Making a class, Part 1

I'm creating a class out of nothing. Sounds miraculous, doesn't it? Something out of nothing? You forget that I worked in advertising for 20 years, and making something out of nothing is exactly what we did. There's a certain purity to the ephemeralness of it.

So this class is about business math. Because "entrepreneur" is a hot word in educational circles these days, the class title is Math for Entrepreneurs. I feel like a journalist whose headlines are written by the editor (which is generally the way it happens). I am not and have never been an entrepreneur, but I grew up watching my dad build a huge business and worked with him in it for 10 years or so. I guess that makes me somewhat knowledgeable.

Math for entrepreneurs would not be appreciably different from any other kind of business math, except adding in the 95% failure rate for new businesses. It's not the best business path for everyone. There was an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday where Sean Parker, founder of Napster (Justin Timberlake in The Social Network) bemoans the fact that Internet entrepreneurs rarely go back for a second round if they succeed at something, even if they leave that business. Success is hard the first time, and once you have succeeded do you want to go back and do it again, knowing everything that had to break right for you to succeed the first time?

So how do you construct this course?  The class meets twice a week for 12 weeks, and I'm guessing the holidays will obstruct one or two of them, so I have to fill 22-24 classes. It's important to note here that I could easily spend 24 classes talking about whatever business related stuff pops into my head and everyone would have a grand old time. But I think the school administration actually considers this thing to be somewhat important. This opens the possibility for my looking lazy and stupid, and regardless of my true levels of laziness and stupidity, I prefer to not look that way. So prepare I must.

The nice thing about a short, circumscribed class like this is that I can (and did) start by taking a sheet of paper, writing the numbers 1-24 in the margin, and filling in the blanks with math stuff. The big question is how much knowledge should I assume, because if, for example, people don't know how to calculate percentage increase or find the vertex of a quadratic equation or add a column of numbers accurately, the fundamental analysis necessary for this class can't be done. So not only do I need to review, but I need to see what it is I need to review, which may be dramatically different for each student.

Plus I have to do all this without holding the cudgel of tests and grades over their heads. This leaves me with no choice but to try to design some form of public humiliation or other kind of negative reinforcement in case somebody slacks off.

Hopefully, however, everyone in there will want to be an active part of the class. At least at first. Once I start talking about the glories of accounting, all bets are off.

Next stop, fleshing out the outline. Starting with the next post, I'll provide links to the class outline and whatever kinds of materials I'm trying to incorporate.

Assorted summer notes

It's kind of hard for me to figure out when to write during the summer. I have too darned much free time is what it is.

I've been biking a lot. I had a long period of inactivity because I was injured and was really feeling the need to get out and do something, so I've been riding 6 days a week, about 15 miles a day on the average. This is gratifying to me because when I'm not active I feel old, and being able to ride 15 or 20 miles on hills confirms to me that I'm not dead yet. The main problem is the heat, which prevents me from riding anywhere there's no shade, like the river drives and the Schuylkill bike trail. Just try putting together a 20 mile ride that doesn't include either of these and isn't insanely hilly.

I enjoy these rides. It's just me, and I'm able to toggle back and forth between stream of consciousness and being totally focused on the ride itself. If you're going to ride on busy suburban roads, you'd better be able to focus, because knowing the rules of the road is totally up to the cyclist; drivers are clueless about how to deal with a bicycle. They're afraid to pass, they come up behind and honk, they make left turns right in front of you. And because you're so focused you feel very much a part of your surroundings, as opposed to being insulated in a car. 

Anyway, I'm managing with the heat okay. I try to ride reasonably early in the morning when it's only in the upper 80's. And then later I'm swimming laps. It's a tough life.

The other two things I'm doing are cleaning my desk and creating a new class from scratch. The desk part is way tougher. The class is about business math, a topic I know more about that probably anyone in the school, so I'm not too worried about being second guessed. My next post will be the first in a series chronicling the birth of this class and its curriculum. Sounds fascinating, I know.

I have, however, reached a key point in the cleaning of the desk. Now when I away, you can see a difference. This may sound silly but it's been months, if not years, since that was the case.

In other cleaning news, I spent an hour and change scrubbing the outdoor furniture. Cleaning anything outside seems kind of silly to me, in the same way making the bed is waste of time. There is nothing so anxious to be not clean as something outside. As I scrubbed the chaise lounges I kept wondering how something could get so dirty, until it dawned on me that these things wanted to be dirty. That's why they chose to be outdoor furniture

Got to make a quick third trip to Chicago to pick up my daughter. I always like going there, and now my daughter is enamored of the place as well. This time around I took the L from the airport into the city. This is a long trip, but cheap and easy and not unpleasant in any way. Once I got to the center of town I eschewed changing trains and walked up to my hotel, then to a restaurant I like called Q. Sorry, I didn't take the L to Q.

I'll tell you, this place is hopping on a pleasantly warm summer Friday night. The street was packed with attractive young people and any restaurant with outdoor seating was overflowing at 10 PM. It was a very lively scene.

Summer stuff

I figured at this point everyone would want to know what's going on with me this summer. What could be more important than that. I guess the short description would be somewhere between procrastination and willful neglect.

Now wait a minute, you might say, it's summer vacation, what could there be to procrastinate? And that's a fair question. But I've been reading up on what it takes to be a real citizen of the early 21st century and the one common theme is that it's really important to be busy at all times. So busy you have to be constantly checking your email and messages and too busy to have a coherent conversation without being dragged off in some other direction.

Now being a teacher, I don't actually have much of anything to do during the summer, so I have to invent a few projects that I can procrastinate. I've had mixed success with this thus far. I made the judgment error of picking unpleasant, sure-to-be-put-off tasks that were actually useful and almost necessary. The outdoor furniture, for example. Why in the world would you clean outdoor furniture? Outdoors is dirty. That's where all the dirt originates. This seems a perfect job to procrastinate.

However, we're having friends come and visit for the weekend and they may want to go outside and sit down. If you think about it, that's kind of an odd idea; there are lots of nice places to sit inside where there are no ultraviolet rays and no bugs. Outdoors is good for all kinds of things, like driving a car and throwing discus, but sitting is an indoor activity. You never know with company though; they're liable to sit almost anywhere. So out I go with a bucket of soapy and I begin to way the furniture.

I begin to notice as I work my way through this stuff that it's practically impossible to get the furniture totally clean. It's not that I'm a bad cleaner. As little as I like doing it, once I start I commit wholeheartedly. So I'm having trouble understanding why this is so hard until it occurs to me that the furniture wants to be dirty. That's how it adapts to its environment and cleaning it may cause it to be poorly suited for survival.

Surprisingly, my wife was unmoved by this line of reasoning, so out I went to finish the job. And after a while it began to actually feel kind of good. It was warm out and I was wearing a bathing suit so it felt good every time I got wet. It was quiet and all I could hear was the slosh of the water in the bucket and the inis tent hiss of the hose ready to rinse. It was a nice moment. And now we have clean outdoor furniture, except for the occasional surface I missed. Now what?

I have to create a new class for the fall trimester, so maybe I'll try doing that tomorrow. That'll probably be more interesting to report on than the furniture.

Brainstorm!

Because I'm a 56 year-old guy who needs to exercise to stave off death for some limited number of years, I'm doing a bunch of things for my health over the summer (and hopefully beyond that). I mostly like to ride bicycles, but sometimes it's too hot for that and sometimes I need a change of pace. Since we have a pool in the backyard, swimming seems an easy alternative and you can do it when it's too hot to ride.

Swimming is really good for you but is unbelievably boring; once you've done it enough that you're over your fear of drowning it's deathly. Listening to an iPod is impractical, so I'm considering buying a couple of piranhas to keep me moving.

I know that sounds impractical, but I know I'm on solid ground here, so to speak. When I was in business school I took a class taught by a famous management consultant (yes, such a thing exists) who told us about the challenges of keeping fish fresh once it's been caught, since some fish are caught several days from shore. Now they have processing plants and freezers, but back then they put the fish in holding tanks. These kept the fish alive but sluggish, and sluggish fish, like sluggish people, don't taste so good.

So someone came up with the idea of tossing a couple of predator fish in the tank. Sure enough, they lost a few fish, but the vast majority that remained were active and tasty. The same principle applies here. I've seen piranhas and I know they can give a nasty bite, but they're much too small to actually eat me. So I figure a couple of them in the pool will keep me swimming vigorously. Plus, it'll keep the neighborhood kids from sneaking in to use our pool. Win-win, as far as I can see.

The Windy City

You know what it's like being in Chicago when it's 100 degrees with a 15 mph wind? Kind of like standing under a giant hand dryer.

Mo Mo Mo

Went to a dinner last night at a place called Moto for a celebration dinner. Moto is what you would call an occasion restaurant; nobody goes there for a casual meal. Dinner takes approximately 4 hours and consists of a 14 course tasting menu. We've been there once before and we were hooked when they showed us the menu and then told us we could eat it.

Moto is one of those places that seeks to reimagine food. Reimagining things is not very hard- you stop thinking about something one way and pick another way. This works most easily for things like superheroes and mythical beings, but it's not that hard to think of something in a different way, like "wouldn't it be cool if...?" Food, of course, is not imaginary and therefore presents some real life difficulties if you wish to go beyond simply the imaginary part to actually serving the food to someone.

Not only do you need the skills to create the reimagined food, you have to do it in a way that would be enjoyable to eat. It takes an understanding of science and flavor that is unusual. So what they do in this place is say, for example, wouldn't it be cool if we could distill a caesar salad down to 5 cc of liquid that tastes exactly like a salad? Or make a printed menu that's made from and tastes like barbecued chicken? Or something that appears to be a red egg yolk that bursts with red wine?

Aside from adding flavors, there aren't a lot of physical processes that you can perform on food, since we're not talking genetic engineering here. You can make it hot or cold, dry it or wet it (or dry something, reconstitute it with some liquid other than its own, then dry it again to concentrate the flavors). You need a lot of liquid nitrogen and a heavy duty dryer. And the trick is to do those things in a way that makes something interesting to look at and delicious. So dinner consists of 14 little things that may or may not be what they appear.


There were too many courses to go on about everything, so I'll give you a few examples. They brought out a steel rack with small ice cream cones sitting in them. What's inside the cones looks like vanilla ice cream with whipped cream and some caramel sauce. What it consists of is lobster salad over a layer of roasted corn salad, topped with a corn puree and lobster bisque distilled to a point where it looks like caramel. The cone itself, which is slightly sweet like the waffle cone it resembles, is made from uni, or sea urchin. It was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. 


Another cool one was the zen garden. You've probably seen those little desktop things with sand an smooth stones and a small rake to arrange them. This one was about 3 x 4 inches with white sand made of dehydrated apple resting on some kind of thick peach compote with white pebbles made of camembert cheese surrounding apricot and brown pebbles made of some other kind of cheese coated in a dark chocolate powder. You eat it with a small spoon and it all tasted spectacular.

Other highlights included shellfish (all on halfshell and prepared in different ways- my favorite being a dusting or a reddish brown powder that turned out to be unusually crunchy bacon) on a bed of seaweed with liquid nitrogen ladled in to suggest fog and highlight the aroma of the seaweed.

We also had a "foraging" course where a variety of mushrooms were arrayed on a small (inedible) tree branch with woodsy smells courtesy of a garland of pine and rosemary and cinnamon heated to smoking temperature on the table with a blowtorch. And spring lamb, prepared 6 different ways and served on a lamb bone with a very shiny cleaver embedded in it. And when Ronnie and I were served a bourbon barrel stave with 4 different cocktails in concentrated gelled form, our underage companion got a bowl of something that resembled Rice Krispies but was not, although it was made from the same ingredients. Who knew you could puff a grain of rice up to the size of a potato chip?

And of course, "Smell The Glove," a Spinal Tap tribute with a globe full of smoke and a leather glove that you wear and sniff while eating a dark chocolate hand on some kind of ice cream. By this time I had consumed a decent amount of wine and my attention to detail was beginning to wane.

Each course was presented and described in detail by a waiter who slightly resembled Kurt from Glee. We arrived at 6:15 and left at 10:30.  The cost? Dinner for 3 was more than roundtrip airfare for my wife and I to come here. But I'll be remembering the meal (and hopefully the birthday girl  will as well) long after the flight is forgotten.

Back to Chi Town

Pronounced "Shy Town," by the way. Same CH sound as Chicago.

I'm now on my way to Chicago for the second time in 10 days. I guess traveling to visit your grown up (or in this case semi-grown up) kids is one of the way life pays you back for not being able to travel so much when the kids when they're little. I should note for the record that this absolutely will lead me to encourage my kids to get jobs in places I like or would like to go. "Oh no, honey, you don't want to work in suburban Washington, you want to take that job in the Canadian Rockies."

It appears that July 3 is a good travel day, because I saw when I started to check in online that empty first class seats, which had been previously offered to me for $250 were now available for $75. Well worth it. Then when we got to the airport there was nobody, and I mean nobody in line for security. This made my usual request for a pat down (the magic words seem to be opt out, a grammatical construction that I'd not heard until about 5 years ago that is now omnipresent) not nearly as stress-inducing as when we're in a hurry.

Pat downs weren't a big deal to me at any point. They don't pick jerks to do them; the TSA guys are always nice. If you tell them you've done it before they are very quick and thorough and efficient. It also is easier during the summer because as much as anything they are searching your clothes and a tee shirt and shorts makes that easy. I've still yet to be in a scanner.

The flight was easy. The only bad thing is the horrendous coffee served at the LeBus stand. I like LeBus and I like La Colombe coffee, but these two together. Ugh! Both the latte and iced coffee were awful.

Got to Chicago though the famous Kennedy Expressway traffic and settled easily into our hotel. I'll review the hotel and amazing restaurant in a separate post.

Chicago pix

Here's a link to a bunch of photos I took in Chicago.

https://plus.google.com/photos/113464566475889563370/albums/5760254519115050225?authkey=CN3P4uK6npL20gE

I could so live in this city. FYI, the pictures of things stuck into a wall are on the outside of the Chicago Tribune building. Somebody saw fit to acquire (or steal perhaps) pieces of famous places and cement them into the wall. There's something from all 50 states and most of the great sites of the world as well. Always amazes me that people just walk right by it.

I have too many videos to put them all here, so they're going on Youtube. I'll put that link in a separate post.

Summer Comings and Goings

It's always a bit hard to refocus myself, or perhaps more accurately, unfocus myself, after a school year. I started, as I usually do, by starting to clean up the huge paper backlog that accumulates when I'm too tired to process it. I've already thrown out several shopping bags full of things- magazines, junk mail, papers that had only transitory value. Now, as always, comes the hard part- the attempt to put a system in place that will prevent this from happening in the future.

This year I am aided by a small, quick scanner that I shall be using to try to keep only digital copies of most papers. We'll have to see how that goes but I am always forced to remember and repeat the story of when a co-worker came into my office and saw I had a book called "Winning the War With Your Desk," smiled at me and said, "My money's on the desk."

I've been riding my bicycle a lot, getting out before it gets too outrageously hot. A couple of notes on that. First, drivers, the purpose of the turn signal is to give advance notice that you are turning. Once you are already turning, it's pretty clear that you're doing, making putting the signal on at that point kind of redundant. Also, the stop signs are not suggestions. But the Sunday morning ride is always the best because I have bagels when it's over. Exactly 10 miles roundtrip to NY Bagels.


My other big activity for the summer is my new class. I'm teaching an elective about business math and I have to construct it from scratch. Of course, I can see what other people are doing with that kind of thing, but it's got to be tailored to our particular group of students, though I don't know who most of those students are. That's fine, I'll enjoy it and will keep you posted.


I know I owe the report on my Chicago visit. I took a number of my walking around and talking videos, so I want to upload them and then will wrap my post around them.