Miscellaneous stuff about P.B. Stark

ultras | espresso | bread | wheels | Erdös | Newton | schooling | the king and I | Vicarism | In Memoriam | wisdom of 50 years | haiku

I'm an ultrarunner. Here are some ultramarathons I've run:

See Stan Jensen's run100s.com or zombierunner.com for more about ultrarunning.

Lately, I've been running barefoot and in minimalist non-shoes, primarily homemade huaraches. In cold and mud, I run in homemade moccasins or split-toe surfing booties. I believe humans are well suited to distance running in minimal footwear or barefoot.

I'm serious about espresso:

I roast my own beans on the stove using a 6q pot and a whisk. I grind using a Zassenhaus Turkish hand mill or a Porlex ceramic-burr hand mill. I pull shots on an Olympia Cremina 67 (another review). I use a brass bottomless portafilter made by Richard Penny and a tamper from Orphan Espresso. I also use a Bacchi stovetop espresso machine. It is not a mokka pot. It's a steam-powered piston espresso machine, truly a marvel of engineering.

I bake:

I like to bake bread from scratch, including grinding the grain by hand.

My favorite wheels:

I drive a Vespa GTS 250ie and a Colnago C40 Carbon, full Campagnolo Record 10-speed, Ultra Torque carbon cranks, Easton EC90 bars. But mostly I walk or run for transportation.

My Erdös Number is 3:

(Erdös → Felzenbaum → Hochberg → Stark)

(Erdös → Diaconis → Freedman → Stark)

(Erdös → Diaconis → Evans → Stark)

(Erdös → Tovey → Donoho → Stark)

In December 2006, there were about 33,605 people with Erdös number 3. I believe that my Erdös number of the second kind is also 3; in December 2006, there were about 10,118 people with an Erdös number of the second kind equal to 3.

I'm an academic descendent of Sir Isaac Newton ;-)

(Devised by Duncan Agnew.)

Schooling

My education is a little unusual for a professor of Statistics. I dropped out of high school to go to MIT, where I intended to major in Physics and Philosophy. After a year, I transferred to Princeton University, where I majored in Philosophy. I spent a semester in Oxford as a junior. From Princeton I went to law school at the University of Texas at Austin. I dropped out after six weeks, and worked in management for an industrial marketing company. After a year, I switched to part-time consulting and took undergraduate courses at UT in Biology, Chemistry, Geology and Physics, then started graduate work in Geophysics. I transferred from UT to University of California, San Diego (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), where—while self-employed as a car mechanic— I finished my Ph.D. and started postdoctoral work in Geophysics. I came to UC Berkeley as a postdoc in Statistics, which was my first formal exposure to Probability and Statistics. I was hired as Assistant Professor of Statistics in 1988 after a year as a postdoc.

The King and I

I am not King Harald V of Norway. But I could play him on tv.

My moral system

I am the founder of Vicarism.

In Memoriam

Two of my dearest friends died in late 2008:

John Matthew Emery III, M.D., 8/23/1957–12/7/2008: obituary, eulogy, second eulogy.

David A. Freedman, Ph. D., 3/5/1938–10/17/2008: obituary, eulogy.

Some things I've learned in 50 years on Earth

• No matter how busy I am, I can always find time to procrastinate.
• Nothing feels quite as good as feeling good.
• Pain hurts more than anything else.
• There's no need to seek out irritating wastes of time: They will find you.
• An anal retentive obsessive compulsive's work is never done.
• Patience would be easier if it weren't so time-consuming.
• The glass might be half empty. It might be half full. Regardless, somebody will have to wash it.
• Measure twice, twice.
• Don't look for shortcuts if you don't have time to spare.
• There's no present like time.
• If the answer to a question will make you feel bad—no matter what the answer is—consider not asking.
• If you piss into the wind, more often than not, you'll get wet. The stronger the stream or the wind, the wetter you tend to get.
• Just because you're an a**hole doesn't mean you have to act like one.
• Meditation is all fun and games, until somebody loses an I.
• There's a fine line between being morally eccentric and having a scruple loose.
• Unsolicited advice is rarely heeded. The same goes for solicited advice.
• A lack of willpower can be compensated for by appetite.

Haiku on working as an Expert Witness

The job is simple:
Help the judge and the jury
understand the truth.

If the other side
were scrupulous and careful,
I would be useless.

Opposing counsel:
They feed me and my children.
Why don't I love them?

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Last modified 12 September 2011. statistics.berkeley.edu/~stark/other.htm