Boston Day 2 & 3

Sorry, this will be brief as I’m writing from the hotel and I’m exhausted. On Day 2 we bundled up and trotted about historic downtown Boston. We saw an old graveyard with Ben Franklin’s grave site, and had lunch at Cheers. In the evening we had the mprize dinner. About 35 people attented. Aubrey de Grey opened the evening with a summary of SENS and how the mprize has been doing. After a CR-friendly dinner, Ray Kurzweil gave a talk summarizing his new book The Singularity is Near. He also gave every attendee a free autographed copy of his two most recent books, which was a nice touch. After much shmoozing we got back to the hotel, engergized with ideas and excitement for the possibilities the future may bring.

Today we slept in a little bit and then woke up to a huge-normous blizzard! Our cab driver was looking pretty panicky trying to navigate in a white-out. Of course Christine and I were pretty relaxed and found it a comical how a little snow can bring a city to it’s knees.

Anyhoo, we cabbed slowly over to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where we spent the whole afternoon and evening taking in some culture (envision me sipping tea with my pinky finger in the air). We started with an Ansel Adams exhibit, then some classic european masters (wow, these paintings were HUGE and the colors and realism fantastic). Then we perused a collection of egyptian, greek, and roman artifacts, and next some impressionist stuff (a pile of monet and the like). After some dinner, we checked out the cubist exhibit (mostly Picasso stuff). Then we tried to get back to the hotel. It took us two hours to get a taxi! They really don’t know what to do when it snows here.

Heading home tomorrow, although it will be another very long day of travel. We’re flying through Denver on the way back to Edmonton. Hope it’s not cloudy, I’d like to see a little bit of Colorado.