jawfish

DARPA Urban Challenge Winner
john posted in other on November 4th, 2007

From a press release by DARPA:

TARTAN RACING WINS $2 MILLION PRIZE FOR DARPA URBAN CHALLENGE

Stanford Racing Wins $1 Million Second Prize, Victor Tango Takes Home $500,000 Third Prize

(Victorville, Calif.) - Tartan Racing’s “Boss” of Pittsburgh, Penn. turned in the top performance in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge and won the $2 million cash prize as the competition’s first-place winner, DARPA announced today. Stanford Racing’s “Junior” of Stanford, Calif., won the $1 million second place prize, while Victor Tango’s “Odin” of Blacksburg, Va., received $500,000 for finishing third.

The Urban Challenge prize winners competed as part of a field of 11 finalists that was selected from 35 semifinalists that competed in the National Qualification Event (NQE) prior to the final event. Semifinalists were selected from the original field of 89 competitors. The NQE and the main event took place October 26 to November 3 at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif., that is used by the U.S. military to train for urban operations. The network of roads on the site effectively simulated the type of terrain American forces operate in when deployed overseas.

Vehicles that competed in the Urban Challenge were required to operate entirely autonomously, without human intervention, as they obeyed California traffic laws and performed maneuvers such as merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles and avoiding obstacles. The vehicles had to think like human drivers and continually make split-second decisions to avoid moving vehicles, merge into traffic and safely pass through intersections. Demonstrating safe operation in an urban situation was an effective and consolidated method of testing situations the vehicles might face even while conducting missions in less populated areas.

Why Karl Rove Will Always Be With Uscomments
john posted in other on September 12th, 2007

This week’s On The Media, from WNYC and NPR, had a story on the nature of remembering facts The Truth of False.

Also a science story on the brains of Liberals and Conservatives ran all over, showing that Conservatives are less able than Liberals in managing habitual responses. Put plainly, they tend to be knee-jerk rather than thoughtful.

Janus

read on …

Smile For My Crosshairs, Part II
john posted in other on February 1st, 2007

In my original post on this topic, I wandered a bit aimlessly around the issue of the warrior, and the horror of the war itself, and the trapped feeling I had when dealing with the crude feelings of the soldier. Since I wrote it, a friend lent us a copy of Chris Hedges’ book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, where his introduction does a far better job. Hedges was himself a war correspondent in many different locations.

Chris Hedges, ex-war correspondent, from his book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, from the introduction:

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war’s appeal.

read on …

The Day Fire - Sunday
john posted in other on September 18th, 2006

Original full-size picture from Nasa here… - Large file warning.

With the earthquakes, mud slides, and runaway celebrities California gets a little exciting from time to time. This weekend, the Day fire covered the county in smoke.
read on …

Fake Authenticity
john posted in other on July 28th, 2005

from Hermenaut: Whenever “authenticity” is evoked, we are actually in the world of fake authenticity.

Maybe Hermenaut is right, or maybe authenticity just doesn’t mean anything. Things trying to be themselves are fake; things trying to be something they manifestly are not, are faker, especially when they are selling themselves to you. We need a word for the ridiculously fake status gee-gaws that gesture at something else just to infer its status. This Zimmer is mostly made of these:

Note the fake spare wheels. Its just a boring old Lincoln underneath.

An English country garden is trying to be itself, yet you wouldn’t say it could be fake. Maybe if you are a gardener in same town, the hollyhocks and delphiniums are just a bit much. So maybe as soon as a thing is a member of a type - English garden, classic motorcar - it is subject to authenticity. So is it fake if claimed to be authentic? Surely an authentic Stradivarius is The Real Thing, even if it’s used in a Coke commercial. But there’s no point in talking about authenticity if there’s no chance of fakery, and you can’t even think about it if theres no archetype for the thing under discussion. And a fake Strad might be a very fine instrument indeed.

Yet, I don’t want to give up on fighting for the real and rejecting the ersatz. I am certain that shopping malls, Disneyland and City Walk are ersatz environments, though Venturi et al make a case in Learning from Las Vegas for real substance beneath the bright lights. Las Vegas is so fake that it’s something else, in the way that Cony Island was a real place, because of its garish vulgarity. A Hello Dolly of places.

So is it wrong to enjoy a stage set like Las Vegas? Of course not, and anyway its only authenticity is in comparison to its projected image. A Ronald Reagan of places.

An authentic Mississipi roadhouse is just a pile of throw-away buildings in the daylight,

and the House of Blues has good seats, good sound and a very authentic fire sprinkler system. But the HOB is just another ersatz franchise. Its not authentically poor.

Fake or real?

Midwest house

from Sears catalog

(houses could be ordered from Sears in kits)
Its a now a real house, with no hint of its flatcar origins, but it was designed to be a copy of real houses. Once it’s lived in for a few years is it more authentic? Or is it just not-new?

Tomorrowland house

Originally created to be a Monsanto ad for plastic building materials at Disneyland, now demolished. It looks timelessly fake in a whole different way. Real houses were copied from Disney’s creation at the Anaheim park. It was built as a model. Is it authentic fakery now? How about the houses that copied it?

Soho loft

Its chic, because it used to be a factory, but doesn’t feel or smell like it anymore. Somehow transformation makes it authentic, while your average over-priced New York apartment is pedestrian.

Mill

Its a discarded warehouse. Definitely authentic, may or may not have any value. The gritty plainness stands in for authenticity, even though it was one of thousands of nearly identical workaday buildings when built.

Disneyland New Orleans Square

What is less authentic than Disneyland, with its all-too-perfect facade. The food is still authentically worse than normally bad fast food.

New Orleans

itself an import from abroad, it has a tawdry appeal even as it mimics itself.

So maybe not-new is almost as good as authentic. The new factory, the new urban development, is just not as interesting as the old. There is a quality of designed-ness about new stuff that feels Stalinist in the way it manipulates you, but when things get old, and shopworn chaos creeps in, they become charming. The human mark is upon them. Can this ever happen to mini malls and franchise restaurants and Disneyland? I think not. There is hardly any there there in malls and corporate architecture, and Disney treats its parks like their toilet seats - any mark of character is quickly erased.