Read­ing Series at Out­post 186. I never go to poetry read­ings, but this was a pretty fun Sat­ur­day after­noon diversion.
Thumbs Up Mozart’s Requiem at Sanders The­atre (April 25). Erin Rhode may have car­ried the alto sec­tion, but the orches­tra and soloists blew me away. Nice seats, too. (Thanks Rhode!)
Thumbs Up Sail­ing on Boston Har­bor. So much fun that I paid money so I can do it all summer.
Thumbs Up Volvo Ocean Race. Watched the fin­ish of the Rio-to-Boston leg of this insanely hard­core sport. The win­ning team sur­vived the final few days with­out a reli­able sup­ply of drink­ing water. Another fin­isher sailed for a week with a bro­ken rib. The boats are pretty too—check it out.
Thumbs Up Sum­mer weather. Keep it coming.
Thumbs Down Swine flu. Imag­ine what it’s like when you have a cough, a sore throat, laryn­gi­tis, and pos­si­bly a slight fever, and sud­denly they start talk­ing about this in the newspaper?
Indifferent A newly-minted soft­ware plug-in for the Scot­tos­phere per­mits quick author­ing of these posts using the hereto­fore unknown Wis­dom Watch Markup Lan­guage (WWML).

April 29, 2009 April 29, 2009 ww by Scott 3 Comments

weekend wisdom watch

Thumbs Up Dur­ing a 24-hour period last Thursday-Friday, I went for a run, walked, rode a bike, rode a train, rode in a car, rowed a boat, and flew on a plane. I guess a swim would have been a nice addition.
Indifferent Ran the 2009 Cherry Blos­som Ten Mile in 1:16:40. That’s 6 min­utes faster than last year, but not fast enough to beat Mihalik’s for­mi­da­ble 7:30 pace! I call for a rematch in 2010.
Thumbs Up Cherry blos­soms.
Indifferent Alex Tre­bek: really the best choice for grand mar­shal of a parade?
Thumbs Down D.C. traf­fic.
Thumbs Up Hang­ing out with old friends. Meet­ing cool new people.

April 7, 2009 April 7, 2009 ww by Scott 3 Comments

wisdom watch

Thumbs Down The McDonald’s down the street will be bull­dozed by the Red Sox in April. Ordi­nar­ily the loss of a fast food fran­chise would not trou­ble me, but the team’s vague plan is to do some devel­op­ment “when the econ­omy improves.” As a post on Arch­Boston puts it, what the Red Sox mean is “this will be a park­ing lot for years.” Thanks for improv­ing the neigh­bor­hood, guys.
Indifferent Two head­lines on the nytimes.com page yes­ter­day: “Obama Vows, ‘We Will Rebuild,’ and ‘Recover,’” and “Michelle Obama Goes Sleeve­less, Again.” Granted, the lat­ter was a weblog entry, not a real arti­cle, but the mes­sage is the same: you’ve come a long way, ladies!
Thumbs Down Yesterday’s gas tax protest out­side the State House. The cost of fix­ing the roads must be borne by the peo­ple who drive on them. I don’t care how Repub­li­can you are—there’s no other money in the bud­get, so get over it already.
Indifferent Work­ers at a UCSD build­ing are blam­ing elec­tro­mag­netic fields from ele­va­tor motors for a small spike in breast can­cer cases among the building’s occu­pants. I laughed when I read the story, because it is com­mon knowl­edge that EMF (and non-ionizing radi­a­tion in gen­eral) have no muta­genic effect on cells. But, hav­ing just read Steven Johnson’s book The Ghost Map, I quickly recon­sid­ered my posi­tion. The response to London’s infa­mous 1854 cholera out­break was tremen­dously ham­pered by igno­rance among the sci­en­tific set, who still believed (despite incred­i­ble data) that cholera was spread by smell. It would be decades before every­one agreed that bac­te­ria might be the culprit.
Thumbs Down The AMA is upset about the promi­nent use of cig­a­rettes in a movie. Does any­one really think that smok­ing still looks awesome?
Thumbs Up When he’s not busy read­ing hard-hitting lit­er­a­ture, Mrhé is tak­ing time to “blog” about some pretty heavy stuff.

Mrhe hard at work

February 26, 2009 February 26, 2009 ww by Scott 5 Comments