The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Memoir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doctoral Study

in e-books, Education | July 5th, 2012

Recent­ly, a video circulated—one of those weird Xtra­nor­mal cre­ations that set text to stilt­ed ani­ma­tion and robot­ic voices—entitled “So you want to get a Ph.D. in human­i­ties.” It spawned a num­ber of imi­ta­tions, in oth­er dis­ci­plines, of a sim­i­lar scenario—a world-weary pro­fes­sor chip­ping away at a star­ry-eyed undergraduate’s naïve illu­sions about the world of acad­e­mia. For a week or so, this meme had some of us wiz­ened, griz­zled doc­tor­al stu­dents laugh­ing through our tears while we hunched over key­boards and suf­fered through carpel tun­nel syn­drome and irrel­e­vance. In his free and down­load­able mem­oir, The Ph.D. Grind, author Philip J. Guo points out that such dis­par­age­ment can serve a purpose—as com­mis­er­a­tion for dis­tressed insiders—but it hard­ly helps less jad­ed or expe­ri­enced stu­dents and can be mis­lead­ing and disin­gen­u­ous.

In his pref­ace, Guo promis­es to give clear-eyed advice, avoid too much geek-speak, and steer clear of “bit­ter whin­ing.” Guo is an accom­plished engi­neer at Google who received his Mas­ters from MIT and his Ph.D. in Com­put­er Sci­ence from Stan­ford. His memoir—written imme­di­ate­ly after he fin­ished his degree and there­fore free, he claims, of what he calls “selec­tive hindsight”—documents his expe­ri­ences as a doc­tor­al stu­dent over the course of six years. He offers the book as a prac­ti­cal man­u­al for a vari­ety of read­ers, includ­ing under­grad­u­ates, cur­rent Ph.D. stu­dents, pro­fes­sors and poten­tial employ­ers of Ph.D.s, and any­one gen­uine­ly curi­ous about the nature of aca­d­e­m­ic research.

The most imme­di­ate­ly help­ful part of the book is the Epi­logue, which func­tions as a set of con­clu­sions in which Guo lays out twen­ty of the most mem­o­rable lessons he learned dur­ing the years he nar­rates in the book.  It’s all good advice and well worth read­ing his fuller expla­na­tion of each one. Here’s the short ver­sion of Guo’s “twen­ty lessons”:

1. Results trump inten­tions
2. Out­puts trump inputs
3. Find rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion
4. Cre­ate lucky oppor­tu­ni­ties
5. Play the game
6. Lead from below
7. Pro­fes­sors are human
8. Be well-liked
9. Pay some dues
10. Reject bad defaults
11. Know when to quit
12. Recov­er from fail­ures
13. Ally with insid­ers
14. Give many talks
15. Sell, sell, sell
16. Gen­er­ous­ly pro­vide help
17. Ask for help
18. Express true grat­i­tude
19. Ideas beget ideas
20. Grind hard and smart

Notice that none of these relate direct­ly to the arcana of Ph.D.-level com­put­er sci­ence. While Guo cer­tain­ly achieved a high degree of mas­tery in his field, his mem­oir demon­strates that, despite the inten­sive spe­cial­iza­tion of doc­tor­al work and the pre­car­i­ous posi­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic pro­fes­sion­als in the cur­rent job mar­ket, com­plet­ing a Ph.D. has many intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits that well exceed the nar­row goal of tenure-track employ­ment. The full-text of Guo’s book is avail­able in PDF here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a PhD

500 Free Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Allen Ginsberg Reads a Poem He Wrote on LSD to William F. Buckley

in Poetry, Television | July 5th, 2012

On Sep­tem­ber 3, 1968, William F. Buck­ley invit­ed poet Allen Gins­berg onto his TV pro­gram, “Fir­ing Line.” It was an odd encounter. “We’re here to talk about the avant-garde,” Buck­ley says grandil­o­quent­ly. “I should like to begin by ask­ing Mr. Gins­berg whether he con­sid­ers that the hip­pies are an inti­ma­tion of the new order.”

“Ah,” says Gins­berg, “why don’t I read a poem?”

Buck­ley smiles uncom­fort­ably as Gins­berg reach­es into his bag and pulls out a poem called “Wales Vis­i­ta­tion,” writ­ten under the influ­ence of LSD dur­ing a vis­it the pre­vi­ous year to the ancient ruins of Tin­tern Abbey, on the Riv­er Wye in South­east Wales. It was the same place that inspired William Wordsworth to write his “Lines Com­posed a Few Miles above Tin­tern Abbey” in 1798 and Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson to write “Tears, Idle Tears” in 1847. Buck­ley set­tles back in his chair as Gins­berg reads three of nine stan­zas from “Wales Vis­i­ta­tion,” begin­ning with the first:

White fog lift­ing & falling on moun­tain-brow
Trees mov­ing in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigan­tic eddy lift­ing mist
above teem­ing ferns exquis­ite­ly swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mul­lioned glass in val­ley raine–

To fol­low along with the oth­er two stan­zas recit­ed by Gins­berg and to read the rest of the poem, you can open this page in a new win­dow. Also don’t miss Gins­berg read­ing his sig­na­ture Beat poem, “Howl”. It’s a rol­lick­ing 26 minute affair, and you can always find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William F. Buck­ley Meets (Pos­si­bly Drunk) Jack Ker­ouac, Tries to Make Sense of Hip­pies, 1968

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

William F. Buck­ley Flogged Him­self to Get Through Atlas Shrugged

The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange

in Film | July 5th, 2012

Over forty years after its release, Stan­ley Kubrick­’s film adap­ta­tion of Antho­ny Burgess’ nov­el A Clock­work Orange retains all its aes­thet­ic and vis­cer­al impact. Cinephiles would expect this of any­thing by a per­fec­tion­ist auteur like Kubrick, but as it usu­al­ly goes, works of pop­u­lar art that grow instant­ly famous for their shock val­ue tend not to hold their artis­tic val­ue. How this par­tic­u­lar pic­ture man­aged that trick makes up the implic­it sub­ject of the 30-minute doc­u­men­tary Mak­ing A Clock­work Orange, avail­able to watch on YouTube. Here was a film con­tro­ver­sial enough, and alleged­ly inspi­ra­tional of enough real-life crime, that Kubrick him­self pulled it from dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Unit­ed King­dom. What did the direc­tor and his many col­lab­o­ra­tors have to do to make a film whose own tagline calls “the adven­tures of a young man whose prin­ci­pal inter­ests are rape, ultra-vio­lence and Beethoven” obscu­ri­ty-proof? Mak­ing A Clock­work Orange’s answer: they had to think hard and work long at every sin­gle aspect of the cin­e­mat­ic craft.

Offered a com­par­a­tive­ly low bud­get of $2.2 mil­lion, Kubrick and his team had to con­struct an ambigu­ous­ly futur­is­tic dystopi­an Lon­don and an entire way­ward youth cul­ture with­in it. For­mer mem­bers of this team describe the direc­tor as a “sponge,” hear­ing every last idea any­one could offer him and adapt­ing them to his and Burgess’ hybrid vision. He worked not from a script but straight from the nov­el, exhaus­tive­ly attack­ing each page from every pos­si­ble visu­al approach. He and his design­ers sat down with stacks of archi­tec­tur­al mag­a­zines to find the ugli­est pos­si­ble mid­cen­tu­ry build­ings in which to shoot. Apply­ing to pro­tag­o­nist Alex deLarge a sin­gle set of false eye­lash­es came from a hunch by the make­up spe­cial­ist. And Alex belts out “Sin­gin’ in the Rain” dur­ing he and his gang of hoods’ fate­ful assault on the home of an elder­ly writer — a scene that assures you’ll nev­er quite hear Gene Kel­ly the same way again — because it’s the only song star Mal­colm McDow­ell hap­pened to know. Vio­lence, crime, pun­ish­ment, and even the Beethoven: A Clock­work Orange presents them all at the height of styl­iza­tion. This assures a per­ma­nent pur­chase on our con­scious­ness that grit­ty, effects-laden explic­it­ness can nev­er attain.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange: Mal­colm McDow­ell Looks Back

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Isaac Asimov: “I Am Crazy, Absolutely Nuts, About our National Anthem” (1991)

in History, Music | July 4th, 2012

The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner became the nation­al anthem of the Unit­ed States in 1931, thanks to Her­bert Hoover. And, ever since, the anthem has had its detrac­tors. The Kennedy Cen­ter acknowl­edges on its web­site:

Some Amer­i­cans com­plain that it cel­e­brates war and should be reserved for mil­i­tary cer­e­monies. Oth­ers sim­ply grum­ble that it is too hard to sing with a range that is out of reach for the aver­age vocal­ist [any­one remem­ber Carl Lewis giv­ing it a try?]. Sug­gest­ed replace­ments have includ­ed “Amer­i­ca the Beau­ti­ful,” “God Bless Amer­i­ca,” and “This Land is Your Land.”

And don’t for­get that singers, ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­als alike, often have dif­fi­cul­ty remem­ber­ing the com­pli­cat­ed lyrics. Yes, The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner has its crit­ics. But the great Isaac Asi­mov wasn’t one of them. In 1991, Asi­mov wrote a short piece called “All Four Stan­zas” that staked out his posi­tion from the very start. It began:

I have a weakness–I am crazy, absolute­ly nuts, about our nation­al anthem.

The words are dif­fi­cult and the tune is almost impos­si­ble, but fre­quent­ly when I’m tak­ing a show­er I sing it with as much pow­er and emo­tion as I can. It shakes me up every time.

I was once asked to speak at a lun­cheon. Tak­ing my life in my hands, I announced I was going to sing our nation­al anthem–all four stan­zas.

This was greet­ed with loud groans. One man closed the door to the kitchen, where the noise of dish­es and cut­lery was loud and dis­tract­ing. “Thanks, Herb,” I said.

“That’s all right,” he said. “It was at the request of the kitchen staff.”

I explained the back­ground of the anthem and then sang all four stan­zas.

Let me tell you, those peo­ple had nev­er heard it before–or had nev­er real­ly lis­tened. I got a stand­ing ova­tion. But it was not me; it was the anthem….

So now let me tell you how it came to be writ­ten.

And, with that, he takes you back to The War of 1812, which start­ed 200 years ago. It’s large­ly a for­got­ten war. But it did leave us with our most endur­ing song.  Per­haps you’ll find your­self singing it in the show­er today too.

Andy Griffith (1926–2012) Gives a Lesson on the American Revolution

in History, Television | July 4th, 2012

As we roll into the 4th of July hol­i­day, let’s take a nos­tal­gic look back at Andy Grif­fith as he tells the sto­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion on his clas­sic 1960s TV pro­gram, “The Andy Grif­fith Show.” Grif­fith died Tues­day at the age of 86. In the eight years “The Andy Grif­fith Show” was broadcast–from 1960 to 1968–Griffith was a humane and ratio­nal pres­ence in Amer­i­can homes. His char­ac­ter, Sher­iff Andy Tay­lor, was sur­round­ed by eccentrics yet always man­aged to keep things in per­spec­tive, embody­ing what the show’s pro­duc­er, Aaron Ruben, once described as “this Lin­col­nesque char­ac­ter.” It’s a fit­ting phrase, and a good way to remem­ber Grif­fith as we enjoy the hol­i­day.

Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí in Classic 1968 Braniff Commercials: ‘When You Got It, Flaunt It!’

in Art, Business, Television | July 3rd, 2012

One of the scari­est things about air trav­el is the seat­ing assign­ment. You nev­er know who you’ll end up next to. This clas­sic 1968 adver­tis­ing cam­paign from Bran­iff Inter­na­tion­al Air­ways lets you imag­ine what it would be like to find your­self elbow-to-elbow with Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí.

In the com­mer­cial above, Warhol tries to explain the inher­ent beau­ty of Cam­bel­l’s Soup cans to heavy­weight box­er Son­ny Lis­ton. Below, Dalí and major league base­ball pitch­er Whitey Ford com­pare notes on the knuck­le­ball ver­sus the screw­ball. The com­mer­cials were part of Bran­if­f’s ambi­tious “End of the Plain Plane” rebrand­ing cam­paign, which com­plete­ly revamped the com­pa­ny’s stodgy image. Adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive Mary Wells Lawrence hired archi­tect and tex­tile design­er Alexan­der Girard to redesign every­thing from air­plane fuse­lages to ash trays. Ital­ian fash­ion design­er Emilio Puc­ci cre­at­ed flam­boy­ant uni­forms for the stew­ardess­es, or “Bran­iff girls.” And in 1968 Lawrence brought in art direc­tor George Lois to over­see the “When You Got It, Flaunt It!” adver­tis­ing cam­paign for print and tele­vi­sion.

Lois lat­er said he came up with the slo­gan before the celebri­ties were cast. In addi­tion to the Warhol/Liston and Dalí/Ford pair­ings, the cam­paign includ­ed ads with anoth­er odd cou­ple: pulp writer Mick­ey Spillane and poet Mar­i­anne Moore. In an inter­view with the New York Dai­ly News ear­li­er this year, Lois remem­bered that Warhol had trou­ble with his lines. “Andy had to say, ‘When you got it, flaunt it.’ But I end­ed up hav­ing to dub his voice. Lat­er, after I sent him a copy of all the com­mer­cials, he told me that he said the line bet­ter than any­body.” The ads were a prod­uct of Lois’s gut-instinct approach to adver­tis­ing. “Those ads,” he said in anoth­er inter­view, “would have total­ly bombed in ad tests. As things turned out, it tripled their busi­ness.”

New Crowdfunding Site, Unglue.It, Releases Books Stuck in Publishing Limbo

in Books, e-books | July 3rd, 2012

When Ruth Finnegan pub­lished Oral Lit­er­a­ture in Africa in 1970, she was award­ed an Order of the British Empire for her exhaus­tive and pio­neer­ing research on the his­to­ry of sto­ry­telling in Africa. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the book was so expen­sive that it was large­ly out of reach for African read­ers.

Now it’s out of print, but the book and many of the audio record­ings Finnegan made in her research will soon be avail­able through unglue.it, a kick­starter-style cam­paign to release out-of-print books.

Unglue.it raised $7,578 from 259 supporters—mostly in the library world—to make the book avail­able “on any device, in any for­mat, for­ev­er.” The mon­ey will help off­set the costs of pro­duc­ing the e‑book and a dig­i­tal archive of record­ings and pho­tographs tak­en dur­ing Finnegan’s field­work. In addi­tion to the ebook, the pub­lish­er, Open Book Pub­lish­ers, will pro­duce free, down­load­able pdf edi­tions of the work.

Unglue.it has three oth­er titles in fundrais­ing mode:  Love Like Gum­bo by Nan­cy Rawles, a set of young read­er books and the auto­bi­og­ra­phy 6–321 by Michael Laser. Using the kick­starter-style mod­el, Unglue.it is try­ing to raise an agreed-upon fair licens­ing fee to release the books under Cre­ative Com­mons licens­ing, com­plete­ly lib­er­at­ed from dig­i­tal rights man­age­ment tech­nol­o­gy.

Books are cho­sen by the crowd too. At the moment A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy tops the wish list.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. Check out her work at .

NASA & Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Record Cosmic Sounds of the Universe on New Album

in Music, Science | July 3rd, 2012

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured UC San­ta Cruz’s new Grate­ful Dead Archive Online. There you’ll find a wealth of mate­ri­als about the band from their incep­tion in 1965 until their dis­band­ment in 1995. But over the past 17 years, the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the Dead have pur­sued all sorts of fas­ci­nat­ing projects, musi­cal and oth­er­wise. Mick­ey Hart, the group’s drum­mer between 1967 and 1971 and again between 1974 to the end, has put out a par­tic­u­lar­ly unusu­al new album that takes its basic mate­ri­als from the heav­ens. As both a musi­cian and musi­col­o­gist, Hart has estab­lished a prece­dent for such son­ic exper­i­ments. Craft­ing his 1989 album Music to Be Born By, he record­ed his yet-unborn son’s heart­beat with­in the womb — the most nat­ur­al of all per­cus­sion, you might say — and record­ed tracks on top of it. For his lat­est record, Mys­teri­um Tremen­dum, he lis­tened not to the core of a human being but as far in the oth­er direc­tion from human­i­ty as pos­si­ble, col­lect­ing and com­pos­ing with “cos­mic sounds” made in out­er space.

To make music like this, you need some unusu­al col­lab­o­ra­tors. Hart went to NASA, Penn State, and the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, work­ing with sci­en­tists like George Smoot, win­ner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics with John C. Math­er. They helped con­vert light, radio waves, and oth­er elec­tro­mat­ic radi­a­tion into sound waves that Hart and his band could put to musi­cal use. After get­ting a sam­ple of the result­ing extrater­res­tri­al grooves in the videos above, you might con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to this recent inter­view with Hart on KQED’s Forum. Why go to all the trou­ble of sam­pling the bil­lons-of-years-old sounds of the infi­nite uni­verse? Because the Big Bang, Hart thinks, marked the very first beat. “Four words: it’s the rhythm, stu­pid,” he explains. “That’s what I always say to any­one, and myself as well. It all goes back to that. We are rhythm machines, embed­ded in a uni­verse of rhythm.” Spo­ken like a true drum­mer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The History of Philosophy Visualized

in Philosophy | July 2nd, 2012

Simon Rap­er at Drunks & Lamp­posts has com­posed a data visu­al­iza­tion of the rela­tions of influ­ence among philoso­phers. This was put togeth­er to demon­strate Rap­er’s data extrac­tion algo­rithm; he col­lect­ed the con­tents of all the “influ­enced by” fields on Wikipedia, dis­play­ing each philoso­pher as a node con­nect­ed to all oth­er philoso­phers that he or she influ­enced. The more con­nec­tions, the big­ger the node. The result is visu­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and an inter­est­ing touch­stone for phi­los­o­phy fans.

Who was more impor­tant, Edmund Husserl or Jean-Paul Sartre? Well, you may not have heard of Husserl, but the size of his node is a bit big­ger than Sartre’s, so accord­ing to the graph, he’s had more of an influ­ence on the pro­fes­sion. The fact that Husser­l’s hey­day was thir­ty years ear­li­er than Sartre’s may explain that fact, but as Mark De Sil­va at the New York Times Opin­ion­ater points out, it’s also unclear how well these “influ­enced by” rela­tions in Wikipedia cor­re­late with real influ­ences in the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy. Rap­er’s graph seems to pro­vide an excel­lent start for pon­der­ing the ques­tion. More graphs by his­tor­i­cal peri­od can be found here.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er appears on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, offer­ing live­ly, in-depth intro­duc­tions to Husserl, Sartre, and many oth­er fig­ures in phi­los­o­phy.

UC Santa Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grateful Dead Archive is Now Online

in Archives, Internet Archive, Music | July 2nd, 2012

“They’re not the best at what they do,” said respect­ed rock pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham of the Grate­ful Dead. “They’re the only ones that do what they do.” The band devel­oped such an idio­syn­crat­ic musi­cal style and per­son­al sen­si­bil­i­ty that their legion of devot­ed fans, known as “Dead­heads,” tend­ed to fol­low them every­where they toured. The Dead with­stood more than their fair share of clas­sic-rock tur­bu­lence in the thir­ty years from their for­ma­tion in 1965, but did­n’t dis­solve until the 1995 death of found­ing mem­ber and unof­fi­cial front­man Jer­ry Gar­cia. The bereft Dead­heads, still in need of a con­stant flow of their eclec­tic, impro­vi­sa­tion­al, psy­che­del­ic-tra­di­tion­al, jam-inten­sive sound of choice, took a few dif­fer­ent paths: some began fol­low­ing oth­er, com­pa­ra­ble groups; some would go on to rely on acts formed by ex-Dead mem­bers, like Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s Furthur; some made it their life’s mis­sion to col­lect every­thing in the band’s incom­pa­ra­bly vast col­lec­tion of demos, live record­ings, and son­ic mis­cel­lany.

Grate­ful Dead com­pletists now have anoth­er source of solace in the Grate­ful Dead Archive Online from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz. Lest you assume your­self Dead-savvy enough to have already seen and heard every­thing this archive could pos­si­bly con­tain, behold the new­ly added item fea­tured on the front page as I type this: Jer­ry Gar­ci­a’s Egypt­ian tour lam­i­nate. Accord­ing to the press release, the archive’s inter­net pres­ence fea­tures “near­ly 25,000 items and over 50,000 scans” from the uni­ver­si­ty’s phys­i­cal archive, includ­ing “works by some of the most famous rock pho­tog­ra­phers and artists of the era, includ­ing Herb Greene, Stan­ley Mouse, Wes Wil­son and Susana Mill­man.” Rest assured that it offers plen­ty of non-obscu­ran­tist Dead-relat­ed plea­sures, includ­ing tele­vi­sion appear­ances, radio broad­casts, posters, and fan record­ings of con­certs. Like any rich sub­ject, the Grate­ful Dead pro­vides its enthu­si­asts a life­time of mate­r­i­al to study. UC San­ta Cruz, a school often asso­ci­at­ed in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion with the Dead­’s greater San Fran­cis­co Bay Area ori­gins as well as their pen­chant for laid-back good times, has just made it that much eas­i­er to plunge into.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Van Mor­ri­son, Jef­fer­son Air­plane & The Grate­ful Dead: Watch Clas­sic Con­certs from Wolfgang’s Vault

Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Archive

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.