Friday, March 23, 2007

Turtles

Today a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie opens. The turtles were quite popular back in the late 80's and early 90's, somehow making appearance in more than a couple STOC and FOCS talks. Seemed the rule to avoid popular culture in talks doesn't apply to children's shows.

Then the turtles started winning NSF Math Postdocs: Michelangelo (Grigni), Raphael (Ostrovsky) and Leonardo (Schulman). Poor Donatello never did get his postdoc.

5 comments:

  1. http://www.xkcd.com/c197.html

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  2. I loved the turtles when I was a kid. I can't wait to take my son to this movie :)

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  3. The funny part is that all the 3 turles (Mic Grigni, Leonard Schulman and Rafi Ostrovsky) got their PhD at the same year from MIT theory group and all got their NSF postdoctoral award at the same time (1992). Donatello was never admitted to MIT.

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  4. Are the Lance-lings into the turtles these days? Or does Dad's nostalgaia exceed the interest of the kids?

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  5. There was another NSF postdoc in TCS that year: Toniann Pitassi. -- MG

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