Author: geoff

Tragic mathematicians and disembodied souls

This is an interesting week at the MIT Philosophy Department. Yesterday I attended a talk by Rebecca Goldstein, author of several books including the stunning Incompleteness about Kurt Gödel and the mischievous novel of philosophy The Mind-Body Problem. She read a paper entitled “Mathematics and the Character of Tragedy”, which you can find here.
Tomorrow the maverick NYU philosopher Peter Unger will be defending a version of strong Cartesian dualism under the heading “Why We Really May Be Immaterial Souls”, based on Chapter 7 of his book All The Power In The World. I can hardly wait! Mind you, I hope his treatment of the topic will avoid the “aw shucks” style that permeates the Preface to the book.

The mixed blessings of the bungee exec…

From CNET News.com

Sun Microsystems hired a new software chief on Monday, CNET News.com has learned: Rich Green, the latest in a series of former executives the company has lured back
[…]
Green originally started at Sun in 1989 but left in 2004 to become executive vice president of product development at Cassatt, a start-up focusing on managing large groups of servers.
[…]
Green is one of several returning executives who Sun Chairman Scott McNealy likes to highlight as the company tries to argue that it has its dot-com mojo back. “We’ve got them coming back in droves–Andy Bechtolsheim and Mike Lehman and Peter Ulander and Karen Tegan,” McNealy said in an interview last week. “There’s a boomerang hitting my door, it seems, every five e-mails these days.”

Without commenting on the merits of individuals, I have to say that I’ve always been skeptical of this “bungee exec” pattern at Sun. Sometimes they simply return; sometimes Sun buys their start-up. The problem is, they are experienced denizens of the Sun echo-chamber, and history suggests that their sojourns away from Sun don’t change them very much. I would prefer to see Sun recruiting executive talent from companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, or SAP: people who could challenge the conventional wisdom. Because [insert deity here] knows, it needs challenging!

The executive elevator?!?!

A lot of Sun folks have been posting their favourite Scott McNealy stories. Here’s one of mine:
Back in the late 1980s Sun opened a new high-rise headquarters building at 901 San Antonio Road in Palo Alto: PAL1. It was quite a change after the cluster of low-profile MTV (Mountain View) buildings, and Scott took advantage of the view by grabbing an office on the top floor. Soon after it opened, I flew out from Massachusetts for routine meetings in California. [I hate to think how many times I did that during my years at Sun – probably 120-150. No kidding.] Because my body was still on East Coast time, I arrived at PAL1 really early one morning – about 7:15, I think. The car park was almost empty, but as I walked towards the front door I was joined by Scott. We chatted about this and that as we walked to the elevator, and he offered to show me the view from his office.
Just as we got into the elevator, a young man in his mid-20s dashed in. He was wearing a snappy blue suit, a perfectly knotted silk tie, and dazzling cuff-links. (Scott and I were in polo shirts and jeans, of course.) The sharp dresser recognized Scott, and became very confused. “Oh, excuse me, I didn’t realize… Is this the executive elevator?“ Scott and I looked at each other, barely suppressing hysterical laughter. After a moment, Scott managed to say, “You haven’t been at Sun very long, have you?” The red-faced newbie got off on the second floor….
I enjoyed this at the time, but I didn’t think much of it until years later. After all, it was no big deal – I took the casual egalitarianism for granted. And then a few years ago I had occasion to visit HP Laboratories for a standards meeting (W3C or FIPA… I forget which). I arrived a bit early, and sat in the lobby, hoping I wasn’t too conspicuous in my Jini polo shirt. Suddenly the receptionists started twittering anxiously: one surreptitiously fixed her lipstick, while another ran a brush through her hair and straightened her scarf. And then Carly herself swept regally through the door, accompanied by two flunkies. She cast a disapproving glance in my direction, barely acknowledged the receptionists, and strode off into the building.
What a difference.

Spring at Broadmoor

Took a walk around the Massachusetts Audubon reservation at Broadmoor in Natick this afternoon. The signs of spring were everwhere – trees in blossom, painted turtles sunning themselves, signs of fresh work on the beaver lodge and dam, and a patient frog waiting for an unsuspecting fly. I’ve uploaded a bunch of photographs here. In particular, see if you can make out the frog in this shot. He’s on the semi-submerged branch just below and to the right of the centre of the picture, as you can see in the subsequent images. (I don’t think I’d have seen him if a more experienced photographer hadn’t pointed him out to me.)

Random 10

A couple of interesting ones this week, including one that I only just bought:

  • “3-D Technicolor Scrambled Egg Trip Down The Hell-Hole (With Canary)” by the Tear Garden (from The Last Man To Fly)
  • “Here’s One That Got Away” by the Style Council (from The Collection)
  • “Simple Things” by the Nails (from Corpus Christi)
  • “Better Do Better” by Hard-Fi (from Stars of CCTV, which I bought on Friday – thanks for the tip, Alec)
  • “Gin Soaked Boy” by the Divine Comedy (from A Secret History – The Best Of The Divine Comedy)
  • “Sunny Afternoon” (yes, the old Kinks number) by Tom Jones & Friends (from Reload – and why the hell didn’t they release this powerful collection of duets with various contemporary stars in the USA?)
  • “China (Clouds Not Mountains)” by Banco de Gaia (from Last Train To Lhasa)
  • “The 8:45” by Peter Buffett (from Lost Frontier)
  • “On The Border” by Al Stewart (from Year Of The Cat)
  • “Always Never” by Porcupine Tree (from Up The Downstair)

J. K. Galbraith and me

John Kenneth Galbraith died yesterday, age 97. I don’t want to debate the merits of his ideas, merely to mention his significance for me. Back in the spring of 1966 I was 15 years old, coming up on my GCE “O [Ordinary] Level” examinations, and trying to decide which three subjects to specialize in for 6th form. (Sixth form covered two years – “lower sixth” and “upper sixth” – and culminated in “A [Advanced] Level” examinations, and possibly even “S [Special] Levels”.) Mathematics was an obvious choice, but what else? Both classics and science appealed.
And then I came across a copy of J. K. Galbraith’s The Affluent Society, read it from cover to cover, and was seized with the economist’s world-view. I learned of Galbraith’s influence on American politics, especially the Kennedy administration, and I was intrigued by the idea of an academic discipline with a real political impact. (1966 was the first year that I really became politically aware, and even active.) I read more, including two journals in the school library (the Economist, which is still going strong, and the Statist, which disappeared a few years later), and bits of Lipsey‘s Positive Economics. I was hooked. Inspired by J. K. Galbraith, I would study economics. And I did so, right up to the end of my first year at Essex University, when computer science drove out everything else.
And what about my third “A Level” subject? I annoyed my classics master by deciding against Latin, and eventually settled on geography. (Thinking back, I’m not sure why; I remember liking the fact that it was the only really interdisciplinary syllabus.) However when I got back to school in September, I ran into a problem: the timetable couldn’t accomodate the combination of maths, economics and geography. Reluctantly I replaced geography with physics, which turned out to be mostly applied maths. There were still some scheduling issues – all but two of those who took maths and physics were also taking chemistry, and the science teachers occasionally traded lab slots – but it all worked out OK.

Heading home

I’m at the RCC (Red Carpet Club) in DIA (Denver airport) waiting for my flight home. Normally I’d be composing this on my Treo, but I’ve reluctantly decided to sign up for T-Mobile WiFi service. I’ve found myself in too many Starbucks, RCCs, and other locations where I really wanted WiFi access but felt too cheap to pay the exorbitant day rates. Yesterday in a Starbucks in Denver (near the Cherry Creek Mall, a really charming neighbourhood) I did the arithmetic and decided it made sense to sign up for a year.
It’s been a really enjoyable, productive, and above all instructive trip. I was surprised and grateful that despite all of the things going on at Sun this week (earnings announcement, CEO hand-over, Leadership Conference) both John Fowler and Greg Papadopoulos made time for me to chat on Monday and Tuesday. It was delightful to meet a number of ex-Sun colleagues from w-a-a-y back and hear about their experiences of “life after Sun”. And it was good to spend yesterday with Barbara Bauer (ex-STK VP) here in Denver, and get together with several colleagues for dinner last night. Forgive me for being vague about the substance of all of these conversations; let’s just say that we discussed current issues and future prospects in some depth.
Time to delete the current flood of blogspam (about 80 over the last 24 hours), grab some coffee, and get ready to board my flight.

On the seashore

One of the delights of working in SunLabs some years ago was the location of their headquarters: a building in Mountain View called MTV29. wading birdsBehind the building was a parking lot, and beyond that was a complex of paths through the salt marshes along the National Seashore. It was – and is – a wonderful place to take a short break from work, and enjoy the landscape and wildlife.
Well, SunLabs quit MTV29 a year ago; it’s now housed in the Menlo Park campus. But the seashore paths are still there, and this morning I spent a happy 90 minutes revisiting the area. You can see the photographs that I took here.