From your perspective, which Scince Fiction books/stories are the best indications of the future of robotics? Or which ones raise ideas or questions that you have for the future of the science?
Vilseck, FRG - SNOWED my first day in country. July 5th, 1985!
I can live with a little engine noise and cold. In the cold, moonless nights on guard duty, with terrorist/bombers and wild boars, now that is rough working conditions! We weren't even at war then.
Ok - Panicing in Austin here. Can you do this with a second NAT device? I have a nice Router using NAT (SMC Barricade - SMC7008BR). If I buy the new SMC model and stick it between the Cable Modem and the current SMC, would this avoid any detection. A one time $100 seems like a simple solution for my home network. Even pays for itself in a month.
Thanks in advance,
PaGeN
What did you think of Galaxy Quest?
on
Ask William Shatner
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Has the Senate already asked NASA/Huge Tech University to create some potential math in the area of potential risk to being beaned by reentry objects?
Even if they have, what is the size of 6ish Billion people compared to the complete land area. Assuming 1/3 to 1/2 are sleeping (more surface space) versus sitting or standing?
In this equation, would you rule out certain areas due to orbit types? Seems that fun could be had doing the math!
Since Silcon cages (similar to Bucky balls) have been discovered (see http://www.sciam.com/news/022701/1.html), I can't stop thinking that this will lead to a major breakthrough in Silcon Bucky Balls. The potential, if this same (similar) relationship exists in silicon, is incredible!
I hated High School. I know others that did as well. The hope of living just long enough to get out was a lofty goal. But in undergraduate school, I considered being a teacher. I wanted to make High School better for those that hated it as much as I did. I foolishly became some thing else, but I love and miss teaching!
In one of my undergraduate classes on teaching, the instructor said that most everyone had a positive, healthy memory of High School. Why did I feel bad when she said that? Perhaps it was not like that for the outcasts, the unclean, the different. I graduated 19 years ago from a Magnet school in Houston. I will not be invited to the 20 year reunion. But the nice people, the kind people are the only positive memory I have. And those people I miss.
It is hard for me not to identify with the 2 young men that shot and killed their classmates. Not because I too, killed, I have not. But instead, I can feel the pains of 20 years ago. In a time when being a computer Geek was really out there.
I don't know what could have pushed me over the edge at that age. But, I know today that I was on that path.
On that path, I did not know that everyone else was as frightened and ashamed as I was. That they all had fears and concerns about how they felt and who they were, even the jocks and the cheerleaders.
It scares me, that it is the same today for many. That youth today have the same reaction to the things people still fear at thirty, forty, and even sixty. But there is hope. After we get done believing we could have stopped this, we could have saved those boys damnation on Earth and after. When we are done Banning Jackets and thoughts. We will look at each other and say it can't happen again. We are safe.
But we are not safe. We will all die. Some people will die young. But how we live is important. How we limit our feelings and expressions in the most controlled environment we will ever live in, and I served in the Army, is where we should be looking. My daughter is limited in what she can do and say in school. She is 10. She will have more limits on what she can say and do in 5 years. She will find repression from above and from the sides. She will learn that you can torment those around you and be In or you can be caring and loving and be Out. But she may learn that if you are caring, loving, and alone, you can snap. You can lose track of who you are and what you believe. It is not very far from alone.
As a High School student, I sucked. I was irreverent, outraged, and angry. One day I snapped. Walking up the stairs I saw another Out being harassed, manhandled and finally threatened. He was too proud, still, to show he was scared. After all, people were watching.
I intervened. I threw one down the stairwell and grabbed the other one. I started to hit him. But I was no longer Out. Everyone I knew was there. I knew every face. Most had never smiled at me before, unless I was in pain. I heard, "hit him", "do it", "come on!" But then I saw a peacemaker. I saw her face and heard her voice. I think I remember her name, none of the others stick. She whispered, "let him go." I don't know how to this day, how I heard her voice in the din of fifty. But I did let him go. I was shaking so bad it made me more afraid.
The next moment, I was leading 100 magnet school students down to the regular school. But she had gotten the principal. She did not care that I would lose face and be Out if I backed down now. She wanted this to stop, so she got the Cavalry, our principal. The principal walked with me. She asked me where I was going. I said down stairs. She asked me why and I started to cry. I said I didn't know.
She never let anyone see I was crying as I am now. I have never remembered the next hours in her office. I do remember the compliments from my fellow students. The pats on the back (really) from people I swore hated me yesterday.
I got beaten up later in front of my friends. I flunked my classes because I was too ashamed to return to school. I never graduated from the Magnet school. I finished English, the only class I needed to graduate, in the summer. A class that was made for people who found regular school English difficult.
I never planned on going to any school ever again. I hid from my friends. I got a job in a metal shop. But I could not escape. I never escaped that shame. Today I am trying.
I did go to college because my Mom and Dad asked me too. They forgave me. Neither had graduated from High School in their teens. They were proud of me. They told me it would be a new start. A new beginning was ahead of me. But my irreverent, outraged, and angry attitude never died. My problems with authority stuck. And I never admitted why I hated High School to anyone except my wife and friend Bob, until today.
For some reason, what happened feels cathartic. Perhaps it is because I don't feel as bad as two kids from Colorado must have felt. Perhaps, finally, someone will look at what really happens in High School and not what they want to remember.
But they will ban coats, suggest uniforms, discuss ways to demoralize and belittle teenagers. Will they start teaching non-violent communication? Will they put Science Fiction on the High School course list? Will they demand reverence of our youth by those older than they are? Perhaps not, but perhaps they may listen and read and care, long enough to know that "Saved By The Bell" is not a real picture of High School. I think "Carrie" is much closer.
As stage two of the crisis/tragedy is woven in the paper/electronic web we read and watch, we will understand that it is Human Nature to be afraid, angry, and find fault. We are all afraid for our children and our friends' children. We are all angry that this happened at all. It interrupted many other really cool things. (I am not making light of all this, people just don't want to deal with pain and suffering.) Finally, we all want vengeance (or at least a solution). But like so many social engineers, we have our own pet peeves, beliefs, and understandings of the Human Psyche. Who is Responsible and what must be done?
I am afraid that you will be angry because it is my fault. I don't do enough for those in need around me. I get angry in front of children. I lash out. I fail to be tolerant. I often make responses to those that trespass against me. I can not forgive easily. I can not tell God, "I don't understand why, but that is ok!" I play Quake 2 all the time (with my wife and daughter.) I loved The Matrix. I had premarital sex with beautiful young women! But I did not pull the trigger. I did not kill anyone.
But like everyone, I want to know why. I want to point the finger and fix what ever is broken. But I do not want to look in the mirror. I do not want to say, "Did I miss a signal?" "Did I cut that guy off?" "Is this my fault?"
No! It can't be your fault you live in Maine! You live in Dallas! You live in Boulder! When is blame not related to pain and suffering? When I admit, as the principal of a school, that I made a mistake, the school board will fire me. They will distance themselves from me. You can bet that I will be sued and possibly put in jail! Why, because I made a mistake and foolishly admitted it.
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right." Mohandas Gandhi
In the country that first saw Gandhi's response to discrimination, they are healing. They are doing an unbelievable thing. They are asking for the truth and offering forgiveness. Imagine for one full 60 second period, that President Clinton pardoned all those associated with this massacre! The villains are dead along with the innocent, what will punishment gain us? Imagine if no one could sue anyone about this horrible act! Imagine that all you had to do to avoid prosecution was to come forward and tell all of us what you did wrong! Then simply apologize to the survivors. I fear some would rather face death row. We all need someone to blame and none of us wants to be IT!
I asked my Sunday School Class to understand why they needed someone to blame for what happened. Then I asked them how would their lives be different and the lives of the dead in Columbine, if they as Christians had attended High School at Columbine.
Why did I torture these young adults with these questions? I am asked these questions often when I read that I should turn the other cheek, help those in need without question, and love my neighbor as I do myself.
But the one thing God taught us well was to forgive each other. No one wants to stand up and ask forgiveness, because they will be sued and punished for their act. Which will we do: what God asks us to do or what we need to do to feel safer and more secure?
I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do the something I can do. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Helen Keller
A blind women could see that we will never be safe or secure. Why must we have this pretense of safety before us? How will you treat those around you? How will you answer for your indiscretions?
The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back. Abigail Van Buren
How will you respond? How will you answer the question, "What should happen to your best friend? You know the one. Her 18 year old son killed 12 people?"
Are you done imagining the injustice and outrage it would take to get the truth and offer forgiveness? Injustice because these parents (all of them) need someone to blame for this horror. Outrage, because this country still can't get over that O.J. was found not guilty! So how will we handle these kids being dead and we can't prosecute them? We will find another scapegoat. Another patsy will be discovered! Video games, the Internet, movies, Nazis, Hitler, some one must be blamed.
Who will suffer for this outrage? Who will ask you to look in your soul and ask really tough questions like: "What if this happened to you?"
Your school age children, as they loose more and more freedoms to safety, will suffer for our fear. As more of them make light of shocking and horrible things, we will have other kids turning them in and sending them to jail. Why? Because they handle their fear with humor? Because they sought attention?
We can forgive. A few that have already lost their lives and loved ones can help us all better answer the question HOW? And perhaps Why? They will not get money from their help, but that would not have brought back their loved one. Can you set aside your need for anger and hate, to forgive those that would trespass against you?
It is very hard to imagine. But vengeance is not ours, except in the fantasies we create. Two young men murdered 13 others. They got away with it. They did this by agreeing to kill themselves when they had accomplished their gruesome task. We don't want to imagine that we can live in a society where any single human being can trade their life for another. Ask Kennedy, Gandhi, or King. You can seek your vengeance. But understand you can not stop what happened. It happened. Now how do we heal?
Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" Vanity asks the question, "Is it popular?" But conscience asks the question, "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular -- but one must take it because it's right. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
Tell me it is not right to Forgive. Tell me it is not right to seek the Truth. Better yet, tell your neighbor, your friends, and your family!
-------------------------------------
I wrote this days after the shootings, but i had not found a forum I felt comfortable in releasing it to until my friend Bob sent me this link. Many Thanks to JonKatz,
Slashdot Mirror
From your perspective, which Scince Fiction books/stories are the best indications of the future of robotics? Or which ones raise ideas or questions that you have for the future of the science?
That was my response - had this come out yesterday - I would have blown by it until I read the paper today.
Vilseck, FRG - SNOWED my first day in country. July 5th, 1985!
I can live with a little engine noise and cold. In the cold, moonless nights on guard duty, with terrorist/bombers and wild boars, now that is rough working conditions! We weren't even at war then.
HQ 3/35th Armor, US Army
God Bless All Soldiers, Everywhere.
Peace,
PaGeN
Great job! Yea! Thank You! Yea!!
Ok - Panicing in Austin here. Can you do this with a second NAT device? I have a nice Router using NAT (SMC Barricade - SMC7008BR). If I buy the new SMC model and stick it between the Cable Modem and the current SMC, would this avoid any detection. A one time $100 seems like a simple solution for my home network. Even pays for itself in a month.
Thanks in advance,
PaGeN
What did you think of Galaxy Quest?
Has the Senate already asked NASA/Huge Tech University to create some potential math in the area of potential risk to being beaned by reentry objects?
Even if they have, what is the size of 6ish Billion people compared to the complete land area. Assuming 1/3 to 1/2 are sleeping (more surface space) versus sitting or standing?
In this equation, would you rule out certain areas due to orbit types? Seems that fun could be had doing the math!
TIA,
PaGeN
Since Silcon cages (similar to Bucky balls) have been discovered (see http://www.sciam.com/news/022701/1.html), I can't stop thinking that this will lead to a major breakthrough in Silcon Bucky Balls. The potential, if this same (similar) relationship exists in silicon, is incredible!
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. " Benjamin Franklin
I hated High School. I know others that did as well. The hope of living just long enough to get out was a lofty goal. But in undergraduate school, I considered being a teacher. I wanted to make High School better for those that hated it as much as I did. I foolishly became some thing else, but I love and miss teaching!
In one of my undergraduate classes on teaching, the instructor said that most everyone had a positive, healthy memory of High School. Why did I feel bad when she said that? Perhaps it was not like that for the outcasts, the unclean, the different. I graduated 19 years ago from a Magnet school in Houston. I will not be invited to the 20 year reunion. But the nice people, the kind people are the only positive memory I have. And those people I miss.
It is hard for me not to identify with the 2 young men that shot and killed their classmates. Not because I too, killed, I have not. But instead, I can feel the pains of 20 years ago. In a time when being a computer Geek was really out there.
I don't know what could have pushed me over the edge at that age. But, I know today that I was on that path.
On that path, I did not know that everyone else was as frightened and ashamed as I was. That they all had fears and concerns about how they felt and who they were, even the jocks and the cheerleaders.
It scares me, that it is the same today for many. That youth today have the same reaction to the things people still fear at thirty, forty, and even sixty. But there is hope. After we get done believing we could have stopped this, we could have saved those boys damnation on Earth and after. When we are done Banning Jackets and thoughts. We will look at each other and say it can't happen again. We are safe.
But we are not safe. We will all die. Some people will die young. But how we live is important. How we limit our feelings and expressions in the most controlled environment we will ever live in, and I served in the Army, is where we should be looking. My daughter is limited in what she can do and say in school. She is 10. She will have more limits on what she can say and do in 5 years. She will find repression from above and from the sides. She will learn that you can torment those around you and be In or you can be caring and loving and be Out. But she may learn that if you are caring, loving, and alone, you can snap. You can lose track of who you are and what you believe. It is not very far from alone.
As a High School student, I sucked. I was irreverent, outraged, and angry. One day I snapped. Walking up the stairs I saw another Out being harassed, manhandled and finally threatened. He was too proud, still, to show he was scared. After all, people were watching.
I intervened. I threw one down the stairwell and grabbed the other one. I started to hit him. But I was no longer Out. Everyone I knew was there. I knew every face. Most had never smiled at me before, unless I was in pain. I heard, "hit him", "do it", "come on!" But then I saw a peacemaker. I saw her face and heard her voice. I think I remember her name, none of the others stick. She whispered, "let him go." I don't know how to this day, how I heard her voice in the din of fifty. But I did let him go. I was shaking so bad it made me more afraid.
The next moment, I was leading 100 magnet school students down to the regular school. But she had gotten the principal. She did not care that I would lose face and be Out if I backed down now. She wanted this to stop, so she got the Cavalry, our principal. The principal walked with me. She asked me where I was going. I said down stairs. She asked me why and I started to cry. I said I didn't know.
She never let anyone see I was crying as I am now. I have never remembered the next hours in her office. I do remember the compliments from my fellow students. The pats on the back (really) from people I swore hated me yesterday.
I got beaten up later in front of my friends. I flunked my classes because I was too ashamed to return to school. I never graduated from the Magnet school. I finished English, the only class I needed to graduate, in the summer. A class that was made for people who found regular school English difficult.
I never planned on going to any school ever again. I hid from my friends. I got a job in a metal shop. But I could not escape. I never escaped that shame. Today I am trying.
I did go to college because my Mom and Dad asked me too. They forgave me. Neither had graduated from High School in their teens. They were proud of me. They told me it would be a new start. A new beginning was ahead of me. But my irreverent, outraged, and angry attitude never died. My problems with authority stuck. And I never admitted why I hated High School to anyone except my wife and friend Bob, until today.
For some reason, what happened feels cathartic. Perhaps it is because I don't feel as bad as two kids from Colorado must have felt. Perhaps, finally, someone will look at what really happens in High School and not what they want to remember.
But they will ban coats, suggest uniforms, discuss ways to demoralize and belittle teenagers. Will they start teaching non-violent communication? Will they put Science Fiction on the High School course list? Will they demand reverence of our youth by those older than they are? Perhaps not, but perhaps they may listen and read and care, long enough to know that "Saved By The Bell" is not a real picture of High School. I think "Carrie" is much closer.
As stage two of the crisis/tragedy is woven in the paper/electronic web we read and watch, we will understand that it is Human Nature to be afraid, angry, and find fault. We are all afraid for our children and our friends' children. We are all angry that this happened at all. It interrupted many other really cool things. (I am not making light of all this, people just don't want to deal with pain and suffering.) Finally, we all want vengeance (or at least a solution). But like so many social engineers, we have our own pet peeves, beliefs, and understandings of the Human Psyche. Who is Responsible and what must be done?
I am afraid that you will be angry because it is my fault. I don't do enough for those in need around me. I get angry in front of children. I lash out. I fail to be tolerant. I often make responses to those that trespass against me. I can not forgive easily. I can not tell God, "I don't understand why, but that is ok!" I play Quake 2 all the time (with my wife and daughter.) I loved The Matrix. I had premarital sex with beautiful young women! But I did not pull the trigger. I did not kill anyone.
But like everyone, I want to know why. I want to point the finger and fix what ever is broken. But I do not want to look in the mirror. I do not want to say, "Did I miss a signal?" "Did I cut that guy off?" "Is this my fault?"
No! It can't be your fault you live in Maine! You live in Dallas! You live in Boulder! When is blame not related to pain and suffering? When I admit, as the principal of a school, that I made a mistake, the school board will fire me. They will distance themselves from me. You can bet that I will be sued and possibly put in jail! Why, because I made a mistake and foolishly admitted it.
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right." Mohandas Gandhi
In the country that first saw Gandhi's response to discrimination, they are healing. They are doing an unbelievable thing. They are asking for the truth and offering forgiveness. Imagine for one full 60 second period, that President Clinton pardoned all those associated with this massacre! The villains are dead along with the innocent, what will punishment gain us? Imagine if no one could sue anyone about this horrible act! Imagine that all you had to do to avoid prosecution was to come forward and tell all of us what you did wrong! Then simply apologize to the survivors. I fear some would rather face death row. We all need someone to blame and none of us wants to be IT!
I asked my Sunday School Class to understand why they needed someone to blame for what happened. Then I asked them how would their lives be different and the lives of the dead in Columbine, if they as Christians had attended High School at Columbine.
Why did I torture these young adults with these questions? I am asked these questions often when I read that I should turn the other cheek, help those in need without question, and love my neighbor as I do myself.
But the one thing God taught us well was to forgive each other. No one wants to stand up and ask forgiveness, because they will be sued and punished for their act. Which will we do: what God asks us to do or what we need to do to feel safer and more secure?
I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do the something I can do. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Helen Keller
A blind women could see that we will never be safe or secure. Why must we have this pretense of safety before us? How will you treat those around you? How will you answer for your indiscretions?
The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back. Abigail Van Buren
How will you respond? How will you answer the question, "What should happen to your best friend? You know the one. Her 18 year old son killed 12 people?"
Are you done imagining the injustice and outrage it would take to get the truth and offer forgiveness? Injustice because these parents (all of them) need someone to blame for this horror. Outrage, because this country still can't get over that O.J. was found not guilty! So how will we handle these kids being dead and we can't prosecute them? We will find another scapegoat. Another patsy will be discovered! Video games, the Internet, movies, Nazis, Hitler, some one must be blamed.
Who will suffer for this outrage? Who will ask you to look in your soul and ask really tough questions like: "What if this happened to you?"
Your school age children, as they loose more and more freedoms to safety, will suffer for our fear. As more of them make light of shocking and horrible things, we will have other kids turning them in and sending them to jail. Why? Because they handle their fear with humor? Because they sought attention?
We can forgive. A few that have already lost their lives and loved ones can help us all better answer the question HOW? And perhaps Why? They will not get money from their help, but that would not have brought back their loved one. Can you set aside your need for anger and hate, to forgive those that would trespass against you?
It is very hard to imagine. But vengeance is not ours, except in the fantasies we create. Two young men murdered 13 others. They got away with it. They did this by agreeing to kill themselves when they had accomplished their gruesome task. We don't want to imagine that we can live in a society where any single human being can trade their life for another. Ask Kennedy, Gandhi, or King. You can seek your vengeance. But understand you can not stop what happened. It happened. Now how do we heal?
Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" Vanity asks the question, "Is it popular?" But conscience asks the question, "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular -- but one must take it because it's right. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
Tell me it is not right to Forgive. Tell me it is not right to seek the Truth. Better yet, tell your neighbor, your friends, and your family!
-------------------------------------
I wrote this days after the shootings, but i had not found a forum I felt comfortable in releasing it to until my friend Bob sent me this link.
Many Thanks to JonKatz,
PaGeN