Professor of Computer Science
Computer vision, video understanding, gesture recognition, AI

Email:  kender@cs.columbia.edu            Web:   www.cs.columbia.edu/~jrk
Mail:   Department of Computer Science    Voice: 212-939-7115
        Columbia University               Lab:   212-939-7107
        1214 Amsterdam, MC 0401           Dept:  212-939-7000
        New York, NY 10027-7003           Fax:   212-666-0140
Office: 622  Schapiro CEPSR               Home:  169 Ames Avenue 
Lab:    6LW5 Schapiro CEPSR                      Leonia, NJ 07605
Hours:  TBD, and by appt                         201-944-4150

From "The Wisdom of Children", by Simon Rich
A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids' Table
   Mom: Pass the wine, please.  I want to become crazy.
   Dad: O.K.
   Grandmother: Did you see the politics?  It made me angry.
   Dad: Me, too.  When it was over, I had sex.
   Uncle: I'm having sex right now.
   Dad: We all are.
   Mom: Let's talk about which kid I like the best.
   Dad: (laughing) You know, but you won't tell.
   Mom: If they ask me again, I might tell.
   Friend from work: Hey, guess what!  My voice is pretty loud!
   Dad: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my
      kids ask I pretend like there aren't.
   Mom: I'm angry!  I'm angry all of a sudden!
   Dad: I'm angry, too!  We're angry at each other!
   Mom: Now everything is fine.
   Dad: We just saw the PG-13 movie.  It was so good.
   Mom: There was a big sex.
   Friend from work: I am the loudest!  I am the loudest!
   (Everybody laughs.)
   Mom: I had a lot of wine, and now I'm crazy!
   Grandfather: Hey, do you guys know what God looks like?
   All: Yes.
   Grandfather: Don't tell the kids.

From www.edge.org, "What's your law?":
   Chalupa's Second: Don't underestimate the importance of fashion in
      doing science.
   Levy's: The truth is always more interesting than your
      preconception of what it might be.
   Warwick's First: Art takes you out of town, and gives you a
      destination.  Science builds the bus that takes you there.
   Zangger's Second: Truly great science is always ahead of its time.
      Lucius Annaeus Seneca realized this already two thousand years
      ago, when he said: "The time will come when our successors will
      be surprised that we did not know such obvious things."
   Norretranders': The difficulty in understanding new ideas
      originating from science or art is not intellectual, but
      emotional.
   Venter's Fifth: Life is like sailing: It is easy to run downwind,
      but usually if you want to get somewhere worthwhile, a long hard
      beat to weather is necessary.
   Dawkins': When two incompatible beliefs are advocated with equal
      intensity, the truth does not lie halfway between them.
   Blakemore's First: People are never more honest than you think they
      are.
   Maddox's Second: Reviewers who are best placed to understand an
      author's work are the least likely to draw attention to its
      achievements, but are prolific sources of minor criticism,
      especially the identification of typos.
   Schank's: Any new idea will be treated as a variant of something
      the listener has already thought of or heard.  Agreement means a
      listener has already had a similar thought and well appreciates
      that the speaker has recognized his idea.  Disagreement means
      the opposite.  Really new ideas are incomprehensible.
   Luther's: Pecca fortiter.  O'Donnell's commentary: Literally, "Sin
      bravely."  His idea was that you're going to make a mess of
      things anyway, so you might as well do so boldly, confidently,
      with a little energy and imagination.

From "The First Three Minutes", by Steven Weinberg: 
   The effort to understand the universe
   is one of the very few things
   that lifts human life
   a little above the level of farce
   and gives it
   some of the grace of tragedy.

From "Four Quartets", by T. S. Eliot:
   We shall not cease from exploration
   And the end of all our exploring
   Will be to arrive where we started
   And know the place for the first time.

From "Sometimes", by Mary Oliver:
   Instructions for living a life:
   Pay attention.
   Be astonished.
   Tell about it.

From "Manhattan", by Woody Allen:
   Isaac Davis to Tracy:  You know what you are?  You're God's answer
   to Job, y'know?  You would have ended all argument between them.  I
   mean, He would have pointed to you and said, y'know, "I do a lot of
   terrible things, but I can still make one of these."  You know?
   And then Job would have said, "Eh.  Yeah, well, you win."