Nigel Fabb

Three cheers for you, Noam, on your birthday:

1. #1 In the 1980s, before the internet, emails from the UK to the USA all went through a gateway at Rutherford Labs in England; my best story about how nothing is private comes from this time, when in an email to your secretary I complained about emails going missing about your visit to Glasgow. Next thing, I received an email from someone at Rutherford Labs, to explain what I was doing wrong. Did they read all the emails going through, or perhaps just the ones which mentioned Noam Chomsky?

2. #2 You probably saved the life of a friend of mine, with a letter.

3. #3 You found the sublime in the ordinary.

And a thought: I ended up by accident at MIT, persuaded to stay on and do a PhD by Jay Keyser, and just lucky to have my PhD supervised by you. It changed my life, and I thank you for it.

Happy Birthday, from Nigel Fabb