Ideas in Search of a Blog Post

I keep a list of ideas for blog posts, but some will never turn into posts. So here are a few random thoughts from that list.


Some people like to write prose, some people like to write lists, like Bill's last post. Bill will often send me an email that's a list of items. I prefer the prose and usually avoid the lists with today being the "exception that proves the rule" (an expression that I never understood).

I do have to admit that lists are very efficient, when I can respond to Bill like 

yes
no
Friday
Did you really expect happy comments on that post?

Marissa Mayer has banned working at home for Yahoo employees. Lots of academics work at home when they aren't teaching. I didn't have any more deep insights here so it didn't become a post.
I have a note to write a blog post on "confusing university names". I wonder what was confusing me.


I'll end this post of uninteresting post ideas with the wine tasting story. At Cornell there was a popular course on wine tasting open only to graduating seniors. Alas it conflicted with graduate complexity which I took from the great Juris Hartmanis. I don't regret that choice but missed the wine.



When I was a grad student at MIT there was a wine tasting course held during the short IAP session during winter break. So we took that course. A fun course. On the last day we all dressed up for the really fine wine. The instructor came to class in his tux even though he was quite ill that day. Two days later everyone in the class got sick as well.



There ought to be a moral to that story but I haven't figured it out yet.