Personal Interests
Books
This is a certainly not comprehensive list of my favourite books:
The Computational Beauty of Nature
Complexity
The Selfish Gene
Goedel, Escher, Bach
Cry to Heaven
Music
I recently discovered the Tango's by Astor Piazzola. There are 2 songs available for piano:
Chiquilin: Page 1, Page 2
Adios Nonino: Page 1, Page 2
Science
I am very much interested in evolutionary biology and particularly in the work by Richard Dawkins. Here is a small current collection of his political articles:
- Islam-Terrorism
- Ignorance is no crime
- Snake Oil and Holy Water
- Sadly, an honest creationist
- You can't have it both ways
- Science and Sensibility
- Information Overload?
If you liked them you should take a look at the in-official Homepage of Richard Dawkins.
After the recent events (Fall 2001) in New York I read an excellent dossier in the German newspaper Die Zeit that I could identify with very well, written by Henning Sussebach:
Sport
Growing up I had one passion: riding horses. I certainly spent more time and effort in Milbitz than in school. I later discovered power-lifting, originally a means to the end of improving my vaulting, which eventually became an end in itself. I currently hold the NYU immaturial records in all three disciplines (admittedly, the competition in my weight class is rather small).
Friends on the Web
A rather small portion of my non-academic friends afford the luxury of maintaining a Web-presence:
Patick Baudisch, who makes an
equally good figure with a cummerbund or a black belt;
Andreas Weigend, whose path seems to be
intertwined with mine for more now than 8 years;
Maytal Saar-Tsechansky, who
recently discovered the pleasures of motherhood and since than is of constant
advise;
Jae Yun Moon, who countably often
(aleph-zero) kept me company through sleepless nights in our office;
Georg Fritzsch, who gave me my first horse-riding lessons and is now
working on his carrier as a conductor,
Shiri Rokshin, who recently escaped the
crazy world of the Big Apple for the comparably soothing and peaceful
atmosphere in Israel; and finally
Foster Provost, who I can finally (after graduating) pronounce a
great friend rather than just a terrific advisor.