All posts by bfiggefox

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From little acorns: Teams of Princeton University students are working at the Keller Center this summer to churn out tech startups. On Monday, August 11, they showcase them in an always popular event. For information on how to register, click here.

One such startup — not from a student, but from a professor, was Universal Display. Former Princeton professor Steve Forrest had some bright ideas about bright displays using OLED (Organic Light Emitting Display) technology, and his three-person startup is now 100 plus. His sidekick, CTO Julie Brown, speaks at the Princeton Regional Chamber just as these students finish their project. Her talk: Thursday, August 7, at the Forrestal Marriott.

I’ve registered for both events.

Meeting Mercy

Faith and Social Justice, ,

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Meet Mercy Neal. Vacation Bible School students at my church, Princeton United Methodist, will have the chance to make friends with her and her family from 8,000 miles away. In our evening program entitled “Can You Hear Me Now? God Calls Kids Too!” preschool children through incoming 6th graders will meet — through videos — this missionary family that works in Fiji.

Set for Tuesday to Thursday, July 29 to 31, 5:30 to 8 p.m., the VBS program is free by registration. Dinner is included, and parents are invited to stay. The dinner and classes are on the street level and begin in the Sanford Davis Room, on the corner of Nassau and Vandeventer.

Twelve-year-old Mercy Neal and her eight-year-old brother, Josiah, are moving from their home in Belleville, New Jersey to Fiji, an island in the South Pacific. Their parents — Rev. Wesley Neal and Rev. Jerusha Neal, both graduates of Princeton Theological Seminary — will teach at a seminary there.

“The children and youth of Princeton UMC will be writing to Mercy and Josiah, and they will also support the Neal family with prayer and fund raising,” says Anna Gillette, associate pastor for discipleship. “VBS children will hear Bible stories about God calls children into discipleship.”

I’m looking forward to working with Anna, who is returning after a year’s stint in Lambertville and has written this curriculum. It will be fun to introduce Mercy and Josiah to the older students with crafts, music, mission projects and games. We will continue our pen pal friendships when Sunday School begins in the fall.

You’ll likely see VBS students playing games on the tiny lawn at the corner of Nassau. If you have children of VBS age, or are interested in helping out, call 609-924-2613 or email Anna@princetonumc.org. Also don’t forget there is a Cornerstone Community Kitchen dinner this Wednesday and every Wednesday, 5 to 6:30 p.m., in the lower level Fellowship Hall (the red door). All welcome!

House of Cupcakes won a spot on “Cupcake Wars” with this video and fulfilled their pledge to donate all the proceeds to the St. Jude Children’s Hospital

Then their store burned down.

Hear their story at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast, Wednesday, July 23.

Singers and dancers alike say, ‘all my springs are in you’

This is verse 7 from Psalm 87, today’s reading from Moravian Daily Texts.

Dancing with City Ballet

Dance and the other arts

Unity Phelan went from Princeton Ballet School to School of American Ballet in 9th grade, 2009. Three years later, age 16, she made it into City Ballet as an apprentice and at 18 is a member of the corps being given her first principal role.

Today she returned to her home turf to teach master classes. In the class I am watching — many of the students are just one or two years younger but their feet are decades slower. Feather thin, steel strong, Unity’s feet scissor space into neat bits. ‘Turn out your face so you are ready to perform’ she says as she challenges these young woman with company class combinations.

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Then they go across the floor, buoyed by a new exuberance (and the pianist) and those who were having trouble at the barre — fling themselves into the air with Balanchinian abandon.

A delight to watch but the chief delight was watching Unity move and imagining her airborne on the Koch theater stage.

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Unity with school director Mary Pat Robertson.

Changing the way they see the world

Faith and Social Justice, Healthcare, , ,

2014 anna students2014 7 looney John at camp

These days, student doctors with hefty loans likely gravitate to high-paying specialties rather than primary care. Here’s an inspiring example of how Robert Wood Johnson Medical School encourages them to change that viewpoint. It is the Community-Oriented Primary Care Summer Program, “Changing the Way You See the World,” directed by Anna Looney.  In this interdisciplinary program, students come from medical schools, pharmacy, nursing, social work, and physician assistant programs. Looney says the program aims “to give them experience working with New Jersey’s underserved populations and hopefully light their fire to into primary care.”

As examples, the photo on the right shows a migrant farm in Hammonton where two students did health screenings with the workers. On the left, volunteering at Elijah’s Kitchen.

The closing celebration and poster session is today, Friday, July 18, 4 to 6 p.m. in the Great Hall at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway.  Keynoter Deborah M. Spitalnik of the Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities will speak, and 20 interdisciplinary students from four institutions will present posters summarizing their community service projects (732-235-4200).

Today’s Google Doodle commemmorates the 96th birthday anniversary of Nelson Mandela, whose inspiring statements include  “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”

It is an apt coincidence.

Everyone is a racist at heart, says Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Time Magazine (5-14-2014).

Says Kareem: Maybe the worst racism of all is denying that racism exists, because that keeps us from repairing the damage. This country needs a social colonoscopy to look for the hidden racist polyps. And we aren’t doing ourselves any good by saying, “I feel fine. Everything’s fine. Nothing to see here.”

“The truth is, everyone has racism in his or her heart. We feel more comfortable around people of similar appearance, backgrounds and experiences. But, as intelligent, educated and civilized humans, we fight our knee-jerk reactions because we recognize that those reactions are often wrong and ultimately harmful.”

Robert Taub, a pianist, used to be artist in residence (1994-2001) at the Institute for Advanced Study. Now, as told in U.S. 1, he is helping to launch Hook’d, a music app that aims to be the musical equivalent of the photo sharing app Instagram. This new company, MuseAmi, is at 20 Nassau Street.

Taub decries “private music,” listening to tunes on your headphones. “What Hook’d does is make you sound good with pitch correction, reverb, and echo, and allow you to interact with a song that you know and love in less than 30 seconds,” he says.

The current artist in residence is Sebastian Currier.

Every middle school student knows not to get caught citing Wikipedia as his/her main source. But where to start, when you don’t know anything about a topic.

In this essay printed in the current issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper, Ed Tenner weighs in on the information revolution:

Even a mediocre Wikipedia article — and they range from superb to misleading — may link to valuable additional resources. But what happens when a user is exploring a new topic? To judge a source we need to have the knowledge we are trying to get from it!

Tenner welcomes “information abundance” and recommends “knowlege bootstrapping” and/or “ratcheting.” With practice everybody learns techniques for refinement of their results and more sophisticated searches

Since I’m just a little older then Tenner, I liked going down memory lane with him, back in the days before Xerox copiers revolutionized scholarly research. You will too, if you were born before 1950. And if you are younger — read it and thank your lucky stars!

Richard K. Rein, who I believe was in Tenner’s Class of 1969 at Princeton, had his own take on this subject.

PS to Tenner: Consider making your own Wikepedia page about yourself. A search on your name yields these incomplete results.

This blogpost captured my imagination: an anonumous person is leaving seashells on random shelves in the Princeton Public Library.

Is this my chance to downsize my own seashell collection?