The Great Weapons Debate

Recently, I read an article in Popular Mechanics called The Great Weapons Debate [popularmechanics.com.].

The article discusses new weapons systems that are being developed by the Pentagon. It also discusses how critics are arguing that a lot of money is being spent on those weapons systems despite the fact that there are currently no enemies they would be effective against.

These types of debates are always highly-charged and very political. And whenever I open my mouth on these sorts of things, the results are usually humorous (at least, to me). My liberal friends get the impression that I am conservative, whereas my conservative friends get the impression that I am liberal. How exactly does that work, anyway?

I am strongly in favor of defense spending and the development of these weapons systems, but not for the reasons you would think. The primary reason that they receive my support is because a big chunk of defense spending goes into research at academic institutions. And research at universities trains the next generation of engineers and researchers. This has a direct benefit to our economy.

Weapons systems also usually take a decade or two to really develop. And I don't think it's possible to predict the types of threats we will have to face that far into the future. So, I think it would be really short-sighted to cut funding for all weapons systems except those that are direclty related to counter-terrorism right now.

Wikipedia Featured Pictures

Lately, I've been ludicrously busy with all of the traveling (Washington, D.C. last week, and Chicago this week) and paper-writing (I'm trying to submit papers to both CLAWAR [bsmee.be] and ICRA [icra07.org] this year).

Even with how busy I am, I occasionally have some downtime. Lately, I've been browsing through the Featured Pictures [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. There are some incredible pictures posted there, such as this picture of the exposed die of a 486 processor [wikipedia.org]:



or this picture of the Thurston Lava Tube [wikipedia.org] (although, unfortunately, there is no associated article):



Cool stuff.

Robert Samuels

I've been having some problems with Blogger lately. This is the entry I meant to post yesterday, but couldn't.

--

Last Thursday evening, a small plane carrying a group of graduate students from Indiana University crashed, killing all aboard [chron.com].

Among those killed was Robert Samuels. I remember him as being an incredibly fun person to be around. However, most other people would know him for being a very promising composer and a singer.



I also remember him for being incredibly devoted to his girlfriend. He will surely be missed.

The Chicago Tribune has biographies (annoying subscription required) of all of the students involved in the crash.

Target

I happen to love Target [target.com]. I dislike pretty much all of the other big-box stores (well, ok, except for Costco), but I do really like Target. And the primary reason is because I know that no matter what time of day I go into a Target, I know I am going to be able to get through the registers relatively quickly and get out of there. I love that aspect. Whereas if I were to go after work to any of the other stores or department stores, it would definitely take me forever to get through all of the lines.

There are all kinds of other things I like about Target, too. For instance, I love that they make it easy for people to recycle batteries.

Anyway, on Gulfstream [beebo.org], I saw a link to a shocking article about Target [washingtonpost.com]. Apparently, their forensics labs are so capable, they are now doing a lot of pro bono work for law enforcement.

Here are some quotes from the article:

"'One of the nation's top forensics labs is located at Target's headquarters building in downtown Minneapolis,' said FBI Special Agent Paul McCabe, who has worked with Target. 'They have abilities and technology that far surpasses many law enforcement agencies in the country.'"

and

"Target began helping law enforcement on cases that had nothing to do with its business. It wasn't long before Target was analyzing criminal evidence for police, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms."

That is a fascinating article. But at the same time, I worry about law enforcement becoming dependent upon private-sector donations -- especially in forensics. I mean, what if Target starts taking losses, and is no longer in the position to provide forensics help? Or, what if the relationship between law enforcement agencies and Target becomes damaged? And I don't think they can deny there is the potential for conflict of interest.

I applaud Target for stepping in and helping, but what the hell are we as a country doing? The FBI doesn't have the nation's leading forensics labs? Doesn't this bother anyone?

Lost

Even though I have made great strides in recent years to reduce the amount of TV I watch, there are still shows that I really enjoy watching, and won't be cutting any time soon.

One of those series is Lost [go.com]. Of course, there are many reasons to like the show. It's not like any other show on TV right now (unlike the rest of the other 70 Law and Order clones). And the plotlines are always interesting, instead of having the same format as other dramas (such as having a male and female lead who are always on the edge of getting together, but never manage to, even after several years).



One of the other criteria I use to select shows that I watch is whether I have lots of friends who also watch it. Shows that I can discuss with friends in the days after a new episode are always more interesting to me. Plus, that enables me to find out about subtle things I may have missed.

Recently, a friend of mine pointed out a column in the USA Today [usatoday.com] that discusses the new episodes of Lost and point out all kinds of things that most people would miss. For instance, did you notice that the owner of the house that Locke inspected was the same woman who was Sayid's former girlfriend (Nadia)? I totally missed that.

I'll Be Back Next Thursday

Posts here will resume on Thursday, April 20. I'm going to be out of town until then.

Cross at Ground Zero

Because I have a lot of friends and family in New York City, I drive out there all of the time to visit. And I've been visiting New York several times a year since before I can remember.

I, of course, visited Ground Zero on some of those trips. And in 2002, I snapped this picture at that location:



I've always liked that picture, but it never occurred to me to figure out the story behind that cross. That is, until I saw a link on Gothamist [gothamist.com] to an article about how the cross is coming back [nydailynews.com] to the former World Trade Center site.

I decided to see if there was some sort of back-story [artaid.org], and found that the cross was found in that shape in the rubble of the World Trade Center. I had assumed that two steel beams had been welded in that shape after they were pulled out of the rubble.

Anyway, the cross is coming back.

FBI Woes

Another link I saw on digg [digg.com] was to an article called The Federal Bureau of Luddites [slate.com].

The article details all kinds of problems at the FBI, like:

"For those who do want to share data, it can be more trouble than it's worth. Investigators are supposed to document everything from warrant requests to stakeout summaries in the FBI's Automated Case Support database. But agents can't point and click to add a record to their digital files. Instead, they have to tab through 12 different functions on a pre-Windows-era green screen. Pictures of suspects can't be scanned in. And complex searches are impossible—don't bother looking for 'aviation' and 'schools' at the same time."

If true, that sounds really bad.

When I think about domestic intelligence, I always envision an agency that has the latest tools available. I would think they would have to, in order to keep up with the arms race they are in against criminals and terrorists. But I don't know how you would expect them to do that job without giving them the proper tools to do it with.

This sounds indicative of a systemic problem that absolutely needs to be fixed.

Being a Scientist

On a restricted access weblog (don't ask -- it doesn't make any sense to me, either), I saw a link to an article called Women in Science. It's all about the reasons why there are so few female scientists.

The article is very well written, and explains a lot of feelings that I have had about science and academics but have never been able to express clearly. It is also full of blunt observations about male behavior. Here are some choice quotes:

• "Having been both a student and teacher at MIT, my personal explanation for men going into science is the following:
  1. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group
  2. men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question 'is this peer group worth impressing?'"
  
  
• "Jobs in science pay far less than jobs in the professions and buisiness held by women of similar ability. A lot of men are irrational, stubborn, and unwilling to admit that they've made a huge mistake."

I really haven't had much interest in staying in academia. And a lot of the reasons I feel that way are discussed in the article, including the lack of job security, and the need to move around all over the place in order to compete for the few jobs that are actually out there. So, for me, the article really hit home, because it described tons of reasons I wouldn't be interested in staying in academics. Anyone hoping for a future career as a scientist should definitely read it.

Runbot

On digg [digg.com], I saw a link to an article about Runbot [newscientisttech.com]. Runbot is a biped robot that is supported by a boom (restricting its motion to 2 dimensions), that purports to be the fastest biped robot in relation to its size.

By the way, I think that it is interesting that journals are no longer the way that researchers are keeping up with the literature in their field. Someone like me who is involved with robotics research can just subscribe to the RSS feed that pertains to robots. It's crazy to think that a year ago, most people didn't even know what an RSS feed was.

Anyway, the research they are doing on Runbot is very interesting. I do, however, have a problem with the name. It may be that they intend for it to run at some point. However, it is clear from the videos that are available (two can be found at the article I linked to) that it isn't "running." For a biped to be running, there needs to be a ballistic phase. Whereas at least one of Runbot's feet are touching the ground at all times. Locomotion with a ballistic phase is much more difficult, from a control point of view. For one thing, during the ballistic phases, the attitude of the robot can not be corrected. And for another thing, the window in which the control system can correct any attitude problems is much narrower.

Still, I think the work they are doing is very good. At the end of that article, they interviewed Russ Tedrake, who used to (or perhaps still does) work with Andy Ruina at Cornell.

I have had the pleasure of personally meeting Ruina, and he has a lot of fantastic ideas about robotics. And he would definitely agree with Tedrake's statement that "they've done a good job of creating a dynamic system. It contrasts with robots that have to do unnecessary work to fight their dynamics." The majority of walking robots have control schemes that do things like use high-frequency control loops to tightly control joint trajectories. These control schemes fight the robot's natural dynamics, and consume a lot more power as a result. Because humans use their own natural dynamics to increase efficiency, it is not too surprising that walking robots typically don't move anything like the way humans do.

Boot Camp

Ok, I guess that's enough home-buying talk for now. I'm sure that I'll have plenty to write about after closing, but it wasn't my intention to turn this into a house-blog.

Last week, one of the big news items was about Boot Camp [yahoo.com], which allows Apple computer users to install Windows XP onto their machines. That is great news, and has to be a major selling point. There must be tons of users out there who would like to switch, but couldn't because there were one or two Windows-only applications they needed to use. Either that, or they were gamers, and didn't want to have to buy a Mac and a top-of-the-line PC in order to have their proverbial cake and eat it too.

So now, those people have a viable option. The reviews (albeit all probably by Mac fans) seem great too.

One of the features of OS X that I have been envious about is the suspend to disk (hibernate) support, which seems to work flawlessly. I have seen friends do all kinds of things and run 40 programs at the same time, and not have to reboot for months... even on laptops that they take to work and bring home every day. With Windows or Linux, it either does not work properly, or it takes forever to come out of hibernation mode.

A little while ago [fluggart.com], I talked about how I was debating between waiting for a 12" Powerbook with the Intel Core Duo to come out [update: the rumor is the new small Macbook will have a 13" screen running at 1280x720 [thinksecret.com]], or waiting for the 12" Alienware Sentia with the Intel Core Duo to come out. Now that Dell has bought out Alienware and it's easier than ever to run Windows on Macs, the choice for me is clear. The Mac will have the better hardware and give me a lot more options.

The End of the Great House Hunt

Yesterday, I was talking about a house that we saw that we absolutely fell in love with immediately. And I described the features that we loved about it (the kitchen, the woodwork, the driveway, etc).

We do love the house, but there are things that aren't perfect (of course). For instance, it is farther from the highway than I'd like. I'm worried that will add 10 minutes to my already hideously long commute.

Also, the bedrooms have really small closets. So we'll need to buy some armoires. But as soon as we saw it, we knew we weren't going to find a place better than this. And it was a lot cheaper than our previous favorite (The Condo).

Oddly enough, the owner was home when we arrived. I had previously talked about how we didn't like it when the owners are at home when we see the house. But it was alright, because she was the nicest woman. She was home because her realtor hadn't shown up yet (and he was the one who was supposed to be showing the house to us). And it turned out to be great that she was there, because she was able to tell us a lot of really useful (and honest) information about the house. That was the only time it wasn't awkward for the owner to be home when we saw the house.

We looked at a few more places after we saw that one, just to make sure we weren't going to find any places that were better. In the end, we decided to get an offer in as soon as possible. And from that point, things went really quickly. About 6 hours later, the owner had accepted our offer and we had a closing date. The next day after that, we followed the home inspector through the house, who pointed out some issues that needed to be fixed, but nothing major (thank goodness). Every house is going to need maintenance, especially one that is 98 years old (!).

Everything flew. In fact, our realtor worried that things had moved so quickly, we wouldn't have time to have second thoughts until it was too late. But it's great, because we are really happy. And our realtor was the best ever. She made us feel so comfortable, even though this will be our first home and we were really worried we were getting in over our heads. We were so happy with her, and we hope she is getting paid accordingly.

House #2

Yesterday, I started out by saying we were getting really depressed after seeing so many houses that weren't really what we wanted (even though on paper, they seemed to fit our bill). That all changed when we saw an open house (House #1) that looked great.

Anyway, even though we really liked House #1, we decided to keep going to open houses (since that was literally the first house we had seen that day). We loved the next open house even better! We'll call this one House #2. This one did have central air and a bathroom on the ground floor. It also had the largest kitchen ever (we cook together a lot, so this was a huge plus).



It also had lots of beautiful refinished woodwork throughout.



There's just no end to the number of things we loved about the house. The 2nd floor bathroom has a jacuzzi in it. It has a 2.5 car garage, along with a paved spot next to the garage where a 3rd car could be parked. The basement was waterproofed and has a new sump pump. The driveway is newly poured concrete. The layout of the whole place is great.

[Update: We made an offer on the house.]

House #1

Again, after seeing house after house that we really didn't like, we really started getting discouraged and depressed. Not to mention worried.

That all changed when we stopped by an open house (that we saw advertised on a realty website) and loved it. For now, we'll call it House #1. It wasn't perfect, but it was a lot closer than any other house we saw. And it was a lot cheaper than our previous favorite (The Condo). But we still wanted to think about it, because it had some issues. There was no central air. There was only parking for two cars, but we could have paved over the owner's garden to create a space for a third car. And it didn't have a bathroom on the ground floor. And there were a few other minor concerns.



But the house was in pretty good shape, so we weren't worried about having to do any serious work (other than painting, which is no big deal). We were at that open house for literally an hour, investigating every detail, taking lots of notes, and taking lots of pictures.

Suddenly, things were looking up.

We were also happy to see that the owners were already moved out. We have to be out of our current place by a certain date, and we worried that if the current owners added a contingency that they had to be able to close on their new house before we could close on their old house, that might have been a huge problem for us.

But that's not the whole story! Stay tuned for tomorrow's entry.

Finding the Right Realtor

One of the things that we really worried about was finding the right realtor. As I said before [fluggart.com], we had discovered previously that we, for some reason, didn't like having a male realtor.

But we really didn't want to just pick a realtor out of a phonebook. I mean, we wanted someone we could trust. And we didn't really know anyone in the area whose opinion we could really trust in this area.

One thing we tried was looking at realtors websites, but it was difficult to find a realtor that way for many reasons. For one thing, we needed someone who really knew our area of town. One problem is that since we live so close to the highway, we never really drive around that much in our area (other than to the store). So, we didn't even recognize street names that were a quarter mile away. We really needed someone who knew our area and would be able to show us the right homes.

Furthermore, we really needed to find someone that we could trust. We are trying to buy our first home, so we're kind of in over our heads. We have read some first-time homebuyers guides that we got from the library, but there are so many intangibles that are hard to learn from a book.

As we looked at more and more open houses, we started recognizing the things that we did and did not want in a realtor. More often than not, the realtors showing the houses were not very cordial to us (maybe they didn't take us seriously), and above all, they didn't make us feel that we could trust them.

Yesterday, I talked about looking at The Condo, which we really liked. And I think that one of the things we really liked was the realtor who was showing the place. She was very nice, and made us feel very comfortable while we looked through the place. She also seemed very knowledgeable about houses, and knew the surrounding area very well. Finally, she seemed to be honest about the details of the house, instead of trying to steer our attention away from the areas that needed work.

So, we ended up asking her to be our agent as we continued the house hunting process, and it ended up working out well. So, I guess if you are looking for a realtor, look at a lot of open houses, which you can use as interviews.

The Condo

Sorry about all of the home-buying talk, but that has been consuming my mind lately. And there are a lot of things I want to make sure to record so that I can reread them later.

Anyway, as I have said before, we have looked at a ton of houses in our area. After seeing house after house that we really didn't like, we really started getting discouraged and depressed. Not to mention worried.

But we did have one favorite (which for now, we'll call The Condo). I personally liked it because it was less than 10 years old, so we could be fairly sure we wouldn't need to fix anything major in the foreseeable future. Because it is so new, it also has all of the modern conveniences we would like. For instance, there are two sinks in the master bathroom. There are also two full bathrooms on the 2nd floor. The closets are huge, etc. These are the sorts of things you really can't find in an older house (unless they built an extension onto the house or something).

Unfortunately, there were some things we didn't like about it. For one, it was a condo, not a single-family home. So, we'd have to pay condo fees for stuff we could easily do ourselves. I mean, we can do yard work. And to be honest, the condo had the smallest yard ever, so it wouldn't have even taken that long. And we can shovel snow. We don't need to pay for a plow service.

While we're talking about driveways, another thing we didn't like was that there was a shared driveway. The driveway is fairly long, and is only a single-car width. And there is a 90-degree turn, where it comes around the building (the garages are in the back). So, if someone were coming out while another was trying to come in, it would have been a major issue. And because of the turn in the driveway, you can't see if someone is trying to come in when you pull out of your garage. I also dislike shared driveways, because if someone is loading or unloading, it can be annoying.

The Condo was also almost directly across the street from a high school, which means lots of traffic at certain hours of the day, along with noise from football games, etc.

And then there was the parking issue. Although it did have a 2-car attached garage, there was really no where else to park. Directly in front of the garage door, two cars could be parked there, but that's it. No parking on the street, and the condo building as a whole didn't have any additional parking. That would have been a major problem for us if we wanted to have a big party or something.

And finally, the price of the place was either right at the top, or slightly over, our price range. So, we decided to keep looking, but for a while, The Condo remained our favorite.