JHU Arts Entertainment Media Entrepreneurship (AEME) Group Event

Over the past several months, I’ve been helping to set up an affinity group for the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association to bring together alumni who work in areas related to the entertainment industry.

For the past several weeks, we’ve been making plans for our first official event to be held in conjunction with a week long Intersession course being offered by the Film and Media Studies Program at Hopkins.  We’re happy to announce the details for this event on January 7th and hope everyone can join us. There will be a panel discussion as well as ample time to chat with a variety of fellow alumni, current students, and faculty.

Are you a member of the Arts, Entertainment, Media, or Entrepreneurship communities in Los Angeles?

Join us as we welcome Linda DeLibero, Director of the Hopkins Film and Media Studies Program,​ and current Film majors from the Film and Media Studies Intersession Course for a diverse and dynamic panel discussion featuring creative and successful Hopkins alumni working in the industry. Learn relevant information, make connections with fellow LA area alumni and talk with the current students.

Hosted by:
Donald Kurz ’77, Johns Hopkins University Trustee and School of Arts and Sciences Advisory Board Member, and
the Arts Entertainment Media Entrepreneurship Affinity: LA Group

January 7, 2016
6:30 pm
at Omelet, LLC, 3540 Hayden Avenue, Culver City, CA 90232
No Charge for alumni and guests

RSVP now for this event.

 

For more information:
Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association AEME LA Reception
Office of Alumni Relations
800-JHU-JHU1 (548-5481)
alumevents@jhu.edu

 

As part of the reception, we’ll have a panel discussion with a variety of local alumni who work in the entertainment and media sectors.

Panelists

Jason P. Somerville, ’97
Founder and Managing Partner, EIG
Mark Swift, ’93
Screenwriter
Dalia Ganz, ’05
Director, Digital & Partnership Marketing at ABC Family
Mitch Tenzer, ’75
Partner, Ziffren Brittenham, LLP
Sunny Boling, ’99
Casting Director

 

A number of students from Hopkins will be in attendance at the event as part of an Intersession course being offered by the department. The listing for the course follows:

The Entertainment Industry in Contemporary Hollywood

This week-long course in Los Angeles gives students inside access to the entertainment industry through daily meetings and workshops with key figures in film, television, new media, and music, many of them JHU alums: directors, producers, screenwriters, studio executives, agents, exhibitors and more. We will visit studios, major agencies and production companies, and will end the week with a JHU networking event and panel discussion with alumni who work in film and television.The course runs from January 4 -8. Open to all Film and Media Studies majors and minors, with preference given to seniors. Students outside FMS may apply if slots remain open after all FMS students have registered.

Course Number: AS.061.377.60
Credits: 1
Distribution: H
Days:  Monday 1/4/2016 – Friday 1/8/2016
Times:  M – 9:00-4:00PM | Tu- 9:00-4:00PM | W- 9:00-4:00PM | Th- 9:00-4:00PM | F- 9:00-4:00PM
Instructor: Linda DeLibero

 

Update

The event was a wonderful success.  I wanted to share a few of the photos I took during the panel discussion:

20160107_202153_002
Students, alumni, and faculty look on at the Johns Hopkins Arts, Entertainment, Media, and Entrepreneurship Panel Discussion

 

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Johns Hopkins Arts, Entertainment, Media, and Entrepreneurship Panel Discussion featuring Dalia Ganz, Mark Swift, Jason Sommerville, and Sunny Boling.

 

Omelet group photo
Here’s just a few of the many alumni who came out to the LA meetup at Omelet! It was a pleasure to see so many graduates interested in helping the current students and young alumni break into the film industry. — with Amelia Voos, Lydia Youngman, Dael Norwitz, Cole Spivak, Juliana Veracka, Taylor Veracka, Errol Koenig, Elena Thompson, Chris Aldrich, Howie Mandel, Evelyn Jerome Alexander, Josh Siegel, Don Kurz, Grant Lease, Linda DeLibero, Kathryn Alsman, Mark Swift, Brian J. McConnell, Will Mason, Josh Raphaelson, Caitlin Duffy and Jess Ambrosetti at Omelet.

Tickets for the Rose Parade on New Years day arrived. I think I’ve got better seats than any of the networks.

Tickets for the Rose Parade on New Years day arrived. I think I've got better seats than any of the networks.
Tickets for the Rose Parade on New Years day arrived. I think I’ve got better seats than any of the networks.

Instagram filter used: Slumber

Eugenia Cheng, author of How to Bake Pi, on Colbert Tonight

Earlier this year, I read Eugenia Cheng’s brilliant book How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics. Tonight she’s appearing (along with Daniel Craig apparently) on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I encourage everyone to watch it and read her book when they get the chance.

How-to-bake-pi

You can also read more about her appearance from Category Theorist John Carlos Baez here: Cakes, Custard, Categories and Colbert | The n-Category Café

My brief review of her book on GoodReads.com:

How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of MathematicsHow to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics by Eugenia Cheng
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While most of the book is material I’ve known for a long time, it’s very well structured and presented in a clean and clear manner. Though a small portion is about category theory and gives some of the “flavor” of the subject, the majority is about how abstract mathematics works in general.

I’d recommend this to anyone who wants to have a clear picture of what mathematics really is or how it should be properly thought about and practiced (hint: it’s not the pablum you memorized in high school or even in calculus or linear algebra). Many books talk about the beauty of math, while this one actually makes steps towards actually showing the reader how to appreciate that beauty.

Like many popular books about math, this one actually has very little that goes beyond the 5th grade level, but in examples that are very helpfully illuminating given their elementary nature. The extended food metaphors and recipes throughout the book fit in wonderfully with the abstract nature of math – perhaps this is why I love cooking so much myself.

I wish I’d read this book in high school to have a better picture of the forest of mathematics.

More thoughts to come…

What An Actual Handwaving Argument in Mathematics Looks Like

I’m sure we’ve all heard them many times, but this is what an actual handwaving argument looks like in a mathematical setting.

Handwaving during Algebraic Number Theory

Instagram filter used: Normal

Photo taken at: UCLA Math Sciences Building

Handwaving during Algebraic Number Theory

A photo posted by Chris Aldrich (@chrisaldrich) on

On Being a Secretary

Daniel N. Robinson, (March 9, 1937-  ), philosopher
in Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Lecture 28 “Hobbes and the Social Machine”

 

Great Ideas of Philosophy

Sir Francis Bacon smacks down Republican party front-runners

A

s I watch the unfolding of the 2016 presidential election, I find myself wondering more and more where I can register to vote for the “scientific party?”

The electorate seems to want to focus primarily (only?) on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which our country was founded. Though I have no qualm with these principles, they seem to miss the firmer and primary base upon which the country was built at the dawn of the Age of Reason.

Sir Francis Bacon, (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, essayist and author
in the preface to Novum Organum (1620)

 

Pourbus' Francis Bacon

Read the original 1620 edition in Latin