Author: Richard Nestoff (Page 13 of 58)

Weird Youtube Power Broker

Youtube: Humanoid robots belong in the trash

I didn’t think there would be any reason for a second post about Youtube physicist, Angela Collier, but the universe is insisting upon it.  Since I watched several of her videos yesterday, the algorithm suggested another one today.

This video is different because it’s more of a pop culture physics rant, then a physics video.  Angela mentions that’s it’s not a typical video, but she wanted to get her thoughts out about the impracticality of humanoid robots in movies and TV shows.  I’ve thought the same thing, so watched it and found it more engaging.

That isn’t why the universe is encouraging me to post.

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The invasion of Springfield

WE: Immigration in Springfield Ohio

This article is like the rest of the news reports that are presented if “Haitian immigrants Springfield Ohio” is Googled.  All the articles emphasize that Haitians are not eating cats and dogs, or killing geese and ducks.  The residents are being pressured into making enthusiastic statements about the Haitian immigrants or get accused of being a racist.

Nobody asks about life in Springfield.

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China is going to the Moon.

SpaceNews: China interested in lava tubes.

China, and anyone interested in a Moon base, should be interested in lava tubes.  If NASA does wake up, it’s likely to roll over and go back to sleep.  Fortunately, Elon Musk needs a Moon base to get to Mars.

The movie, 2001:  A Space Odyssey, got a lot right.  The surface of the Moon is an obnoxious place to live.  The surface temperature goes from about  -200o F to 200o F.   Gamma rays bombard the surface, but cosmic rays are a bigger problem.  Cosmic rays hitting the Earth produce the Northern Lights as their energy dissipates in the atmosphere and are deflected by our magnetic field.  Those subatomic particles moving at nearly the speed of light, are not easily screened

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Sparky is disappointed.

Sparky was being very patient as I worked on the bridge wall.  Well, that’s what I thought.

When we built the stacked-bag wall yesterday, we hosed it down, but not so much that the paper bags fell apart.  Every morning and evening, I will hose down the wall, with the hope that more of the concrete will get wet enough to cure.   At some point, it will rain, and we will see what happens.

I like to bring Sparky along for outdoor projects.  He keeps the rabbits and coyotes away so I don’t have to worry.  I do have to watch that he doesn’t wander too far, but this time, for the 45 minutes it took for me to water the rocks, he sat patiently.

I hopped on the quad and started up the hill, but Sparky didn’t follow along.  He’s pretty good about following the quad if he isn’t working on his own project. 

I went back to check on him.  See the problem?

It’s a mystery how he can get his leash stuck so easily. 

Sparky was perturbed after being stuck for so long.  There is disappointment in those eyes.  I think Sparky bears some responsibility for not giving some indication that he was stuck, and I told him so.  He remembered that he doesn’t speak English, so was unpersuaded.   

Ohio State’s new intellectual diversity director

College Fix: Ohio State’s new intellectual diversity director

Legal scholar Lee Strang is now at Ohio State University to lead the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society. It is one of five new “intellectual diversity” centers at public Ohio universities that are in the works. They will work to promote “civic thought and leadership,” according to Strang, a former University of Toledo professor.

Intellectual diversity is important to get all sides of an issue.  This sounds like a good move, but we’ll see what this center actually accomplishes.

Georgia school shooting

CNN: Georgia school shooting.

It’s been five days since the Appalagee High School shooting, and the details are starting to come out.  A few items are notable.

Bri Jones, 14, was in second period Wednesday when Colt Gray left the classroom, Jones said. “We didn’t notice he left,” Jones said, adding that he was “always quiet.”  But Gray came back and knocked on the door, Jones said.  Bri said she peeked out the door before she opened it because that’s what her mom taught her to do.  “As I was looking at the door, he was pulling his gun out, and then I froze up, like I froze up and I said ‘no’ to myself,” she said.  The teacher asked for the door to be opened, Bri said, “because she didn’t know he had a gun because she was at her desk.” As she went to open the door, “I was like, ‘No, he has a gun,’” Jones said. 

Everyone in that classroom owes their lives to Bri Jones.  Generally, 14 year-olds are awfully dumb.  Bri should get a statue or t-shirt or something.

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Sparky was not involved.

My slender little mutt, the day I picked him up from the Friendship Animal Protective League in Elyria.

In an early post on this blog, I described the process of getting a dog.

The TV show, Star Trek: Enterprise convinced me to get a beagle.  A news article about 42 beagles getting rescued from a house in Lakewood got me motivated to go to the pound.

Sparky was not one of that lot, but after a news report like that, it’s hard not to wonder how that situation came to be.

Danny and Kenzie’s wedding was officiated by a Lakewood judge who is a friend of her family.  We got to talking, and she told me that she was presided over that case.  She explained what happened.

The son of the Lakewood man, had passed away.  The son left two beagles that the dad took in.  The two beagles had puppies.  Then more puppies, then more puppies.  The inside of the house was appalling. 

After reading a news report about too many animals kept in a house, it’s reasonable to imagine that the interior of the house is deplorable.  I usually suppose the problem started small, and slowly grew until the situation was untenable.

The Lakewood story is stupid, as most of these are.  The guy could have had the two beagles spayed or neutered.  Problem solved.  Alternatively, take them to an animal shelter.  Or, sell the pups.

There is a relevant quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

 

Sparky may have a wandering eye.  Not in the Bill Clinton, man-whore, way.  The dog pound cut his nuts off before they handed him over.  I mean in the amblyopia way I recall from those after-school specials they used to have on TV.  The kid with the lazy eye gets picked on until his mom takes him to the doctor.  He still gets picked on because he has to wear an eye patch.  A kind Art teacher makes him a pirate eye patch and he becomes popular on the playground.

That was back when pirates were the Treasure Island kind, and not the skinny Somali pirates we have now.

While I’m having dinner, Sparky will chide me for being fat, hoping I will give my food to him.  I tried a counter-strike by making fun of his lazy eye.  It didn’t work.  Sparky says that he trained himself to do that.  He said that when one eye hits a hard-stop because his nose is in the way, his other eye can sweep a little farther.  That additional field of view gives him a predator advantage.

Sparky says that’s also why he occasionally blinks one eye at a time.  He wants to maintain his sight picture.  That’s good to know.  I thought he was flirting with me.

I didn’t ask why he needed a predator advantage when his main prey is dead birds and baby bunnies.  He had a full life before he retired with me.  Sparky doesn’t talk about it much, but I get the sense that he was involved in some dodgy work.

When Sparky is busting my chops, I can go back to pointing out that he doesn’t have the ground clearance he had when I picked him up.

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