Author Archive: Paul Epps

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. / I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke

MOCA Cookie Crumbles

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Ed Ruscha has resigned as a MOCA trustee, as have John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger and Catherine Opie, leaving no artists on the museum’s board. — latimes.com, July 17, 2012 “Art” and “artist” are words that get tossed around pretty lightly. Ruscha‘s work — and the same goes for Baldessari and Kruger — consists of modifying photos and other images, often by writing words on them. It’s like lolcats, minus the occasional wit. Opie is a photographer whose work is less interesting than the average high school yearbook. Yesterday, the image below was posted on the MOCA Facebook page. It’s an actual museum piece called “Earthwork aka Untitled (Dirt).” Yes, it looks like a pile of dirt, but if you click the image to enlarge it, you can see that it’s actually — a pile of dirt! This is risk-taking art, the risk being that the cleaning crew may accidentally sweep… Read more →

The Game Blame Game

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My boy is playing NBA 2K12 and points out that my Where’s Waldo shirt looks like the Washington Wizards (nee Bullets) throwback uniforms. “Where’s John Wall-do?” he says. Ha ha. I get my comeback opportunity a few minutes later when his game player passes to a teammate, who scores, but his player doesn’t get credit for an ssist. “HOW CAN THAT BE ANYTHING BUT AN ASSIST FOR ME?!” he shouts in disbelief. “That’s bad programming.” “Oh I doubt that,” I say. “The people who program video games are a lot smarter than the people who play them.” Read more →

Goin’ to Bangalore

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I’m spending a couple of weeks in Bangalore at the end of the month. Travel is the most depressing thing in the world, beating out listening to other people talk about their travels. Bangalore has been called the Silicon Valley of Asia. It’s like the Silicon Valley here in California, but with monkeys and malaria. My boss has cautioned me to drink only the bottled water from the hotel, never the bottled water at the office. “They refill the bottles at the office with their own water,” he said. “The hotel will give you two bottles a day, but I tipped the staff a dollar a day and they left extra bottles in my room. That’s a lot of money over there.” I’m seriously thinking about tipping two dollars a day just to see what the heck happens . . . Read more →

Look Out, You Rock ‘n’ Rollers!

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My bizness is taking me to Bangalore, India, at the end of the month. I got vaccinated for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, polio, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis. I’m now immune to everything, including your consultations. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbnJo88kuP8] Read more →

Aside

Richard Feynman: Cargo Cult Science — a commencement speech from 1974 in which Feynman explains in a clear, entertaining way what real science is all about.

Stephen Covey, 1932-2012

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Stephen Covey, the author of the best-selling book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” died early Monday morning at 79 years old, according to The Associated Press. — TODAY.com Here are the seven habits: Be Proactive Begin with the End in Mind Put First Things First Think Win/Win Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood Synergize Sharpen the Saw One way to assess the value of advice is to ask, “Would anyone advise the opposite?” If the answer is no, then all you have are platitudes and truisms. Let’s try it: Let Life Wash Over You Like a Big Wave Go Off Half-Cocked Proceed in a Frivolous, Undirected Manner … You get the idea. By selling more than 25 million copies of this book, and becoming known as one of the leading business thinkers of his time, Covey revealed the vacuousness of the modern mind, although I don’t… Read more →

There’s no sense in being precise when you don’t even know what you’re talking about. — John von Neumann

Let’s Get Drunk and See How Fast We Can Drive My Expensive Car

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According to the California Highway Patrol, [Kurt Duncan] Naegele, [Ryan Robert] Doheny, Doheny’s brother-in-law Darren William Dahlman, 38, of Pasadena, and Christopher H. Pennell of Los Angeles, had been drinking as guests invited to a birthday party on the San Simeon ranch on Sept. 18, 2009. They drove to the airstrip to find out how fast Naegele’s Range Rover could go, something a CHP investigator claims Doheny later told him was a bad idea because it was pitch black out and Naegele was driving very fast and erratically. Around 11 p.m., the Range Rover rolled several times before falling down a steep embankment 300 feet off the runway on the north side of the airstrip. The crash killed Dahlman, seriously injured Naegele (who had to be extricated from behind the steering wheel) and also injured Pennell and Doheny. Naegele and Doheny estimated to officers that they had been traveling 35… Read more →

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. — Einstein

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