Author Archive: Paul Epps

Now What?

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We’re in Berkeley for Casey’s graduation tomorrow . . . we got a text from him earlier this week saying “I just took my last two college exams.” Thus ends a journey that began 17 years ago on the first day of kindergarten, which I feel like I remember too vividly for it to have been 17 years ago, but it was. Now what? I don’t mean for him . . . he’s got a job lined up in San Francisco. I mean for me. I’ve had the milestone birthdays — the ones where your age ends in zero — that seem to depress a lot of people . . . they didn’t bother me at all. But my boy becoming an independent person in the world is really disorienting me . . . Read more →

Aside

I rocked down to Electric Avenue but I can’t decide what to do next . . .

Do We Still Have to Lean In?

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Sheryl [Sandberg] has made her husband, Dave, the role model for the perfect husband. She has said many times that the most important factor in her success was the husband she chose. And as late a week ago, she was saying that men need to do more, they are not doing enough, they need to take more responsibility. And, again, she held up her husband as an example. . . . So then, I would like to know why was he on vacation in Mexico without Sheryl and without the kids? What was it a vacation from? Who was he with? Why was Sheryl in DC instead of going to get the body? Why was Sheryl in DC instead of home with her kids? Why does Dave take a vacation when Sheryl is scheduled to be gone? I wouldn’t ask so many questions except that Sheryl keeps telling me to… Read more →

Letting Go

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Let go of grief. Let go of joy. Let go of hope. Let go of fear. Let go of history. Let go of coming and going. Let go of culture. Let go of waiting. Let go of letting go. — Rudolph Wurlitzer, Hard Travel to Sacred Places Read more →

How fully can the world be explored if you are also trying not to die? — Amy Fusselman

A Lesson From the Godfather

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“There are men in this world,” he said, “who go about demanding to be killed. You must have noticed them. They quarrel in gambling games, they jump out of their automobiles in a rage if someone so much as scratches their fender, they humiliate and bully people whose capabilities they do not know. I have seen a man, a fool, deliberately infuriate a group of dangerous men, and he himself without any resources. These are people who wander through the world shouting, ‘Kill me. Kill me.’ And there is always someone ready to oblige them. We read about it in the newspapers every day.” — Mario Puzo, The Godfather Read more →

The Chaste Song of My Heart

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I work a lot and live far less than I could, but the moon is beautiful and there are blue stars . . . . I live the chaste song of my heart. — Garcia Lorca to Emilia Llanos Medinor, November 25, 1920 View image | gettyimages.com Read more →

Teaching Computer Science: Ask More Questions

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You need to ask more questions. I think there’s a general fear about asking questions. There’s a risk of looking foolish in front of the whole group when it turns out that everyone else already knows the answer. It’s actually very unusual for someone to ask a question to which everyone else knows the answer. If you find it happens to you a lot, you probably want to get that checked out, but normally it’s very unusual. Another scenario: Somebody, maybe a teacher, says something and you think “That doesn’t make sense. I wonder if it makes sense to everyone else. Rather than risk looking foolish in front of the whole group, I’ll wait and see if someone else asks a question.” So you wait for someone to ask a question and no one asks a question. Why? Because they’re all waiting for someone to ask a question. Many people,… Read more →

How Are You?

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I’m getting old . . . mentally and physically I can’t do things that I used to be able to do and I feel like I’m letting everyone down. Thanks for asking . . . Read more →

Cheryl’s Birthday

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My mistake is when someone asks my birthday, I either tell them or I don’t so I’m dismayed to find that the key to world-wide fame is to tell one person the month and another person the day . . . Read more →

Teaching Computer Science: Extra Credit

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I wish I got a dollar for every time a student asks, “Can I get extra credit for [insert action for which it makes no sense to give extra credit]?” Today in class we did a difficult programming exercise. It wasn’t graded but I asked everyone to turn it in so I could evaluate the difficulty of the assignment. “Can we get extra credit for turning it in?” a student asked me. “How does it make sense to give extra credit for turning it in? Everyone is turning it in.” “It raises everyone’s grades,” he said. “Like a rising tide lifts all boats.” Read more →

Mysterious Ways

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Whenever I see headlines like this I wonder why God couldn’t find an atheist family to drop a concrete slab on. The infant, whose shirt appears to say KING JESUS, was also killed. Read more →

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