Pröcrästinätiön is buying furniture in March 2008 and mounting it in September 2009.
Yesterday I gave up after three hours of hammering and screwing. When I woke up this morning, with only half a “BESTÅ VARA” mounted, and the rest of the pieces scattered around the house, Wikipedia proved, once again, to be an indispensable tool.
Summer, the season for getting things done, has officially ended.
Graduate students regulate their circadian clock, blood sugar level, and mating periods according to conferences deadlines. For robotics people, the revered date is not September 21 (solstice), but September 15, the deadline for ICRA. For control people, the date is September 15… or 22… or 29, the ever-slipping deadline for ACC.
The peaks of my productivity for the summer were:
My good propositions for the next academic year are the same as ever:
and on, and on, and on: I consider myself lucky to be in harmony with my procrastination.
Two months ago:
May 18, 2009
TO: Caltech Community
FROM: Jean-Lou ChameauIt is with great sadness that I share the news of the death of one of our students. Brian Go, a junior studying computer science, appears to have taken his own life over the weekend. Brian was president of Page House and was a double major in computer science and applied and computational mathematics…
One month ago:
June 11, 2009
TO: The Caltech Community
FROM: Jean-Lou ChameauIt is with tremendous sorrow that I again must report the death of one of our students. Jackson Wang, a senior in Marks House, was found in his room Wednesday evening. The coroner is currently investigating the cause of death…
This week:
July 23, 2009
TO: Caltech Community
FROM: Jean-Lou ChameauWith a heavy heart I must once again relay to you the tragic news of the death of a Caltech student. Long Phan, a graduate student in chemistry, was found in his apartment Wednesday afternoon. The coroner has not yet issued a determination of the cause of death, and, out of respect for the wishes of the family, I will not address what appear to be the circumstances of Long’s death…
It is not a good period at Caltech. Since my last post, two other suicides took place: an undergrad and a graduate student in chemistry. An isolated death became a suicide cluster — even without remembering my squared chis, 3 deaths in 3 months are surely correlated. The discussion among the graduate students varies from the morbid details of the circumstances of the deaths, to the reminescences about the deaths of a decade ago, to the religious/phylosophical speculations about the admissibible justifications of suicides.
Is suicide admissible in some cases? I believe so, for example in the case of terminal illnesses, or for life-impairing conditions such as complete paralysis. Socrates’ poison hemlock death, to make his point, comes to mind as another defensible suicide. We also can understand why Alan Turing took his life by a poisoned apple, not able to bear the consequence of the chemical castration, the punishment for his homosexuality. However, it is hard to believe the deaths of these students were the result of a careful phylosophical deliberation.
Yesterday was Ditch Day. I was sitting on a bench in Dabney Garden when a pack of undergrads arrived, started stripping naked, made chains with their clothes (the team with the longest chain wins), and then asked me to take a group picture. They seemed a bit embarrassed at the beginning – especially the ladies — but they had a great time in the end. I don’t think those pictures will be put on the website though.
Last week a Caltech undergrad committed suicide.
Last week was the end of a somewhat long period of writing: two months in which I almost didn’t do any new research. The last thing I had to do was preparing the final version for the ACC’09 papers.
I start with the easy one, as opposed to the difficult one. First thing in the morning I read the paper again. I don’t like it. If I were to write it again, I’d write it in a completely different way. I read the reviews, and it seems that the reviewers liked it more than I like it now. The interesting thing is that I realize this is a case of cognitive dissonance, because when I read the reviews for the first time a couple of months ago, I had the impression they were particularly harsh. Instead they are quite reasonable and helpful.
I blame it on the typical emotional roller-coaster for research, which is conveniently summarized below:
The emotional roller-coaster for engineering papers
This is specific to engineering, as science and math have very different psychology. Hopefully I will be doing a bit of biology in the near future, and so I’ll be able to report the differences. For sure, it will not take just 3 months from the idea to the writing.
Winter is over, and the 9-month-long Californian summer has begun. With the temperature over 30 degrees I can go swimming and hopefully reverse the physical decadence of the last months.
(The stats are from the JPL weather station)
Tuesday, March 10: Today’s diversion from work was the ME 72 competition at the Millikan pond. Undergraduates built these tele-operated amphibious robots whose task is recovering ping-pong balls from the water.
The competition is not particularly exciting but, as usual, there are camera crews from the local TV stations; Caltech’s PR people are good at hyping this kind of events.
Joel Burdick was commenting the event — I’ve been told, multiple times, that he has a sexy voice.
Of course, some professors are so busy that they have to watch the competition and read a paper at the same time:
Monday, March 9: I open my TODO list. I close the TODO list. I have dozens of starred messages in my inbox I should answer. I skillfully manage to not start working until 3:40pm, and then I run out of excuses. As a last resort, I check the email and see Christof Koch’s reminder about Alan Wallace’s seminar, starting in 10 minutes.
He is the very first ordained Buddhist monk that I see with a business suit:
In Japan, I was struck by the contrast between a Buddhist monk and the salarymen in a train station (click for video):
Well, clothes don’t make the man, which in Italian we translate as: l’abito non fa il monaco, the robe doesn’t make the monk.
The premise of his presentation is that the study of the mind is currently in the same state as physics was before Galileo invented the scientific method. Psychology is to a rigorous study of the mind very much like what alchemy was to chemistry. What Buddhism can offer are the techniques for rigorous introspection in one’s mind. Self-introspection might be a rigorous endeavor, if there is a way to make objective this intrinsically subjective experience.
At this point, I recall the anecdote of the young Newton puncturing his own eyes with a needle to study the diffraction of light (source: Neal Stephenson, probably in Quicksilver, so it might be slightly apocryphal). The novel Newton must find a way to put needles inside in his mind’s eye.
The presentation is interesting overall, but by the end he starts talking about “luminosity” and other similar metaphysical notions, so I pack up my stuff and leave, happy to have avoided another hour of work.
Sunday: Today I learn on Wikipedia that the International Women Day is actually of soviet inspiration. Is this the reason it is ignored in the US? Wikipedia says that it is celebrated in all the nations of the ex Soviet bloc, plus Italy and Greece.
Anyway, two different women tell me that it’s a stupid thing to celebrate, so I abstain from any reference.
