I’m so jazzed about my HSD class (I’m using it as an excuse to xerox and then pdfify (on the spiffy ADF scanners we have at Olin) lots of my favorite excerpts), that I can barely think about the fact that I’m leaving for a week in New Orleans before Olin starts. Now. Bye.

I was at work, but this story sounded too good to leave so soon to the sands of time.

Claudia’s Day at the DNC

I’ve have lots of notes that I should post about, but the more I have to say, the less I want to take the time to say it. So I gave up and buckled down. Here are the recent bits.

[SCA]

At a recent Milk & Cookies (HRSFA story-reading event), I mentioned being in the SCA to the Milk & Cookies leader. “So you’re in the SCA?!?” “I am, or was.” “I’m supposed to be the provost of the Harvard group– but I don’t know anything about it.” “Oh, really…” I gave some pointers. I hope to encourage a group at Olin this year, so I should take some of my own advice soon.

[ESG]

Alex Slocum (new ESG director) has been trying to assert authority over ESG. I have a proposal for leaving the first days of the semester as a “trial period”, to let frosh experience ESG, rather than just hear about it, before making final decisions. Alex said, “I say no. period. end of discussion.” And the ESG community is responding appropriately.

[Holiday]

I recently discovered more holiday than I had expected this year. An oversea trip with friends fell through, but from its ashes rose one to New Orleans at the end of August. Plus, at the end of this week, I’m going to a family reunion in Illinois, then to either Vegas, Cider City, or L.A., depending on whom I can visit.

Monday I finalized out my plans for teaching next semester. Olin is going to let me teach my Human System Dynamics class (which will be a blast!), and I’m going to help with the engineering side of the freshmen “integrated course blocks” (Concourse-style combined math, physics, and engineering required of all Olin frosh). I’m very much looking forward to it.

Does everyone have as much angst about staying involved as I do?

Last weekend, ESG had a big reunion in Silicon Valley (as a prelude to asking for money for this year’s seminars). The [associate] director told me how it went. The alumni say they want to “stay involved” in ESG. My name came up more than a few times.

During college, I interacted mostly on the community level: being a presence, taking responsibilities, and generally participating in a human give-and-take that defined my communities. Now, by leaving those communities, more than one life’s-worth diverges from mine, I lose friends, and I feel like I lose something of myself.

And I’m still essentially at MIT. But Claudia interacts on the individual level… and the two modes appear to be at odds.

The problem isn’t “staying in touch”– I now have a database for that (I still hope that a technological solution can solve that problem). The problem is that community interaction has threshold below which the ties fall apart, and my plans for personal growth have thresholds to get positive acceleration (I’m still working out the equations). The optimal solution is when the community and the opportunity for personal growth coincide, and I’ve lost that.

Anyone want to do my simulated-robot-navigation experiment? I need more data to analyze!

1. Download the experiment and unzip the folder.
2. Run the program (experiment.exe) and follow the instructions. It should take about 15 minutes.
3. Zip your results file (output.txt) and send it back to the address in the instructions.

Thanks!

On rare occasions there seems to be a supernatural synergy unveiled between the challenges of the past and the unknowns of the future, specially coincident in the present. Those moments in the past convinced me that I am (or was) moving in a right direction for me.

I haven’t had one of those in a long time. Not that I’m having one now, but I think I may be close.

Philo-Psychological Diatribe about such moments

It’s good to see MITers do something with their lives. Lori Berenson ’91 has long been a role-model, but she never achieved the same notoriety as Aafia Siddiqui ’94, one of the current top seven threats to the US.

I’ve always been pretty pro-terrorist. But my recent read of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has jostled me further that way.

I have a philosopher friend who firmly believes that, if a train is careening out of control at four deaf, blind frolickers, and if you have the opportunity to switch the track so that the train collides with only two, you should not, because to do so would be to participate in an unethical action.

I cannot agree, and now I know how. As engineers, we wield enormous power, which we can use, or which will loose itself into the systematic frameworks in which we participate. If the latter happens, it will never make people happier. Better to grasp that power and learn to use it well.

“Go and do your task, even though you know it’s wrong…. You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.” (Wilber Mercer, Do Androids…?)

It’s tough to tear one’s eyes from the world, which appears to have accelerated its frantic move toward hell (climate change, oil shortages, ID barrages, and an imminent draft). With Claudia away (2 weeks), my solution is to bury myself in work and reading.

I recently put together a syllabus for a course in Human Systems Dynamics, and I’m looking for feedback or additional pointers. Read the PDF and reply! A syllabus for an Artificial Intelligence Workshop is on the way.

Like one LJ friend, I recently started my first Philip K. Dick (Do Androids…?). The first few days I tried to read single chapters only between studying my other two current books: a pre-mammoths-and-angels version of The Way Things Work (I’ve been curious), and my Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors (with which it looks like I’ll be able to do about anything). Damn SciFi for being so much more engaging than the books I should be reading. I should be done by tomorrow.

I have to learn to write more journal entries when life is full, rather than less. I had hoped I wouldn’t be so busy now… but therein lies my story.

The semester is over, after some long days of grading (I need to start asking less of my students!). Lest I catch up on sleep, I got a swell research position in the robotics lab at Olin for the summer. I go there four day a week, and arriving by 10:00 means leaving Cambridge shortly after 8. I leave Olin at 5 and return to Cambridge around 6:30. That’s 28 hours a week of work, and not nearly enough for me to feel good about what I’m giving to the lab.

But according to Claudia, that’s already 42 hours per week, and she’s not pleased. Claudia needs people, and as long as I’m her boyfriend, that’s supposed to mean that she can get me. She accepted it during the school year, but it’s the summer now, and she thought that things would change.

I explained to her: Yes– I’m a work-a-holic! I enjoy working! Sure, I enjoy smelling roses too; I think I have an hour on Tuesday for that.

I started the conversation that ballooned into this to ask if there was a way that I could get more than 5 hours of sleep a night (I got to sleep when Claudia does, and get up four hours before her). Ultimately we decided that there wasn’t.