ESP Biography

Having a head at the TOP of your body is pretty useful, but it makes it easy to forget that there’s a world of things happening at the other end. In this class, we’ll go for a short walk around the Stanford campus, paying careful attention to the world around our feet. I hope we’ll have the opportunity to talk a bit about rocks, bugs, weeds, manholes, and more. (Feel free to bring a camera or other recording device, but this class won’t be focused on them.)

High places, low places, hidden places, and secret places -- urban explorers seek out the nooks and crannies of the built environment which most people don't even know exist. Among their ranks are adventurers, photographers, spelunkers, historians, and amateur archaeologists. What unites these characters is their sense of wonder at the world around them, and their desire to push the typical boundaries to discover what lies under their feet, or though that door. Come learn about what makes "urbex" special. Fantastic images and stories from explorers around the world will be presented, along with the more serious side: Where did urban exploration come from? What sorts of exploration exist? Why in the world do people do it? And the age-old philosophical question: What does it all mean?

Ever heard of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography? It's just one example of the exciting work being done in the field of computational photography. "Computational photography" is all about extending the power of normal cameras using sophisticated algorithms and a lot of clever ideas. While we don't have the time to go into details about the algorithms, I'd like to show you what sort of things are possible using a camera plus a computer. I expect you will be surprised!

Like brushes, a pen, or a musical instrument, a computer can be a tool for creative expression. Stop by, and try your hand at creating a work of digital art!

In this class, we're going to go on a little journey. From humble beginnings, covering checkerboards with dominoes, we're going to move on to bigger, brighter, more /triangular/ worlds. By the end of the hour, with any luck, we'll see what this all has to do with... physics? This talk will feature fundamental proof techniques, bizarre numbers which have no right to be whole numbers (but which are anyway), and some very, very pretty mathematics.

Having a head at the TOP of your body is pretty useful, but it makes it easy to forget that there's a world of things happening at the other end. In this class, we'll go for a short walk around the Stanford campus, paying careful attention to the world around our feet. I hope we'll have the opportunity to talk a bit about rocks, bugs, weeds, manholes, and more. (Feel free to bring a camera or other recording device, but this class won't be focused on them.)