Today was Ash Wednesday, and was interesting to see those who chose to brand themselves. (Tradition demands, and as usual it is always interesting to see how tradition is followed in former colonies more than in former empires, that Catholics attend mass in the morning, at which ash is marked onto their foreheads, which should remain for a day. So more than a few people, for a secular policy school, walked around with blackened foreheads today.)
The other anecdote which I truly find eccentric, and it is not many that qualify to that aspirational label, in my books is of a corporate finance professor at MIT, whose class a good friend attends. Said professor, by name of Asquith (whose famous theory shows that stocks that are heavily shorted tend to underperform in the long run), conducts lessons from a bed. Due to back problems, the Professor cannot stand or sit for more than 5 minutes at a time, and for the past ten years, has a bed wheeled into the auditorium, from which he lectures, prone, with his head propped up on one hand, and a dutiful assistant scurries about on the blackboard behind him. To intellect, academia, and the ability to do what you want!
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