MIT Professsor Al Drake and Pope Francis

“Popemobiles Through Time” (nytimes):

To the chagrin of security personnel, [Pope] Francis prefers to communicate with the people without a bulletproof barrier, which he described as being inside a “sardine can.”

“It’s true that anything could happen,” he told a Barcelona newspaper. “But let’s face it, at my age I don’t have much to lose.”

One of my most rewarding experiences as MIT was teaching a section (“recitation”) of a math course for Al Drake (superb textbook: Fundamentals of Applied Probability Theory). Professor Drake lived his subject as well as taught it. When diagnosed with leukemia he purchased a motorcycle, reasoning that the conditional probability of him dying in a motorcycle accident had been reduced.