Not-So-Frequently Asked Questions
About My Not-So-Vital Statistics

Why Doc Bug?
My nickname is 'Bug. The Doc part got added when I got my PhD. 'Bug, in turn, is short for Ladybug which is yet another nickname.

How many nicknames do you have anyway?
Plenty, each coming from a different community I hold dear. I'll answer to most of them, though not all on the first ring. Here's a quick chart in reverse chronological order for the curious:

Name Reason
Doc Rhodes My high-school friends always had crime family nicknames after getting arrested for fireworks, but I was with my girlfriend that night. Finally about a year ago a couple of us were pulled over for driving with Krispy Kreme donuts in the car, so I got a crime name. I'm so proud.
Purple Borg I used to be one of the MIT Media Lab Cyborgs. If we had been Power Rangers, I would've been "Purple Borg."
BJ I wanted a new nickname when I hit grad school. My friends weren't very creative, so they went with my initials. Never really stuck. I guess I should've taken my brother's suggestion and gone with "Flash."
Finagler As in "one who finagles." I picked it as my username after two years of suffering as "gt0741c@gatech.edu."
'Bug Short for Ladybug.
Ladybug Some people think I'm a flirt. These people don't know just how much I've mellowed in the past decade. Upon joining my fraternity, they dubbed me this because I bugged the ladies.
Bradley James C.F. Rhodes You don't want to know
that Hobbit Hairy toes. This one goes back to high school days.
Stale Mate I used to be a member of the Atlanta Hash House Harriers and Harriettes (a drinking group with a running problem). They named me this 'cause I was on the high-school chess team.

What are your politics?
I'm one of those combination cyber-libertarian-liberal-hippie-freaks you see in the Bay Area so much these days. You know, the kind with the tie-dye crypto anarchy t-shirts. I've been trying to cut down lately, and now I'm on a no caffeine, no Chomsky diet. It's made me much calmer.

Cyber-libertarian huh? I bet you've got a PGP key.
Nope. I've got a GnuGP key instead (PGP is so nineties). 

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
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=Sgbz
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

I read in the Wall Street Journal that you don't have a girlfriend. Is that true?
(sigh -- I knew I should've answered that interview question better.)
The Media Lab is a pretty high-profile place, and I was there when the press suddenly learned about this whole technology thing. Being in the right place at the right time, we got a lot of press. I've put up a sampling of some of the more entertaining headlines. (And yes I know I didn't answer your question. See? I'm learning!)

Any other not-so-vital statistics?

Well, there's always my Erdös number (5), traced as follows:

Erdös (0) → Rudin (1) → Roscoe (2) → Rosenfeld (3) → Pentland (4) → Rhodes (5)

  1. P. Erdös, M. E. Rudin, A non-normal box product, in Infinite and finite sets (Colloq., Keszthely, 1973; dedicated to P. Erdös on his 60th birthday), Vol. II, 629-631, Colloq. Math. Soc. Janos Bolyai, 10, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1975
  2. Collins P.J., Reed G.M., Roscoe A.W., Rudin M.E., A lattice of conditions on topological spaces, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 94 (1985), 487-496
  3. Kong TY, Roscoe AW, Rosenfeld A (1992). Concepts of Digital Topology, Topology Appl. 46, 219-262.
  4. Dickinson SJ, Pentland AP, Rosenfeld A (1992). From Volumes to Views: An Approach to 3D Object Recognition, Proc. CVGIP 55(2):130-154, March 1992
  5. Augmented Reality Through Wearable Computing, by Thad Starner, Steve Mann, Bradley Rhodes, Jeffrey Levine, Jennifer Healey, Dana Kirsch, Rosalind W. Picard, and Alex Pentland. Presence, Special Issue on Augmented Reality, vol 6(4), Fall 1997

I don't have a Bacon number, unless you count TV appearances (which I gather is cheating). If you count TV then I have a Bacon number of 3, and thus a Bacon+Erdös number of 8:

Bradley Rhodes → Alan Alda → Tori Davis → Kevin Bacon