May 18, 2009
TO: Caltech Community
FROM: Jean-Lou Chameau

It 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 Chameau

It 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 Chameau

With 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.

Last week a Caltech undergrad committed suicide.

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

• T₀, idea: this is so cool!
• T₀ + 1 month, implementation: wait, it’s not that cool!
• T₀ + 2 months, writing: yeah, it’s cool enough!
• T₀ + 3 months, deadline: enough with this stuff!
• T₀ + 3 months + 1, the day after the deadline: my best paper ever!
• T₀ + 6 months, reading the reviews: nobody understands me!
• T₀ + 8 months, preparing the final version: this paper sucks, let me rewrite it from scratch!
• T₀ + 10 months, conference presentation: how can I fake excitement for an idea I had 1 year ago?
• T₀ + 1 year, considering writing a journal version: I don’t have time for this old stuff, let’s do something new!
• T₀ + 2 years, casually opening the PDF: that’s really cool! did I write that?!

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.

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:

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.

Anyway, two different women tell me that it’s a stupid thing to celebrate, so I abstain from any reference.

Thanks to the jet-lag, for the first time, I saw the dawn in Rome:

I spent my few days (re)reading my Dylan Dog and Rat Man collections:

and playing my piano:

and generally messing up my room, that, having been cleaned daily for months without being used, had reached negative levels of entropy:

By the way, with a strange twists of events, I discovered that while I was busy converting the department to espresso, my parents had converted to American coffee (note on the left):

Roma! the perfect occasion to test my new camera (Sony A300). I found out that I need a larger macro lens:

and I need a longer zoom:

Then I headed to Nice, France for IROS. The conference was okay, with a good program, but the rooms were too small, especially for the bigger sessions.

During 5 days of conference, there’s plenty of time to go around the city. So I saw the sea,

I breathed the old-Europe air,

and visited the museums:

The most inspiring moment I had was in front of this citation of John Cage:

“the situation being desperate, everything is now possible” which will be added to my list of inspirational mantra.

And then, 26 hours of travel later, I was suddenly back in sunny California, wondering where my baggage was instead.