No pressure

I occupy Study 30 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I requested it based on the recommendation of my friend Fred Turner, who had enjoyed it a couple years back and who said it doesn’t get too hot. Which it doesn’t. Then I looked at the list of previous residents of my study (which the Center staff conveniently post outside each study’s door).

Study 30, Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, was occupied by Thomas S. Kuhn during the 1958-59 academic year. He was working on the manuscript that would become The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Here’s what he had to say about his time at the Center:

They told me when I was at Wesleyan that I stayed in the room where John Cage wrote “Silence.” Ah, the shadows of greatness. . . .

Sabbatical Rules

Which can of course be considered a complete sentence or a set of guidelines. Let me assent to the former and get on to the latter. I may add more latter.

1. Just because I’m blogging while on sabbatical doesn’t mean I have time to do work for other people that I didn’t have when I wasn’t on sabbatical (cancer obviously excepted).
2. I am not allowed to work for more than 40 hours in a given week. Delivering a talk at a conference counts as time on the clock.
3. No rushing, hurrying, or emergencies.
4. Limit all commitments.
5. Make life decisions based on JRo’s “Good Times Program.” Like all post-theological life doctrines, this one requires some personal interpretation. (This will be the subject of a future post).
6. Accept the possibility that I may be becoming more of a morning person.
7. Pursuant to #6, my own work happens each day before I even consider doing anything for other people.
8. Have new experiences.
9. Undertake as much nondirected reading as possible.
10. Limit multitasking, be in the moment. Except if it’s fun (like browsing the newspaper during a football game on TV).

Nouveau Sterneworks

I’ve been stealing a few minutes here and there since early summer to re-do my main website. It had been on textpattern, which is a not-all-that-well-supported CMS (that’s “content management system” for those not familiar with the jargon–it’s the software that runs your website for you and keeps everything in order). WordPress (which I use for this blog) has in recent years become a fully reasonable CMS for academic websites such as mine (or Carrie’s). If all my sites ran on one kind of software, then I’d only have to keep track of changes in one kind of software.

I took advantage of the change to also change the look of the site radically to improve readability. The basic site design was a rip off of a few other sites I liked in the late 1990s, and not much had changed since then. So it was time for a refresh. I’m not done with it yet, but since my annual email to listservs advertising my Academe page produced its usual range of suggestions for updates (head on over to have a look), I decided it was time to go live so as not to have duplication of work. Some things are still unfinished, like a print style, but it’s getting there.

Have a look and feel free to send comments or suggestions.

California Crazy

Shortly after our arrival in our new neighborhood, we went out to the car to find this envelope affixed to the windshield:

Clearly someone had noticed the Quebec license plates. Inside was the following letter:

Welcome to Silicon Valley, where everyone has a startup company and is an entrepreneurial genius.* Which means, of course, that they’re out to get a piece of you in the guise of “opportunity.” Let’s examine this “opportunity” with a “big” “company” “in” “Quebec.”

There is one power company, Hydro-Quebec. It has a sweetheart deal with the province, which also means that provincial residents get artificially low power rates through provincial subsidies. Hydro has that notoriously awful Quebec web design, yet it is still pretty easy to pay your monthly power bill online. Or by check. Now–assuming that this isn’t some completely BS investment scam designed to separate us from our money–let us consider it as a serious proposition for a moment. Why would Hydro Quebec start make some special deal with a parasitic company whose sole purpose appears to be to skim money off of commercial transactions? Why would the entrepreneurial geniuses behind such a venture need to resort to hand-written letters to strangers with Quebec license plates in order to secure venture capital? And do any of the people involved actually speak French?

In the local internet vernacular, I’d have to give it an epic FAIL.

—

Oh, how are we doing, you ask? Just fine. We set a goal of being set up after a week and we pretty much are aside from a few small remainder things. The condo is lovely, the center is breathtakingly beautiful, Carrie is managing her new addiction to bubble tea and rediscovering her gardening skills, my studio is set up, and we are floored by the ease of consumerism and the speed of restaurant service.

All of these matters will be topics for upcoming blog posts. The original theme of the blog was “Another American in Montreal.” This year’s theme is clearly going to have to be “an American immigrant to Montreal rediscovering the US after being gone for six years.” It’s not like we haven’t visited, but living here is a whole other matter.

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* For the record, I’m not guaranteeing that I won’t have my own startup by the end of the year. Anything can happen on sabbatical!

And on the sabbath, he rested

My first semester as a professor was the fall of 1999. What I remember the most was the intensity. It was like a constant sprint except I didn’t always know where or why I was running. Then, sometime in October a Friday afternoon arrived when there wasn’t something I urgently had to do. I had a choice of what to do with my time. Exhausted from weeks of sensory overload, I went to sleep.

Just under 30 minutes ago, the clock rolled over to midnight eastern time. I am now officially on sabbatical for the first time after 11 years of a mad dash. And I’m celebrating by going to sleep. A full report on the trip and the new digs will be forthcoming.

Me in California, The Audible Past in Korean, and “The MP3 as Cultural Artifact” in Portuguese

As you read this, we (that’s Carrie, me and the cat) are airborne over North America, destined for our new temporary digs in Mountain View (and at Stanford).  The last few weeks have been as “full time” as I can remember between work and socializing.  It’s good to be back in “normal” but I’m definitely ready for a slowdown.  More soon: a few people asked if I would blog the sabbatical. Yes, but I don’t think it will be as gripping as cancer treatment. A small price to may in my opinion but your attention may drift.

In the meantime, a former student (ie, new PhD) pointed me to this.  Amazing — I always thought The Audible Past was simply too long to translate.  My thanks to whomever spent what must have been a lot of time on this.

I haven’t said much about the Brazil trip and I should, but as long as I’m announcing translations, “The MP3 as Cultural Artifact” is now available in Portuguese, thanks to Simone Pereira de Sà and my translators Lucas Laender Waltenberg and José Claudio Castanheira.

Good News, Fishing for Bad

Brazil was amazing, as expected. Rio is a very interesting and intense city, my hosts were wonderful, the experience was totally unforgettable and I hope to go back. My visa is good for 10 years.

Yesterday I went to the radiation oncologist for followup. He pronounced me fine and said not to come back; and to email him if I have any issues. Apparently my remaining voice issues (compared with May — the issues I had in May were related to paralysis that’s not going away) are related to dryness that may persist for six months or more. Good to know. Otherwise, things are healing up well and apparently the 85 spf sunblock I put on each day is working. Unfortunately, soon it will be time for new scans — MRI or CT, which means doctors go fishing for problems, which in turn will mean more tests to confirm data found in those tests. Ugh. Probably, though, I will have a respite until December.

Back to catching up on email; it’s going to take days to get through this backlog.