Golem 2
Golem 2 is looking pretty good-- I really think it's coming together. And a good thing too since we only have
four days left before the NQE.
NQE stands for National Qualifying Event. DARPA loves acronyms (or initialisms if you prefer). I had to write a fifteen-page paper about the robot-- they called that the DGCTP or DARPA Grand Challenge Technical Paper. Why not the DARPAGCTP? Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grand Challenge Technical Paper.
Wilshire and Westwood
A mundane observation, perhaps: The other day I was waiting to turn left (from east to north) on Wilshire and Westwood, said to be one of the busiest intersections in the world. As the cars turning left (from north to west) passed before me one after the other, I was struck by how many of the drivers were talking on phones. All of them. Well, more than half of them. It was spooky in a way.
The Global War On Error
The other day I discovered three serious typographical errors in the first chapter of volume one of
The Infrared & Electro-Optical Systems Handbook ("Radiation Theory" by William L. Wolfe). In one case the formula was right but the numerical value was totally wrong; in a second case the numerical result was right but the formula was wrong; and in the third case there was confusion between an expression and a single constant in the expression.
Also, Dr. Wolfe attempted a literary allusion to
Alice In Wonderland, but got the Queen of Hearts confused with Humpty Dumpty.
My confidence in the handbook now destroyed, I thought that it was wrong about a factor of pi in another equation. But after a lot of head-scratching I decided that this fifth thing was not a mistake.
I had some typos and omissions in my Ph.D. thesis, but I think that something that calls itself a handbook should be held to a higher standard.
Caltech Mexican Food
Added Amigo's and Ernie's Al Fresco to the
restaurant list.
Wheels Coming Off
Not a great day for science on Saturday. As I was turning a corner in Golem 1 (in non-autonomous mode), there were popping noises and the front right wheel went all wobbly. I stopped to find that three of the wheel bolts had sheared off, so the wheel was only held on by two bolts! I found two of the sheared-off bolts in the street, the fifth one is unaccounted for. I called AAA and had Golem 1 towed to a mechanic. This is not the first time this has happened... We need to figure out what is wrong with this wheel, that it keeps shearing off its bolts.
Well, at least we can carry on with Golem 2, and with simulators, while Golem 1 is out of action.
On the way home, the half-moon was the color of blood. I pointed out that it looked weird. Maribeth concurred that it was creepy.
Four Turns of Phrase That Annoy Me Probably Beyond All Reason
- "Creator's Creation." E.g., "Disney's Hercules," and currently, "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride." This is annoying:
- partly because it's aggressively possessive (Hercules belongs to Disney now? I thought he was an ancient myth who belonged to the whole world. Oh, but this is Disney's Hercules, so they reserve the right to screw up the story as they see fit)
- partly because it sometimes sounds silly (a movie about Tim Burton's dead bride?)
- but mostly because if they say it, it's usually not true, e.g., "Arthur C. Clarke's Venus Prime," which isn't by Arthur C. Clarke. There is an important exception for movies such as "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" or "Bram Stoker's Dracula." That actually makes sense because there was already a movie which was a corruption of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the makers of the movie "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" are trying to claim that their movie will adhere more to Mary Shelley. That's okay by me. But the problem re-emerges with the novelization of the movie "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," by someone other than Mary Shelley.
- "To me, X is true," or "For me, X is true." How can X just be true to you? Do you live in your own private universe? If things are true they're true for everybody. Okay, so you probably just left out some words in the middle, like "it seems that..."
- "Put simply, X." Oh, I really hate this, because I hate being told I'm stupid. I don't mind it when people say, "Simply X," or "Basically X." In fact I say those things all the time. When I say "simply X," I'm saying that X really is simple or basic. When I say "put simply, X," I'm saying that X is really complicated, but I will pretend that it is simple for your sake, because you are an idiot.
- "Trust me, X is true." This one is not as annoying as the others. Still, I can't imagine anything that would make me trust someone less than the fact that they instructed me to trust them.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
Vinyl records are already a curiosity, and even their descendants, compact discs, are on the way out. In the foreseeable future, we may replace all of our light bulbs with LEDs.
When there are no more records and no more light bulbs, will school children still know who Thomas Edison was? Or will he suffer the fate of Jethro Tull?
