Hopeful Things

Yesterday I met Manu Prakash, who has invented a very cheap paper microscope that allows anyone, particularly children in poor countries, to explore scientific subjects, especially micro-biology. He recently won a MacArthur Genius grant and was a guest on our TV news show, KQED Newsroom.

He's a delightful geek, who grew up in India and is now a bioengineer at Stanford. His microscope is basically built from origami and small lenses and, once assembled, can magnify tiny things by at least 150 x.

The cost of the paper miscroscope is 55 cents. I have been trying to figure out how to order it -- I think that will become possible on Monday via Kickstarter. I'd love to order a bunch of them for my grandchildren.

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Updates This Week

I picked up my youngest, Julia, from SFO, as she arrived after a weekend visit where she saw her grandparents and Bard outside New York. On the way to the city, I noticed the engine light come on in my car.

On Tuesday I dropped the car off at the mechanics.

Today my oldest son, Peter, dropped by in early afternoon to update me and discuss the job offers he has started receiving. We talked through negotiation strategies.

After that I got a bus (after a long wait) and pretty long walk to the mechanics to pick up the car, now fixed (for $600.)

Tomrrow I meet a group of students in the morning and my dentist in the afternoon.

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At work my staff remains somewhat exhausted from the long, hard election effort. We are working to prepare them for the possibility of a major attack on our rights under the First Amendment by the Trump Administration.

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