Ken's Blog

I finally saw Dune 2 in the theater. Speaking as someone who grew up with the novels, I thought it was a brilliant film. It did a much better job than most cinematic epics of translating book to screen, retaining the epic sweep of Herbert’s vision while adding its own brand of movie magic.

Although every time Christopher Walken showed up on screen, part of my mind just kept saying, over and over, “Walk without rhythm, it won’t attract the worm.”

I am not sure whether that detracted from the movie or, in some weird way, added to it.

As I said yesterday, “May the fourth be with you” is now ruined for fans, having been co-opted by the overreach of a certain large corporation. Perhaps it is time to move on.

In that spirit, it may be time to initiate a new holiday. So here goes: “May the fifth be with you!” (he said, taking swig from a bottle…)

Alas, I am not sure that this new holiday is very child friendly.

I was going to write today about that wonderful fan tradition around saying “May the 4th be with you.” But then this afternoon I received a long an comprehensive email from the Walt Disney Company, telling me all about how I can celebrate (in their words) “Star Wars day”.

Their email enumerates various TV shows, old movies that are back in theaters, animated shorts, assorted themed toys, Lego tie-ins, PC computer games. They even talk up a commercial for Apple products.

So many ways for me to spend my money. What a way to ruin a perfectly good fan-culture moment.

Maybe I’ll start celebrating May the fifth instead. Sounds like it could be a great drinking game.

When will telepresence technology get to the point where you can meet your friend for dinner at a restaurant and have the same high quality experience that we associate with good restaurants of today? Except in this future scenario, neither of you needs to leave home.

You can think of it as a sort of futuristic culinary Zoom meeting if you’d like. And it may be something that never happens. But if it does, I have another question.

Will this development be a sign of a better future, or a worse future? Some food for thought.

They say you never learn from your successes.

I appreciate the thought, but sometimes I would prefer to have a little less learning.

Nearly every day I read the Wikipedia to learn about notable events in history and the birthdays of notable people. When I do this, I generally also look for the oldest notable person who is still with us.

Sometimes it’s someone I’ve heard of, but never someone I actually know personally. Until today.

According to the Wikipedia, the oldest living notable person in the world is Peter Lax, my colleague at the Courant institute at NYU.

Peter turns 98 today. And I realize now that I have known him for more than forty years.

He has led an amazing life, and has been responsible quite a few ground breaking mathematical discoveries. But it hasn’t all been about math.

In 1970 a group of student protestors brought bombs into the Courant computer room and threatened to blow up the institute’s supercomputer. Peter, together with some colleagues, managed to defuse the bombs and save the supercomputer.

Today, a half century later, we have it easier than he did back then. For one thing, today’s students don’t try to blow up our school’s computers.

At least not yet.

When I was a kid, there was a TV show where children would be invited on, and would then be asked various challenging questions. I don’t remember any of the answers, except one.

A little girl was asked “Why is the boiling point of water 180 degrees higher than the freezing point of water?” She thought about it a bit, and then gave the most awesome answer.

“It’s because,” she explained, “the North Pole is 180 degrees from the South Pole.”

This afternoon, just as our lab’s research meeting was about to start, one of my students, who is from China, asked me an interesting question.

“Why,” he asked, “do Jewish people have Christmas dinner at Chinese restaurants?”

There was a pause.

“Jewish people,” I finally said, “don’t have Christmas dinner.”

I really love travel to wonderful places
So much good food and so many new faces
It expands my horizons, I learn many things
I treasure it for the great joy that it brings
But after I’ve traveled all over the map
Then it’s nice to home and just take a good nap

There are movies that give you what you expect from a movie, and then there are movies that move the needle, change the conversation, reinvent the whole idea of what a movie is or could be. The former are much more common than the latter, but to me the latter are much more exciting.

Some notable examples that come to mind are Psycho, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Poor Things, Synectoche NY, Stranger than Fiction, Twelve Monkeys, Brazil.

This is far from an exhaustive list, and I would be curious to hear other peoples’ favorite examples. Don’t get me wrong — I love a good RomCom or thriller as well as the next person — but there is something transcendent about going to the movie theater and being completely surprised by something that is nothing like anything you’ve ever seen before.