funny story

pawan sinha, a professor at mit strapped a camera to his baby's head to collect data on what the baby was looking at while his wife was out of town. one thing led to another and one day his wife saw that the kiddie's picture popped out in this NYT article...

so pawan was happily telling this story to a class of cognitive science students.. and my friend manning in the audience raised his hand and said you should meet this other first year. her name is sangyu and she wants to raise her baby in an incubator with rubber hands and computer screen that simulate maternal stimuli. (something i have been tireless pushing for. there are more layers of subtleties to it than just rubber hands and a screen, also involving response actions, but you get the idea. with a little bit of AI should be feasible, eh? )

and i heard pawan's response was "good thing we are not married."

meh, i don't know. the prospect of a baby with a camera on her head in an incubator? could be greatness...

poulenc, diaries

i went to borrow volkov's testimony, and ended up grabbing various diaries and correspondences in the vicinity. one of them is diaries poulenc kept about his songs. here's a cute quote (i'm typing in english cos i don't want to deal with accents):

"i am resuming this diary in a bad mood. i began it moreover, in similar circumstances. yesterday a recital by Mme X who sings with intelligence but a minimum of voice. the accompanist was impeccable but she was terribly mean when it came to using enough pedal.
it was a success, it seems. i left the salle gaveau in a fury
i detest intelligent singers. i like to hear some singing with a good sauce of pedal (the butter!), without which my music is destroyed."

one of the ironies with the net generation is the following: no one is nearer a clock for a greater amount of time than we do, because the computer has time displayed, and applications such as chat tell us what time it is literally all the time. but nobody loses track of time more than we do. times just slips away through the chat windows and between the browser tabs. :(

was reminded TED existed again