Tales of the Golem; or, the Modern Epimetheus

It's a nice day to start again

posted by Richard Mason @ Saturday, May 31, 2008 1 comments

You really know me, that's all I need to know

I'm always pleased to see people I know celebrated in the mass media, in however major or minor a fashion, so I got a kick out of hearing Jason Ennis of Dallas interviewed on NPR this morning, in his capacity as a tourist at the current "For Your Eyes Only" Ian Fleming exhibit at the Imperial War Museum, London.

The radio piece created a little point-counterpoint on whether new James Bond books by people other than Ian Fleming were a Good Thing or Not. Jason expressed the Good Thing point of view.

posted by Richard Mason @ Tuesday, May 27, 2008 0 comments

Terror of Colorado Boulevard

ICRA was in exotic Pasadena this year. I went and gave a fifteen-minute talk on Golem 3. I knew I only had fifteen minutes, but I was still shocked when the moderator flashed the "five minutes left" sign and I had barely got around to saying anything. Then I had to rush through my actual points. I was very annoyed... at myself, I guess. Maybe at the moderator, if he didn't give me the proper amount of time.

Norm Whitaker said there won't be a fourth robot race... not under this DARPA director. Under a new administration, who knows.

Friday night we went out to celebrate Luke's successful Ph.D. defense. The Caltech rugby guys are pretty funny. Luke is off to work at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach. Apparently there are poker players at Northrop Grumman so we might be able to restart the poker game. Casa Mason might become Poker Central since Santa Monica is roughly in between Pasadena and Redondo Beach

Sunday night Oz threw a party to

1. observe the landing of the Phoenix mission on Mars (successful)
   
2. observe the third game of the NBA Western Conference Finals (unsuccessful, from the Lakers' point of view)
   
3. play poker (unsuccessful, but not disastrous, from my point of view).
   

posted by Richard Mason @ Monday, May 26, 2008 0 comments

Papa would have shot him if he knew what he'd done

I'm reading Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country and he mentions that "impersonating an Egyptian" was one of two hundred capital offenses in eighteenth-century Britain, for which one could be transported to Australia as an alternative to hanging.

Correlatedly, there are a handful of websites, including the National Museum of Australia, repeating that impersonating an Egyptian (i.e. gypsy) was a transportable offense. However they don't explain why this should have been the case.

In Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester in fact did impersonate a gypsy woman to tell fortunes. However he was not hanged or transported for it.

posted by Richard Mason @ Sunday, May 18, 2008 0 comments

Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around

We went to Jacob Mallory's dol. He seemed a very good-natured and well-behaved baby.

He was presented with a bowl of rice, some money, a pencil, a book, a microphone, and some string. Whichever thing he picked up would symbolize something about his life; for example if he went for the microphone he would turn out to be musical. He just sat there and laughed at the concept for a while, but finally he picked up the string.

This means he will have a long life, but hopefully one not devoid of food, money, writing, scholarship, or music.

posted by Richard Mason @ Friday, May 16, 2008 2 comments

I think I need a sunrise, I'm tired of the sunset

I've been traveling a lot lately. Last week I went to Boston for a workshop. I saw Jeanhee (first time in two years) and Geneve (first time in sixteen years).

While driving around, I heard them say on NPR that Boston drivers were no longer driving because of high gas prices and everyone was riding the T. Well, I would hate to be around for low gas prices because traffic in Boston is horrible.

Boston is well supplied with pub quizzes and I had a plan to tour several of them, but it turned out that I only made it to one, P.J. Ryan's, which is apparently located near Tufts.

The bouncer at the door carded me--and was a little skeptical of my California driver's license. The irony of this became apparent when I got inside and found the pub was packed full of tiny children! I guess I'm used to a more mature pub quiz crowd. There was one beefy white-haired guy, and then a few more people did show up who looked like they were old enough to drink. But by and large, most everybody in the pub looked like David Archuleta. The quiz was heavily attended; I only counted about eight tables in the whole place, but there were fifteen teams.

I had been planning to foist myself on some team, but I lost my nerve. I decided to just play by myself under the name Jason Castro's Not Even Trying. Playing by yourself isn't the most fun approach to pub quiz (sob) but at least I could watch the election results on the muted television. I wasn't crazy about the beers I tried. They didn't have any of my favorites on tap.

I thought it was a good quiz. Balanced mix of topics. There is a point-betting system, and some escalating opportunities to bet a lot of points, so there's potential to come from way behind late in the game. (Imagine what Final Jeopardy would be like if there were fifteen players.) That may be a bit "random" but it does keep things interesting.

I got off to a weak start but made up ground in the middle rounds. I came in second place with 197 points. Congrats to the tiny players of I Just Started Using Laser Cats Again who came first with 205 points. If only I had a teammate I could have told, "It's Bill Somebody who played for the Celtics"... no, that wouldn't have closed the gap. I feel good about it. I made fifty bucks!

Having returned from Boston, I only remembered about midnight Sunday that I was getting on a plane again to go to Phoenix about 6 am Monday. And I not only had to pack, but had to go to work to get some stuff done prior to going to the airport...

In the past couple of weeks I have received the following useful things:

• Lockheed Martin fuzzy blanket
  
• Raytheon "gunpowder" (dried jalapeno seasoning)
  
• Microcosm travel mug
  
• Microcosm ceramic coffee mug with starry sky scene that appears when you put hot liquid in the mug
  
• SpaceX USB flash drive
  
• SpaceX mints
  
• Orbital foam slingshot rockets to shoot at people
  
• Orbital tie pin (ok not that useful)
  

General Dynamics did not give us anything and did not even buy us lunch. But we do not hold that against them.

posted by Richard Mason @ Thursday, May 15, 2008 2 comments