diego // staunch pastafarian. misplaced canadian. over-thinker extraordinaire.
Institute for Advanced Study! Special exception! A position better than Einstein, even! It was ideal; it was perfect; it was absurd!
It was absurd. The other offers had made me feel worse, up to a point. They were expecting me to accomplish something. But this offer was so ridiculous, so impossible for me ever to live up to, so ridiculously out of proportion. The other ones were just mistakes; this was an absurdity! I laughed at it while I was shaving, thinking about it. And then I thought to myself, “You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it’s impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!” It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.
- Richard Feynman, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
I bought my dad this book after enjoying it thoroughly myself, and he replied by highlighting this passage for me.
Use `generate-huffman-tree' (*Note Exercise 2-69::) to generate a corresponding Huffman tree, and use `encode' (*Note Exercise 2-68::) to encode the following message:
Get a job
Sha na na na na na na na na
Get a job
Sha na na na na na na na na
Wah yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip
Sha boom
-via SICP
Thought that was kind of funny.
In other news, my aspirations for a lambda tattoo were utterly dashed (I do support the movement, of course).
One of the things he often said was that "peace of mind is the most important prerequisite for creative work." And he thought one should do everything one could to achieve that. And he thought that meant, among other things, that one should always stay away from anything worldly, like management.
via http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/feynman/
Indeed, in my "real world job" I often find myself bogged down by never-ending administrativa.
