Lean with it, rock with it

and of course blog with it..

So about 2 weeksago I watched the HBO documentary on Daniel Pearl and his assassin -
It's very rare that I have a history with celebrities, but I have been good friends (albeit out of touch since 2000 or so) with Danny Pearl's sister since the early '90s. I had the good fortune of meeting Danny and staying at his DC apartment back in late 1993. While I only met him once, I was very impressed by his easy going nature, smarts and general good guy-ness. I felt very sad when all of this went down, and was reminded by his awesomeness as well as Michelle's when viewing this. RIP Danny, you are a great guy who will obviously not be forgotten...
It's interesting how other worlds collide- it turns out his father Judea Pearl, while a computer scientist, is also a great contributer to the academic lit on causal inference, of big interest to the stats world.

This past weekend we went "day-camping" with Micah's classmate Jake and his family -
we set up camp about 2 pm in Patapsco Valley State Park, got a roaring fire going, cooked up some serious grub (inclulding mandatory S'mores), and had a great time. Jake's dad brought all the goods - two kid size tents, lanterns, a battery powered DVD player, and so on. So Micah's favorite part of the trip was watching a movie from the comfort of the ent, and Emmet's was playing in Jake's parents' van.. ah. the great outdoors! It was a perfect fall day, and we had an awesome time - and still managed to sleep in our own, warm and less lumpy than the earth, beds.

Roni statrted her nw job last week at Hopkins' Center forLivea ble Future - as the director of research. So far, so good she says, and it's exciting that her office is in the same building as mine.

Aight, I'm out - 'til next blog entry!