Wow, my second post here… Well, the Twitter thing, you know, everything longer than 140 characters… just kidding, it’s not that bad… at least not yet.

Actually I did a lot of writing lately. This dissertation thing every doctoral student has to face, sooner or later…. And such a dissertation usually ends up being a very large document. In my experience Microsoft Word doesn’t do the greatest job when you are working on documents exceeding 10 pages, so when I started to write my dissertation I decided to try something else: LaTeX.

You won’t learn how to use LaTeX in 5 minutes, but it is definitely worth the effort, just read yourself:

‘LaTeX isn’t for everyone but it could be for you’ by Andy Roberts

Anyone who has used Microsoft Word for a reasonable amount of time will recognize my very own Andy’s Laws on Word:

1. Likelihood of a crash is directly proportional to the importance of a document.
2. Likelihood of a crash is inversely proportional to the time left before its deadline.
3. Likelihood of a crash is directly proportional to the duration since you last saved.
4. Likelihood of you throwing your computer out of the window is directly proportional to the number of times Clippy pops up.
5. That’s enough laws for now…

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‘Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient’ by Allin Cottrell

The word processor is a stupid and grossly inefficient tool for preparing text for communication with others.

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‘Latex vs. MS Word’ by Andrew Roberts

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Separation of content and style

Not the most obvious advantage, possibly because a lot of Word users don’t understand why this so beneficial. In when producing your Latex document, you are concentrating on the content itself. You introduce structure explicitly by telling Latex when a new section begins for example, but you don’t then faff around trying to decide how the section headers should look. That’s done later.

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Control

Even with simple documents, you can quickly become frustrated by Word’s rather unintelligent interference. And when it comes to large documents, the hours that are wasted trying to get that image that you know will fit at the bottom of the page, but Word refuses to put it there!
With Latex, you can – if you want to – have total control over the presentation of your document.

Output

It’s difficult to disagree that the output from Latex is far superior to what Word can produce. This is emphasised greatest when it comes to documents with high mathematical content, which is a major strength for Latex. It also has much better kerning, hyphenation and justification algorithms that simply make the output far more professional than what any word processor can do.
It also takes little effort to convert your document into a postscript or PDF file. There’s no need to buy additional software such as Adobe Acrobat like you need to do to convert a Word document into PDF.

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‘The Beauty of LATEX’ by Dario Taraborelli

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There is still a further reason that definitely convinced me to abandon MS Word when I wrote my dissertation: you will never be able to produce professionally typeset and well-structured documents using most WYSIWYG word processors. LATEX is a free typesetting system that allows you to focus on content without bothering about the layout: the software takes care of the actual typesetting, structuring and page formatting, producing documents of astonishing elegance.

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It allows fine-tuned control on a number of typesetting options, although just using the default configuration results in documents with high typographic quality.

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1. Kerning

Kerning is the process of selectively adjusting the spacing between letters pairs to improve the overall appearance of text. Examples of letter pairs that need kerning treatment are AV, AY, PA, and AT. These letter pairs often look awkward together, and need to either be moved closer together, or further apart manually. Professional typesetting systems and fonts allow fine-grained adjustments for such letter pairs. Popular word processors either lack support for kerning tables or disable kerning by default.

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7. Line breaks, justification and hyphenation

Readability results not only from a good selection of typefaces, but also from a correct distribution of characters and whitespace per line. To attain this goal, most WYSIWYG word processors use relatively dumb justification/hyphenation procedures (i.e. algorithms that establish the position for line breaks by processing text line by line). LATEX uses an advanced algorithm, based on seminal work by Donald Knuth and Michael F. Plass and enhanced by Frank Liang in 1983 for his PhD dissertation and, which considers paragraphs as `wholes´ in order to decide where to add line breaks. The algorithm uses language-specific patterns in order to decide the preferred position for hyphenation. The engine then selects line breaks so as to make paragraphs look as good as possible. Information that is taken into account for calculating optimal line breaks includes the number of consecutive lines ending with hyphens, word tightness on each line, the change of tightness between consecutive lines.

[...]

Drop me a line if you need some help setting up LaTeX on your computer, we can meet at CIBU and I’ll help you get acquainted.

CIBU had the honor to attend a conference of Sanford Fisch, the co-founder of the American Academy of Estate planning Attorneys, at the World Trade Center. His entrepreneurial soul touched all of us. Follow a brief but intense reminder to motivate us about how to achieve our entrepreneurial goals:

“It has been some time since I spoke to the group at CIBU.  I enjoyed sharing my experience co-founding the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys and some lessons learned.  There is something very special about speaking to students ready to embark on their careers and engage in the entrepreneurial effort.

The current economy presents new challenges and, in fact, many new opportunities.  Make sure you do not do what everyone else is doing.  Following the crowd rarely gets you to the top. Be willing to do what others are unwilling to do and, most importantly, take action on your goals.

To your success”

In the last story, we chronicled how a student we called a “messenger” played a pivotal role in helping a miraculous thing to happen.  A French Marathon student running in San Diego met and gave an American flag to an American heroine running in the same race—a symbol of respect, friendship and love for America and San Diego.

The messenger was the driver.  She accompanied the runner when she finally met her friend the other runner.  Flags were given as gifts.  One to the American heroine, and another to the French runner, our CIBU student, who ran a great 3:39 marathon race with deep purpose.

One last flag remained as my gift to the messenger, my way of saying thanks for keeping this whole thing on track, for sensing the potential of the event, who was happy just to have helped, not to be a player herself.  I had the small American flag as my farewell gift to this third person in this three-person drama.  The other two flags were also gifts born of inspiration.

But sometimes our lives just don’t slow down fast enough for us to complete the most important of small things.

I saved the flag for our farewell meeting as best we had planned to see each other before this student flew back to France to resume her normal life in her home country.  For logistical reasons, the farewell meeting did not happen and I still have the flag, and it will be hers when I see her next.  In France.  Appropriate.  As we said earlier, France and America have learned to stick together for nearly 300 years, why should it change now?

These are such small things and we move so fast through life before we even know what may have happened.  We just act and hope for the best.

I should have known, and given the gift earlier.  Messengers never show up for the glory.  They perform their acts of heroism and leave as quickly as they arrive. They do not like center stage.  Don’t ask them to be a star.  They will be in the background making sure others are stars.

There was no lost time, there was only a great story and some great actions that made lifetime memories.  As we say “a bien tot” to some of our students, we say “bienvenue” to the new ones. There will be new dramas.  They will have deep meaning and emotion.  They will not ever touch the power of this story, but they will have new power unto each of the individuals who experience them.  For some students, it is so difficult and painful to leave San Diego, and so sweet to land in home country where home is so close.  For us too, this separation process is also a natural and healthy process.  It makes the days unusual.  It keeps the circle complete.  It reminds some of us that distances are both real and psychological.

We will complete the flag circle, and keep the torch passed to the next visitors to this place on the planet, meanwhile realizing our place in the greater scheme of things.  We are trying to be rational players in a wildly chaotic planetary economy.  When we are lucky, we slow things down enough to bring about strokes of boldness and bravery.  As we all fly a million miles to mostly planned events and meetings on the planet, maybe we can be aware of what is actually happening all around us, most of the time.

I get to write about this subject.  It took me a while.  I needed to get ready.  There is fierce awesomeness in this topic, not like others I have written before.  There is respectful fear and trepidation, the kind that comes from knowing you were caught up in maybe a sacred moment.

If I do my job as President of CIBU, I seek moments in which the ordinary becomes extraordinary.  I have the chance, not every day, not even often, but once in a splendid while to help something along to become a huge moment of importance and greatness for someone in our community of CIBU.  Some thread, which if pulled, unravels into a lifetime memory.

So, as this story goes (and it is a true story), this student from France this year was going to run in the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon.  I heard this second hand from another student, let’s say the messenger.  It seemed quite “cool” at that moment, when I heard it, that this runner was also a firefighter by training.  A long distance runner and a firefighter.  None of these things are by accident, rather by choice.  Quite impressive, I thought several days before the actual marathon.

Maybe by chance, I read an article in the local news about a war widow, a young American woman, who lost her husband in the ravages of the Iraq war….a woman who planned to run her second marathon in loving memory of her husband.  Last year she did also and had a hard time getting through part of the course that ran through the Marine base downtown.  She planned to run this marathon for her husband.  It was her second marathon for him.

The article seared something deep, something powerful in my soul and I knew this had a connection.  I was supposed to see this.  I could have missed it so easily.

I saw our CIBU student the day before the race.  The student who was the messenger brought her by.  I showed her the article and she read it top to bottom.  I went to my front office and grabbed a small American flag.  I gave it to her and asked if she might run with it in the marathon in memory of this woman.  She smiled and said she would do it and she would find her.  I told her it might be hard…there were to be 20,000 people in that race….I left it alone.

The race came and went.  But the next week, the student who was the messenger came and said that there was something that happened that they wanted to share with me.  They came into my office.  OK, I said, did you see her?  No, not at the race….she waited several hours at the finish line after running a 3:39 marathon, but this firefighter did not find the American widow.  She wanted to give her the flag.

Messengers play special roles in these dramas.  This one figured out a way to find this American marathon runner….where she worked….through Facebook!  They went to meet her.  The meeting took place, the flag was given to her as a gift and a memory by our student.  A picture was taken of the two of them with the small American flag.  That picture will be in my office as long as I am there and the memory will be with them for a long, long time.

But it was somehow not finished.  Our student did her job, that no one ever gave her to do.  I had one more small American flag.  I gave it to her as her gift of our friendship.  France and America, after all, have learned to stick together for hundreds of years of our countries’ histories.

The messenger’s picture was not with these two.  She said it was not important.  She was just the driver, that’s all, she said.  The story will go on.

In our lives, we sometimes see the chance to make a difference and do something that creates a lifetime memory for someone.  We take the chance and make it happen.  These moments are sealed and can never be undone.  They are the moments of circumstance, yet we somehow can recognize them and act, as messengers, as drivers, as players in the life dramas that stay real and vivid forever.

Presidents can sometimes find these moments.  Professors and teachers find them often.  Fellow students and friends find them….we all find them.  The choice is to act, to not mind being bold and brave and doing something incredible.

I tell this story with such respect for the American friend, whom I shall probably never meet, but for whom my heart goes out.  I hope she felt the friendship of two of our CIBU students from France who came to love America, San Diego and every moment here.

These are the great moments of CIBU community. There are so many untold stories of the new friends made here through our doors and out in our California air and sun.  This is the essence of our university.  And it all happens by chance.  Marvelous, exquisite, many-splendored, beautiful chance.

Just so you know, this was not… my average day…..

By Dr. Michael McManus, President, CIBU

I had never been exposed to international cultures before I came to CIBU.

I have been with CIBU for a little over a year and I love it!

I have learned so much from all the students that I have come into contact.  The language barrier is not even an issueJ.

I have met wonderful people here at CIBU.  The students want to stay in the United States, and I can’t blame them!

We are a country that offers a wide range of opportunities.  The climate here in Southern California is great.  People can surf almost year round.  There are a lot of interesting places to go; whether it is for relaxation, sightseeing or dining.

I have come to the realization that the students here at CIBU have given me an education!  I am curious about their background, their ideas, their thoughts and my biggest curiosity was whether they thought our American names were weird, funny or odd.

I have really tried to pronounce each student’s name the way they pronounce it in their native language, and believe me, it can be a difficult task for someone like me who has been raised with mostly English all of my life!

The students here at CIBU are courteous, kind, polite, and they ask a lot of questions (lol).

There is never a dull moment when dealing with any one student from CIBU.

I thank all of you for educating me about your country, your culture, and for not laughing at me when I mispronounce your name.