gave a two-hour workshop (click for notes) on the r statistical programming language at nyu's urban policy research center..
..thanks to max. we both spend our careers doing statistical computing-based applied research without much in the way of formal credentials or concern for funding sources. and we refuse to get lasik.
just sat on the roof and talked for hours, a lost art. easy to do when you're both true believers in public health. tracy's idea? de-silo. we know the population.. we can identify the metrics.. we need to integrate our society's health and welfare services' separate bureaucracies to work in unison toward a desired outcome focusing on communities with an overlap of problems. not problem-, but place-based interventions.
strolled by open-air rage-o-holic vent sessions.
ate great food. sat in the hot tub. played ghostbusters- the video game. chatted about tehran, and reciprocal good-travel: the possibility of giving lectures while also a tourist.
walked a bit of the high line with my old friend joe. to be continued.
think ny subway vandals are uncreative.
read stephen hawking's a brief history of time. dr. hawking says what he can about our existence..
the surface of the earth is a two-dimensional curved space
our scientific discoveries may well destroy us
if a two-dimensional creature ate something it could not digest completely, it would have to bring up the remains the same way it swallowed them, because if there were a passage right through its body, it would divide the creature into two separate halves
..about our place in the heavens..
a million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeroes after it) miles, the size of our observable universe
in the case of the most distant object that we have seen, the light left some eight thousand million years ago. thus, when we look at the universe, we are seeing it as it was in the past
the present evidence..suggests that the universe will probably expand forever
events before the big bang can have no consequences
a medium-sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million million galaxies in the observable universe
in the case of the most distant object that we have seen, the light left some eight thousand million years ago. thus, when we look at the universe, we are seeing it as it was in the past
the present evidence..suggests that the universe will probably expand forever
events before the big bang can have no consequences
a medium-sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million million galaxies in the observable universe
..but more than anything, this book is about questions, not answers--mysterious mountains we've yet to climb.
why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?