From: Moti
I met Amir at yeshivah. He was accepting, generous and remarkably lacking in pretense. Being around him felt good because he was so comfortable in himself. In the picture that always comes to mind when I think of him, his eyes are twinkling with pleasure at the conversation he’s having. He took a wonderfully decadent pleasure in literature conversation. He was affectionate, intelligent and modest. He was also extremely funny and I still laugh when I think of things he said years ago.
amirlopatin
Don’t be an environmental terrorist
The first time I ate a meal in Jon and Amir’s apartment was very memorable. Amir put a bunch of plastic bags on the table. Mashed potatos were in one plastic bag, salad in another and salami in another. Amir had saved these plastic bags from his last trip to the supermarket. Jon argued it was uncivilized to eat from plastic bags. Amir thought that using plates was a waste of paper. Everyone agreed that dishes were too much of a pain. Jon and I were so hungry that we just gave into Amir’s very determined environmental stance and ate dinner out of the bags. That was settled. Amir won. Then, Jon mentioned that he picked a girl up on a date in a taxi. Amir got very upset and told him that this was not environmentally sound. Jon said that he was more chivalrous than Amir. Amir said that because he picked girls up walking or on a bicycle, future generations would live. We told Amir that he was an extremist. Amir told us that we were environmental terrorists. Amir got us to admit that that the food from the plastic bags tasted good. Amir said that he might bring a bag of food on his next date. He made it sound like reasonable etiquette.
-yoni malina
The first time I met Amir
My first time meeting Amir was in the basement of my parents house when my brother and Amir were in high school. Amir and Moshe were playing video games and speaking quickly in their mumbling, non-understandable way. My mother said, “I am so glad that there is another one who speaks like my son”…Who would’ve guessed that this fast-talking, computer-loving mumbler would later become one of my closest friends?
Amir’s comments to Yoni Malina about a couple on the street after Sept 11th
“Sometimes the worst thing in the world is lonliness..we should fight it at all costs. Schleps move about and who can say what passion is? there’s that bald fat guy with his yucky wife and he thinks that she’s dreamy..his passion partner for life…they are sticking together even when they bicker..anyway bickering isn’t so bad..it’s lonliness that’s the worst and friends that save you.”
–Amir Lopatin
nycpul 2003 draft night
i didn’t know amir that well just from the few times i talked to him or played with him on the ultimate field. but i do remember the first time i met amir on draft night for the nycpul 2003 spring league. there were 6 captains (including amir) reviewing the draft pool of co-ed players. i know everybody was revving for a good team and trying to read into the line stats for the draft players. but i remember amir distinctly selecting some not so ‘great’ players just because he wanted to have a fun team and make sure everybody got a spot in the league. i remembering thinking that this is a good guy with great spirit that embodied the spirit of ulitmate frisbee. i wish him peace where ever he now is.
from an Ultimate Frisbee voice
Amir’s energy, efforts and presence added much to our Ultimate community. His initiative in pulling together a summer league was matched by his diplomacy and grace at handling the ‘hotheads’ in our midsts, and his willingness to manage the administrative tasks, all the while making it all so much fun. AND he played such a good, clean game. We say in this sport, “Ultimate doesn’t develop character, it reveals it.” It surely revealed the jewel of Amir.
How amazing that this one young man touched so very many lives around him. He was truly one of the special ones. My prayers and thoughts are with you. Shalom. –
Nedra
Amir Lopatin: Learning Sciences and Technology Design
This is a draft of Amir’s Stanford webpage. Please send me the final if you find it.
About Me:
I am currently a first-year PhD student studying under Roy Pea in the “Learning Sciences and Technology Design ” program of the Stanford University School of Education. Prior to Stanford, I studied at Brown University from where I graduated in May 1999 with an ScB in computer science. My goal here at Stanford is to apply my passion for technology within the field I think poses the most interesting and meaningful challenges: education. It is my animating faith that technology holds the key to making education accessible and effective for everyone and that education, in turn, holds the key to just about everything else that is worthwhile. My specific research interests are still inchoate but here is a short list of topics I would like to investigate before my time here is up.
Before coming to Stanford, I worked as a software engineer at a start-up company called Visible World . There, I specialized in user interface and data-visualization work. My biggest project was a full-featured MPEG2 Transport Stream Analyzer . I also wrote a nifty app we called the Command GUI which was used to monitor the media preparation process for Visible World’s patented intellispot technology. In NYC, my main avocation outside of work was Ultimate Frisbee . I even started NYC’s first public ultimate league, NYCPUL. I am not sure if the league will continue now that I am gone because, in truth, I did almost all of the work and the league was very hard to run within the space constraints of Manhattan.
Before NYC, I lived in SLC Utah for one year. There, I worked for a company called Evans and Sutherland . Evans and Sutherland is the oldest company working in the field of high-end graphics and simulation systems. I did some work there on head-tracking in tank simulators so that the field of view would change in the windows of the tanks as people moved their heads around inside the simulator. The job was pretty cool but Utah was not a good match for me (although I did love the skiing and the mountain biking).
A lot happened to me before that, but I don’t want to waste your bandwidth with the prehistoric details.
Research interests:
Educational:
• Programming to learn: How can programming literacy most effectively be leveraged to facilitate instruction in fields outside of computer-science. People that can program have a language for describing processes that other people lack. This is similar to the way that people who understand calculus have a language for describing change and therefore have an easier time describing and comprehending concepts in physics and math. If curricula designers could take this literacy for granted could they design course materials that are more effective than conventional ones?
o Mindstorms.
o Allan Kay
o Andy Disessa
• Gaming to learn: Are video games an under-exploited educational resource or just a distraction?
o Prensky :
• Issues in educational motivation: What are the motivational qualities of competition? Can computers be used to isolate the beneficial qualities of competition while muting the pernicious ones? In my experience, competition has always been highly motivating. The downside of competition is that if you are on the losing side well Holden Caufield said too well: “Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right; I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.” The thing about computers is that they can adjust their difficulty levels so that nobody feels like they are losing allowing instructors to reintroduce competition without anyone feeling bad.
• Issues in assessment: Can real-time monitoring of student learning activities obviate the need for post-facto assessment?
Stephanie Gros’ Eulogy for Amir
Amour Amir
by Stephanie Gros
March 28, 2004
Amiri was generous with his friendship and appreciative of the love which he received. Last weekend, Amiri and I spent Shabbat together in my apartment in Los Angeles. One of the best weekends of my life – it included deep conversation into the wee hours of the morning, a long jog in which we delved into each others lives, and a Saturday night roller coaster ride on the Santa Monica pier where I screamed so much my throat hurt. Amiri even impressed my roommate by washing the dishes after our Shabbat guests had left on Friday night.
I was struck by how happy Amiri was. It made sense. Having known Amir for many years, he was at a point in his life when he had found what he wanted to do – merge computers and education. And he had found where he wanted to do it – Stanford. As a fellow 27 year old, professionally, what more could we ask for?
I remember September 1990 – my first day of high school. The boy next to me in math class introduced himself as Amir Lopatin. “The Amir Lopatin – so this was Uri’s little brother.” We instantly felt the bond between us. We sat next to each other in math every year after that.
Our brothers had become best friends as they went through Ramaz. Pirkei Avot teaches us about the ultimate, highest form of love – the love between David and Yonatan.
-Our brothers, Uri and David-Alexandre have that kind of love.
-Amiri and Jonathan Wolfson have that kind of love.
Amiri was my friend with the open, sensitive eyes. He took in the world around him. He was always asking questions. He was always analyzing everything. In the words of Pirkei Avot: [ASHIR, HACHAM, GIBOR] [Who is rich? Who is smart? What is strength? What is happiness?] Our conversations always reinforced the answer: Who is Intelligent? He who learns from everyone. Amiri learned from everyone and everything around him.
Amiri felt a tremendous bond to the Jewish community. Over the months when his father was ill, he was openly appreciative and deeply touched by the warm spirit and loving support that the community displayed. It made him want to contribute to the wider Jewish community. At Stanford, he made daily minyan a part of his regular routine and found great solace in saying kaddish for his father.
Amir, you taught me about friendship.
Amir, you taught me what it means to love and care … for a father … and a mother.
Amir, you taught me to open my eyes and be sensitive to the world.
Amir, you gave me a forum to talk about things that I couldn’t talk to anyone else about.
Amir, you taught me about life.
Amir, you have been my teacher and my friend.
Wherever, I go – whatever I do – what I have learned from you will influence who I am and the decisions that I make.
To me, the Lopatin family is the model of friendship.
I will miss you.
— We will all miss you.
The Wizard-Warrior President of the world in the future
“Amir hopes to become the Wizard-Warrior President of the world in the future.” Those are the words that my talented and able friend asked me to use as inspiration for his caricature in the Moriah Yearbook. It was my best one. Amir -in action and in words- inspired me to do many things, among them to always push myself harder, believe in myself, and make myself better. Many of my most defining childhood moments were spent with him. He was the cowboy hat-toting star of my bar mitzvah video. We went skiing and rode bikes. He told me I could be a power hitter when others made fun of my awkward swing in the batters box; he assessed that I needed to keep my elbow up, and I hit my first home run. He introduced me to Salinger, Vonnegut, and others who are now among my favorites. Over the years we didn’t get a chance to spend as much time together as we lived our own lives and went to different schools, but I would always look forward to catching up with him when we’d eventually come home for Shabbat or the holidays. Amir was always doing something interesting, something different, something unique: past the times of his youth when he could be found torturing elementary school teachers with his superior intellect, Amir was now programming a tank simulator and sliding ass backwards down a frozen Alta chute in Utah. I relished his interesting stories, his smile, his laugh, his humor, his insightfulness, his refreshing sincerity… His eyes were always thoughtful and attentive whenever we spoke. The last time I saw Amir was smiling, laughing and closing the door as an Edei Yichud at my wedding. I wish I could still fly home for his. I will miss you Amir.
-Eric London
The Last Piece of Underwear – final version
I am so, so sorry to hear about Amir. He had a beautiful spirit. I searched for the poem Shoshana wanted (“The Last Piece of Underwear“). Amir read it at the Celebration of the Arts, and at the time Parallax did not have a real magazine. Much to my surprise, I found the poem, anyway.
The poem typifies Amir’s glorious, childlike sense of fun. I suspect he never lost that, and the world will be diminished by his loss. So sorry to reconnect with you in this way. You and all of Amir’s friends must be going through a tough time.
Edith Honig