Robo-Carp!

This is fairly awesome...it's fairly old, but I hadn't seen it before.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1007_051007_robot_fish.html

From National Geographic:

October 7, 2005—This week the London Aquarium unveiled the newest "species" to join its collection: robo-carp.

Computer scientists at the University of Essex in the U.K. developed the self-guided robot fish, seen here swimming in the aquarium. The designers say it is the smartest such robot yet created—the fish uses artificial intelligence and built-in sensors to avoid obstacles and respond to environmental changes.

The fish's battery lasts for up to five hours, though the scientists hope to one day program it to search for and access a recharging station when it runs low.

"This work has many real-world applications, including seabed exploration, detecting leaks in oil pipelines, mine countermeasures, and improving the performance of underwater vehicles," project leader Huosheng Hu told the Associated Press.

The bot, which resembles a one-and-a-half-foot-long (half-meter-long) common carp, mimics the undulating motions of a real fish swimming and turning. Three of the cyber-fish will swim in a tank at the aquarium alongside their living counterparts.

—Victoria Gilman

"The Impossible Dream"

I really, REALLY like this song. I've liked it for ages, but I don't know that I've ever told you all how much. It just came up on my Mandy Patinkin Pandora Radio Station (the version from Colm Wilkinson's "Stage Heroes" album). And it's so good. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

It's pretty. And makes me happy.

Good Morning and Happy Tuesday

Had an LBGT Panel this morning for an anthropology class. Bailey was in the class. (It felt a bit ridiculous to be paneling for my roommate on LBGT issues.) The class did a really good job of asking questions, though, so it was lots of fun.
And now I'm in chemistry - exam Thursday! And I am no longer terrified, but instead rather excited. Life shall be grand.
I slept through forty minutes of my alarm this morning. No idea how. It didn't matter, since I get up early to run. I still got to run and everything, just didn't have as much time for studying this morning as I was planning. But life shall go on. It felt a bit ridiculous to have managed to sleep through forty minutes of beeping, loud music, and an online "cockadoodle-doo," but I'm just that skilled.

Well, the Cat's Out of the Bag

We were discussing the Honors Option of MC 241 after class today. And Ross mentioned that he didn't care if we did the paper he'll require of us this semester or over the summer. If we get at least a 3.5, we'll get the "H" added. Unless, of course, any of us are graduating. And he looked at me and said, "Aren't you graduating?" Ha. Ha. Oops. So then I had a lovely little conversation with Ross and two other students about how I'm not, in fact, a Madison senior who's majoring in one of the fields Ross doesn't teach very often. I get read the "Switch to Madison" speech. It was lovely. Mostly I'm vastly entertained that Ross thought I was a senior. It will be interesting to see if he treats me any differently now...

MC 241 Short Analytical Paper

3.8! Which, given the professor and the fact that it's a Madison course, I think is really good. And counts as 20% of the class's final grade. Average grade was slightly below 3.0.

Final comments on the paper:

Wonderful paper. Nicely argued, although you might have gotten to the final argument a little faster. You did a great job with Hobbes: so good that I might have accepted this paper as a very good paper for MC 271, in which we discuss Hobbes at length!

Yay!!!! That was a nice moment in my day.

It's COLD!

Well, colder than it has been. I generally check the temperature before I go running, just so I know what to expect. But I foolishly left this morning assuming it was around 23 degrees, as it has been recently. It wasn't. I had icicles. But I didn't really think of it as being all that cold until, sitting at breakfast, I saw that it's currently 9 degrees outside. And biking to Econ, I felt it. It's COLD. This morning is the first time I've wanted to be in Nicaragua, not for the sake of being in Nicaragua, but in order to wake up at not have temperatures below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm excited. On both counts.

Cafeteria Music

I walked in this morning to "The Boys of Summer," which is a lovely song. But now they're playing something that I think is by the Backstreet Boys or 'N' Sync...