nader akhnoukh

Feynman's letter to his dead wife

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:46:11 -0400

Feynman's letter to his dead wife :

Physicist Richard Feynman was born this day in 1918. In 1946, he wrote this incredibly heartbreaking letter

Via @LettersOfNote

Maurice Sendak and Stephen Colbert. A great interview. via...

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:48:03 -0400

Maurice Sendak and Stephen Colbert. A great interview.

via ColbertNation

Lovely weekend in Golden Gate Park

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:43:16 -0400

Lovely weekend in Golden Gate Park

Today I Became a US Citizen

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:13:00 -0400

I’ve lived here for 20 years. Three years learning who I was in Northern Massachussetts, four building life long friends in the woods of New Hampshire. A summer coding in Seattle, Thanksgivings in Delaware, Spring Break in the Florida Keys. I almost died hiking Tennessee’s fabled Smoky Mountains. I spent a year in DC mostly because someone gave me a job, before discovering San Francisco and falling in love. (With both the town and my girl) I moved to Boston for a few years to start a company, drove cross country twice, and spent a couple months exploring the Southwest and ranching in Wyoming. I drove to Alaska (and back!) camping the whole way.

This is all to say, this is my home. I know this country well. And thus I wasn’t expecting today’s experience to be an emotional one, but it was.

I am nominally Canadian and Egyptian. Canadian via my parents after they immigrated there many years ago, though I’ve never lived there. Egyptian by blood. My name and face are Egyptian. If you force me to distill where I’m from down to one place, and I respect you enough to open up my complex story, I will likely settle on Egypt. But similarly never having lived there, barely speaking the language, there is a disconnect. It is an approximation at best. As a patrol officer in the midst of an unfortunate predicament on the Quebec border once told me, “Son, you are a man without a country.” Thus is the story of the American immigrant, and the connection I felt to those 1000 others from 108 countries sitting around me at the Oath Ceremony this morning. Every one of us has lived a liminal experience to varying degrees for years. Separated from family, afraid to do something wrong and reset the whole process, your dreams in the hands of an immigration officer who you hope isn’t having a bad day. Today there was a definite feeling of excitement pervading the room, but one tinged with relief.

But then you step back and realize that this is the same process that has been going on for generations. America is a country of immigrants. This is how the sausage of America is made, one Oath of Allegiance at a time. And that is what really got to me. Being part of this process, this process that is so imperfect, yet at the same time the most perfect process the human race has yet imagined, to create a better society. Incredibly humbling.

On Healthcare

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 07:23:22 -0400

Government exists to provide for citizens what they cannot provide for themselves adequately and at scale. We agree on roads and schools, but for some mystifying reason in the United States, healthcare is not intrinsically considered to be part of that essential group. Mystifying because no one argues about the need for a military to protect us. To protect our freedom to live healthy lives in pursuit of our dreams. I would argue that providing universal healthcare is the most fundamental responsibility of government, trumping commerce, defense and education. There is nothing more basic and core to the pursuit of happiness.

However, I also sadly believe that requiring a citizen to purchase insurance, dictating how they spend their money, is unconstitutional and I believe Justice Kennedy, the lone swing vote on a court that has sadly mimicked the polarism of the nation, will likely come to the same conclusion.

The ‘great compromise’ of the free market solution to healthcare is flawed at its very core. Government’s role is to protect a free market, not use it for its own means. Universal healthcare needs to be ‘free’, ie paid for by taxpayer dollars in the same way that schools and roads are. Every other developed nation has made it work, and the United States with the strongest social contract of any nation, (‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’) must find a way as well.

"Paulie’s Bouncing Bible He carried his basketball wherever he went. Sometimes he bounced it..."

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:26:35 -0400

“

Paulie’s Bouncing Bible

He carried his basketball wherever he went.
Sometimes he bounced it fiercely
and took aim at hoops
that only he could see.
Sometimes he twirled it
on one finger
like a bulbous ballerina.
But mostly Paulie
held the ball
between his palms,
against his chest,
the way a preacher holds a bible
to make god’s point.
Just like his mother’s little Christ,
it strengthened his grip on things,
extended his palms around a world
he was barely able to hold onto.

”

- From Dennis Bernstein’s Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom, a really beautiful collection of poems.

Andrew Huang’s short film Solipsist. One of the most...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:36:49 -0500

Andrew Huang’s short film Solipsist. One of the most spectacular things I’ve seen in a while. Bravo.

via the ISO50 Blog

"If the insurance industry should experience a $250 billion loss from some mega-catastrophe – a loss..."

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:46:00 -0500

“If the insurance industry should experience a $250 billion loss from some mega-catastrophe – a loss about triple anything it has ever faced – Berkshire as a whole would likely record a moderate profit for the year because of its many streams of earnings. Concurrently, all other major insurers and reinsurers would be far in the red, and some would face insolvency.”

- Buffet’s 2011 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Investors

Prostitution, Welfare and Uber

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:46:23 -0500

Prostitution, Welfare and Uber :

This an old post that I just recently came across. Love how the data nerds just keep getting sidetracked by more interesting data, totally losing their initial focus. I love this because I am a data nerd myself.

What it takes to make minimum wage as an independent musician

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:33:00 -0500

There’s been a lot of talk in my circles these days about the pros/cons of different musician revenue models.

Some good thoughts about it are laid out here: http://derekwebb.tumblr.com/post/13503899950/giving-it-away-how-free-music-makes-more-than-sense

And here’s a great infographic depicting the options.

via Information is Beautiful

The World's Most Mysterious Book

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:39:45 -0400

The World's Most Mysterious Book:

The Voynich Manuscript has stumped cryptographers for 500 years.

I’ve been reading all about this manuscript. Fascinating stuff. Learned a new word through the process: ductus (“the number of strokes that make up a written letter, and the direction, sequence and speed in which they are written”). eg, The author’s ductus seemed practiced, evidence that the symbols were not invented.

Catchy tune of the day. Happy Friday. How’d You Like...

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:22:53 -0400

Catchy tune of the day. Happy Friday.

How’d You Like That, by The Kooks

Revisiting the Chunking Mansions

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:28:36 -0400

Revisiting the Chunking Mansions:

Allison and I crashed here for a couple nights a few years ago in a room probably about 8x6. We paid extra for a window facing a wall close enough you could reach out and touch it. Every race and ethnicity packed into the maze of a building, anything imaginable can be bought or sold, the true black market wild west.

"Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865 To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee Sir: I..."

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:37:37 -0400

“

Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy, —the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson),—and the children—Milly, Jane and Grundy—go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve, and die if it comes to that, than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

P.S. —Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson

”

- History Matters

Awesome. Love the ingenuity that necessity derives. via Colin...

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:00:05 -0400

Awesome. Love the ingenuity that necessity derives.

via Colin Stuart

I was about to board a plane when I heard of Steve Jobs’...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:53:56 -0400

I was about to board a plane when I heard of Steve Jobs’ death. It hit me much harder than I would have expected, which has made me reflect on why.

As a software creator, I unintentionally embody his vision in every decision I make. Is there a way to make something simpler, more elegant, can I get rid of it completely? How does a change to one component affect the holistic vision? All of my best software sensibilities are directly attributable to him. He didn’t raise the bar of design, he completely re-imagined it. Repeatedly.

As an entrepreneur, he inspires me profoundly. At Kapost, we’ve been playing a mental exercise of imagining the most outlandish thing our company could do in 5 years. Then step away and when you return start thinking about how you could make that happen today. I imagine Steve thought this way continuously. He made the imaginary real. Repeatedly.

I know my best work is yet to come, and I hope I can honor him in some small way by striving with even more focus towards the impossible goal of a little piece of perfection.

Cheers to you, Steve.

Faster than speed of light?

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:27:43 -0400

Faster than speed of light?:

I hope this result holds. We’re due for a major physics revolution.

via Jean Bredeche

Harvest

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:05:38 -0400

Harvest

Old SF

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:42:00 -0400

Old SF:

Great Mashup of the San Francisco Public Library’s Image Archives with the Google Maps API. Enjoy.

"There is an extraordinary breadth and depth and tenure among the Apple executive team, and these..."

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:44:05 -0400

“

There is an extraordinary breadth and depth and tenure among the Apple executive team, and these executives lead over 35,000 employees that I would call “all wicked smart”. And that’s in all areas of the company, from engineering to marketing to operations and sales and all the rest. And the values of our company are extremely well entrenched.

We believe that we’re on the face of the Earth to make great products, and that’s not changing. We’re constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.

We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot.

And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to change. And I think, regardless of who is in what job, those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well.

”

- Tim Cook, on assuming the day-to-day operations of Apple, after Steve Job’s first medical leave two years ago.