Category: Uncategorized

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Yes, I can really procrastinate …

So, I tend to run a few minutes late for things (for which I blame Nichelle), but these Outlook reminders really got my attention this morning … The 20 hours overdue is because I was out sick yesterday, but 135 weeks?!

very_late_meetings

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ASD Students to Kick ’Bot with Robot Sumo

On Tuesday, June 16, from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m., students in the Robotics course at the Academy for Science and Design Public Charter School in Merrimack, New Hampshire, will go head to head against their peers and with engineers from Kronos Incorporated of Chelmsford, Ma., in a Robot Sumo competition. Anyone with an interest is welcome to watch.

The students will be using robots they have designed, built, and programmed over the last 6 months using Lego MindStorms kits, having learned mechanical and software engineering along the way, and often discovering their final design differs radically from what they first envisioned.

Robot Sumo begins with two autonomous robots in a round douyou ring, a white circular area measuring 36″ in diameter. The first robot pushed out of the ring loses. The students have been working in teams of 2 or 3 to create and improve their robot designs. A number of students have also created second robots of their own to compete. Robot Sumo has provided students with a unique design and programming challenge, requiring extensive hands-on work from each student.

Few things, however, have given the students more pleasure than seeing their robots beat the one designed and programmed by their instructor, Kronos engineer Doug Wilcox of Nashua.

The Academy for Science and Design is a tuition free open enrollment chartered public school for grades 7-12, specializing in science and math with algebra, biology, chemistry, and physics taught beginning in 7th grade.

Academy for Science and Design
316 Daniel Webster Highway
Merrimack, NH 03054
603 262-9162

Update:

The Robot Sumo event was a huge success, and we even got some great press from it.

“Young designers learn it’s about more than building best ‘bot’,” by Mark Oullette, Union Leader.

Mr. Oullette prepared a great video, available on YouTube.

“Academy of Science and Design class makes machines worthy of battle,” by Dana Smith, Merrimack Journal.

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中文 Homework (Showing Off)

Okay, I’m going to show off a bit.

My Mandarin homework at the Chelmsford Chinese Language School this week was to write a paragraph about Naomi. Most of this we have covered in class, but I got some help from my friend Shenghan to make sure the grammar was correct, and still managed to make one mistake in with the suì character, which I have since corrected.

我

有

一

个

女

å„¿

。

她

叫

娜

奥

ç±³

。

她

五

岁

了

。

她

é•¿

着

黑

黑

çš„

头

发

。

她

喜

欢

è·³

舞

。

娜

奥

ç±³

是

一

个

亮

é—ª

é—ª

çš„

女

å­©

。

Here is the same text with the pinyin inserted:

wÇ’

yÇ’u

yī

gè

nÇš

ér

tā

jiào

我

有

一

个

女

å„¿

。

她

叫

Nà

ào

mǐ

tā

wÇ”

suì

le

娜

奥

ç±³

。

她

五

岁

了

。

tā

zhÇŽng

zhe

hēi

hēi

de

tóu

fà

她

é•¿

着

黑

黑

çš„

头

发

。

tā

xǐ

huàn

tiào

wÇ”

Nà

ào

mǐ

她

喜

欢

è·³

舞

。

娜

奥

ç±³

shì

yī

gè

liàng 

shÇŽn 

shÇŽn 

de

nÇš

hái

是

一

个

亮

é—ª

é—ª

çš„

女

å­©

。

Mandarin makes learning Spanish seem very easy by comparison. There are no Chinese-English cognates, and just learning the different tones is daunting. The “pinyin” phonetic aids help, but I still struggle with pronunciation, and, ultimately, need to memorize all the charcters. (Growing up in China, my teacher learned each character by being required to write it 1,000 times.) Of course, I occasionally have my rudimentary Chinese good-naturedly laughed at, such as a few weeks ago when I said, 我的太太不好。 My wife is no good, rather than 我的太太不舒服。My wife is not feeling well!

I’ll post a translation in the comments in a few days. In the meantime, you might have fun figuring it out. (Hint www.chinese-tools.com offers some excellent tools for working with Chinese, including a dictionary and input method editor.)

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Just the Facts

The other day I was talking to someone who said he had heard on the radio that the US Federal government was going to give free digital television converts to welfare recipients, and that they were spending $100,000 each on plasma TVs in prisons. This came from what was described as “the most trustworthy radio news source in the area.”

Frankly, I couldn’t believe it. There was a coupon program to buy converters at a discount, but the program used up all its money, and had been discontinued. (Recently, it has been given more money by the federal bailout, and is operating again.) However, these coupons are available to anyone who desires them, so it’s hardly being targeted to those receiving government assistance.

But I wondered what the origin of these stories had been, so I hit the internet.

It turned out that millions of households on welfare might be given free digital television converters—in Japan sometime before their digital switchover in 2011. The prison story was a little closer to what’s real—the state of Florida’s department of corrections is spending $100,000 total, approximately $1 per inmate, out of its $2.3 billion dollar budget to convert existing television to digital.

Our opinions are often based on incorrect facts. Part of this is described in basic psychology—it’s called confirmation bias—how we filter evidence that strengthens our preconceptions.

But also our incorrect knowledge of history, various sciences, and current events allows us to hold on to incorrect opinions.

This is especially true in “popular knowledge”—think about all those e-mail forwards you receive that 15 seconds at about.com or Snopes could easily refute. Think about all the people who believe wearing a magnet on their wrist will make them healthy. Or all the “Christians” who espouse the heresy of the Prosperity Gospel and can even quote Scripture out of context to support it. Or that rubber tires protect vehicle occupants from lighting strikes. Or that a metal vehicle acts as a Faraday cage. (It doesn’t.)

At any rate, I have been thinking much of late that we should all do more analysis before we speak.

I wish we could all just be smarter.

I wish I could just be smarter.

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President Obama’s Big Day: Off to a Good Start

After being up until 1:00 a.m., our new President attended a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral.

He issued several executive orders, including:

  • A freeze on salaries for White House staff earning $100,000 or more.
  • New Freedom of Information Act rules, making it harder to keep the workings of government secret. (And requiring a third-party ruling before declaring communication or meetings secret.)
  • Saying, “The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable,” he ordered new ethics rules for “a clean break from business as usual”—tighter ethics rules governing when administration officials can work on issues on which they previously lobbied governmental agencies, and banning them from lobbying his administration after leaving government service.

He also drafted an executive order calling for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison facility within a year, got things rolling on the economic stimulus package, and spoke with a number of Middle East leaders.

Despite what I would have predicted, I think I am going to like this guy.

(See http://www.cfrb.com/news/56/861993 and http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/01/21/pm_first_day_q/ .)

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g-speak Spacial Operating System

I’ve written about developments in this area before, but you’ll want to see the video below to find out what Oblong Industries is up to.


g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Some of the SOE’s core ideas are already familiar from the film Minority Report, whose characters performed forensic analysis using massive, gesturally driven displays. The similarity is no coincidence: one of Oblong’s founders served as science advisor to Minority Report and based the design of those scenes directly on his earlier work at MIT.

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Amazing Worldwide (Web) Updates

In a typical day, I come across many fascinating things that aren’t exactly well known. This is a list of things which interest me, and probably does not reflect interest in the general population. Of course, thinking about that alone is of interest to me, so … (Ah, recursion!)

Cyborgs Are Real
Way cool neuroscience.

Gizmodo Goes to Lego
Far more here than I could summarize, including a video tour of the Lego factory.

Star Wars is Nearer than You Think
Actually, Star Wars weapons fire charges of ionized Tibanna gas, but you’ll get the idea.

Microsoft 3D Modeler
And you thought everything from Microsoft was evil.

The Large Hadron Collider Rap
Almost as good as “White and Nerdy.”

ShapeWays 3D modeling
These aren’t quite replicators, but affordable 3D “printing” is now at our disposal.

Marketing and Stop Signs
What happens when the marketing department designs a stop sign? (Software and graphics design often go this way.)

The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer
Gamers will understand the reference. Others may learn something.

Keeper of the Star Wars Canon
Imagine having to hold the continuity of a universe together single-handedly. (Well, it helps to have some database skills.)

The Mythbusters Weren’t Allowed to Bust This.
What “the man” doesn’t want you to know about RFID.

I have Joined the Dharma Initiative.

I Have Decided to Become President

What do you think of, “Grow up, you babies!” as a campaign slogan?