The Carnegie Hall performance was a good experience. I had reservations at first because the whole thing was such a big production and it seemed like it was going to be difficult to maintain any artistic integrity in that environment. But I was pleasantly surprised. What I learned was that the presence of a few real artists can offset a lot of distractions.
Writing
I'm writing a paper and so I've been thinking a lot about presentation. I've always felt that academic papers are too formalized, but it is hard to break out of that because the journals have very rigid rules about the writing. But maybe it doesn't really matter in the end, because it is difficult to really learn anything directly from a paper anyway. You only really learn from trying to repeat the work yourself. Maybe the point should be to give the information needed to reproduce the results.
Also there is the issue of writing style. I prefer to write in as straightforward a manner as possible, but inevitably jargon creeps in and can obscure things. I think this Calvin & Hobbes cartoon illustrates the point pretty well:
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