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Posted by Jonathan J. Rosenberg, Senior
VP, Product Management

We live in a world focused on celebrity, but there are also
luminaries — those guiding lights who actually inspire celebrities
along with the rest of us. Today there's a luminary we'd
like to call out: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer" id="p_iz" >Tom
Lehrer. It hasn't escaped our attention that Mr. Lehrer
turned 80 last week. (We have it on good authority that his view of
numbers is such that 80 is not so different than 79, so he probably
won't mind this belated note.) We think he's great.
We're fans.

Mr. Lehrer is the Harvard mathematician turned parodist
songwriter-performer whose sense of humor, intelligence and rhythm
created a cult following that, weirdly enough, anticipated a lot of
what Google's culture tries to be about. His work is clever,
playful and fun and connects things in ways that surprises,
delights and inspires. (Consider href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNfx0FO4hzs"
id="zs_0" >"The Element Song", his ode to the periodic
table, or his lesson on href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a81YvrV7Vv8"
id="zp:h" >"New Math".) How could we not be inspired
by someone who can craft a good laugh, a great tune, and an elegant
equation?

From href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytGOeiW0aE"
id="h9_z" >"The Masochism Tango" to

href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FgMTAj4f_o"
id="djxr" >"Who's Next" to

href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz-DHBiYnrc"
id="cjub" >"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" (trust us,
you have to hear it), Mr. Lehrer's unique music carved out a
distinctive place in popular music in the 1950s and '60s. He
made his fans feel smart. An entrepreneur — and we like
entrepreneurs — he self-produced and sold his songs via mail
order. And for all the edginess in his humor, he ended up writing
some ten clever songs for the '70s public television
children's program The Electric Company, including
a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6gjvAYDZ6M" id="wdnx" >tune
about the letter 'e.'

Although Wikipedia notes that he performed only 109 shows and wrote
just 37 songs over 20 years, we think his impact and influence goes
well beyond those numbers. He was the best kind of "geek"
before the word made its way into pop culture. He's the kind of
character as comfortable teaching a university course on the
history of the musical — which he did — as running a seminar on
the nature of mathematics — which he did.

We hope that in retirement Mr. Lehrer is enjoying himself even a
fraction as much as we've enjoyed his work. We're grateful
that he's such a great example of how science, humor, music and
mathematics can be combined to create such wonderful things.

href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/blogspot/MKuf?a=RfqcD3G" > border="0" />

height="1" width="1" />

Tags: , Jonathan, ManagementWe, Posted, product, Rosenberg, Senior, VP

Posted by Jonathan J. Rosenberg, Senior
VP, Product Management

We live in a world focused on celebrity, but there are also
luminaries — those guiding lights who actually inspire celebrities
along with the rest of us. Today there's a luminary we'd
like to call out: href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer" id="p_iz" >Tom
Lehrer. It hasn't escaped our attention that Mr. Lehrer
turned 80 last week. (We have it on good authority that his view of
numbers is such that 80 is not so different than 79, so he probably
won't mind this belated note.) We think he's great.
We're fans.

Mr. Lehrer is the Harvard mathematician turned parodist
songwriter-performer whose sense of humor, intelligence and rhythm
created a cult following that, weirdly enough, anticipated a lot of
what Google's culture tries to be about. His work is clever,
playful and fun and connects things in ways that surprises,
delights and inspires. (Consider href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNfx0FO4hzs"
id="zs_0" >"The Element Song", his ode to the periodic
table, or his lesson on href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a81YvrV7Vv8"
id="zp:h" >"New Math".) How could we not be inspired
by someone who can craft a good laugh, a great tune, and an elegant
equation?

From href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytGOeiW0aE"
id="h9_z" >"The Masochism Tango" to

href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FgMTAj4f_o"
id="djxr" >"Who's Next" to

href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz-DHBiYnrc"
id="cjub" >"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" (trust us,
you have to hear it), Mr. Lehrer's unique music carved out a
distinctive place in popular music in the 1950s and '60s. He
made his fans feel smart. An entrepreneur — and we like
entrepreneurs — he self-produced and sold his songs via mail
order. And for all the edginess in his humor, he ended up writing
some ten clever songs for the '70s public television
children's program The Electric Company, including
a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6gjvAYDZ6M" id="wdnx" >tune
about the letter 'e.'

Although Wikipedia notes that he performed only 109 shows and wrote
just 37 songs over 20 years, we think his impact and influence goes
well beyond those numbers. He was the best kind of "geek"
before the word made its way into pop culture. He's the kind of
character as comfortable teaching a university course on the
history of the musical — which he did — as running a seminar on
the nature of mathematics — which he did.

We hope that in retirement Mr. Lehrer is enjoying himself even a
fraction as much as we've enjoyed his work. We're grateful
that he's such a great example of how science, humor, music and
mathematics can be combined to create such wonderful things.

href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/blogspot/MKuf?a=RfqcD3G" > border="0" />

height="1" width="1" />

Tags: , Jonathan, ManagementWe, Posted, product, Rosenberg, Senior, VP

Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior
VP, Product Management

This week Israel observed href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Hashoah" id="u3.v" >Yom
HaShoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day, a holiday inaugurated
in 1959 to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. This is an
especially important day to id="omu9" >Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem-based
center for remembering the Holocaust's victims and survivors. I
was fortunate to tour Yad Vashem's href="http://www1.yadvashem.org/new_museum/overview.html" id="gc22"
>New Museum with my family last summer, and
was moved and inspired by the experience. Our guide told us an
anecdote about a visitor, a survivor of the camps, who recognized
an item in one exhibit and was able to explain its context to
museum curators and fellow visitors. This is why Yad Vashem is so
important: it's a place that preserves the horrible history of
the Holocaust and puts it in context for all of us.

But a lot of people, including many survivors, aren't able to
visit Yad Vashem. How can they discover and share stories? How can
they see an artifact or a photo and say, I recognize that item or
person because I was there? The answer, of course, is the
Internet.

We're proud to report that Yad Vashem has just launched two new
YouTube channels, href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.youtube.com/user/YadVashem"
id="gh7u23" >one in English, the href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.youtube.com/user/yadvashemarabic"
id="gh7u24" >other in Arabic. They feature
testimonies from Holocaust survivors, historians' lectures on
key issues related to the Holocaust, and footage of events big and
small ( id="o1kw" >Pope John Paul
II's visit in 2000, a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucu94QAi4dA" id="f3-o"
>touching family reunion). More
importantly, they are a way for Yad Vashem to surpass its physical
boundaries and reach out to an audience worldwide. This is the
promise the Internet holds: to inform and connect the globe, to
remember stories, to teach us. As href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel" id="gh7u17"
>Elie Wiesel said in href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=D_kuKXRLEnY"
id="gh7u18" >his speech at the opening of the
museum: "If we decided to tell the tale, it is because we
wanted the world to be a better world, just a better world, and
learn and remember."

href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/blogspot/MKuf?a=owTaBH" > border="0" />

height="1" width="1" />

Tags: , Jonathan, ManagementThis, Posted, product, Rosenberg, Senior, VP