Smart Kids

The Winning Team

2010 FEH At St. John Arena

(With 'Robot')

One of the unintended pleasures of returning to school after all these years is the opportunity to spend time with some really bright kids. As much as I've disparaged certain classmates in these pages, my experience is that, as Garrison Keillor is fond of saying, these kids are, by and large, above average. And, though a few of them are a bit woebegone at times, aren't we all? Some of them are bright as a new nickel, and not the least bit shy about showing it off.

Take Jimmy, if you can. He's a gangly, effervescent, walking atomic pile in speech, mannerisms and demeanor.  Look up scary bright in your search engine, and Jimmy's name will likely pop up. I've concluded that he is skinny and somewhat frail looking, because taking time to eat would mean wasting time better spent studying quantum neutron nano-physics, or perhaps it was just pre-cosmological calculus he mentioned, my hearing isn't what once was.

In either case, Jimmy and his mentally-precocious pals want to change the world. If my doubts extend to such things as Bush V Gore 2000, or the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa, they do not extend to this Jimmy and his colleagues' ability to alter the arc of this sorry planet that they're about to inherit. Jimmy and his team of pre-engineers are a group of about 200 young people--first-years all, mind you--at the college's annual robot competition. One of them told me that they "basically got to build toys for six month." Be that as it may, there's nothing childlike about what they built. These robots of theirs had to not only fit certain critical dimensions, they had to perform several tasks autonomously, from coding installed inside their teeny 20 Kb brain by a kid with a lot more Kb than that, and adding more all the time. 

The show took place on the floor of the old basketball arena. Appropriately, the robot competition--there were 78 of the little contraptions--was tracked and scored like the sweet sixteen of basketball. When the G-5 team, Jimmy et. al., wound up in the final four, I edged closer to my seat, and held my breath for the two minutes allotted for the little machine to do its job on the circuit. And, like Short Circuit, the movie, 'Robot,' as the team named it--I told you they were smart--performed just as coded, zipping along doing its appointed chores, tracking the lines, following its internal logic till it backed into its tiny stall with one last whir and giggle, and won first prize! The energy was everywhere. As you can see from the picture, the G-5 team, plus 'Robot,' had worked to perfection. Smart kids. It's a pleasure to know them.

Fast company

Dr. Gee & The OMOC 5/17/10

There are a few perks involved in returning to school at my age. One of them is the realization that certain activities, opportunities and events are just there to indulge and have fun with. The photo is of yours truly with the president of Ohio State, Dr. E. Gordon Gee. The event was a reception at the new student Union for whichever arts and sciences students wanted to drop by, grab a slice of free pizza and meet the prez. Hey, why not? One thing about going back to school, and immersing oneself in the atmosphere of academia is feeling the energy, the positive sensation of moving forward toward a goal, and being surrounded by people who not only share that momentum, but want you to succeed right along with them. There are certainly people on this campus who have a dim view of the way things are run, the political predilections of the administration, the seeming disregard for common sense approaches to matters which appear to be achingly simple. There will always be those people; I am not one of them. The more I study and allow myself to be exposed to the inner workings of things--whether a campus newspaper, a quasi-political organization or a massive educational edifice like Ohio State--the more I realize there are no simple answers. Hell, there aren't even simple questions.

I'm grateful for the chance to meet the people who call the shots, and to ask questions that they actually take time to answer, and to hear from them what intricacies are involved in running a show like OSU. Is it a bit obsequious on my part? Perhaps, but I'm convinced that the people in high places, regardless of which high places we're discussing, are for the most part capable, well-intentioned and conscientious when it's time to decide things that have an impact on all of us. It's good to know they're also approachable, and generally good people. Plus, the pizza was free. Life is good.

 

Musings

Musings 

Some  random thoughts near the end of the term. Once again it's been an amazing journey, what with steers loose on the ag campus, (go figure), fascinating feedback to various newspaper articles I've written about this and that, interesting classes about more this and that and, in general, a very satisfying quarter. Too much work, but satisfying nonetheless. And, once again, it's awfully good to know that the old brain still has a bit of spark left in it, that all that supposedly lethal white, middle-class, hetero, Christian, suburban mediocrity hasn't completely killed what curiosity and skepticism I've tried my damndest to nurture all these years. It's still there; in fact, it's if anything stronger than ever. The older I get, the feistier I get, just ask my wife. I guess that's one of the unwritten benefits of education, at any level, the demand to accept nothing at face value, and to keep asking why, why why ad nauseam. If I had to settle for any one conclusion at this late date, it would be this: why in bloody hell can't we just do what we say we will, or at least say we won't do something and mean it? Do we humans of necessity need to indulge our hypocrisy at every turn? What ever happened to good, old-fashioned 'NO,' I'm not going to do that--be deferential to whites/blacks/women/latinos etc., or 'NO,' I don't believe ________(fill in the blank). It is always better to say it up front, than to say what it is we really never meant. Does that make sense?

Musings, that's all. It's one way we convince ourselves we're still alive.

More light than heat

 Incandescence

One of the primary reasons we try to educate ourselves, when you get right down to it, is to be more efficient. Since the invention of the light bulb, for example, we've made it more efficient, brighter, cooler, more powerful, with less heat and more light. It's an apt metaphor for the human brain as well. The longer we wallow in ignorance about any topic, be it religion Vs spirituality; sexual preference Vs gender orientation; political expediency Vs traditional, conservative, fear-driven reaction, we, too, expend more heat than light. This is where education comes in, the active pursuit of enLIGHTenment, the restless need to know what is true, or at least what passes for truth in a transitional world. There's a reason cartoon balloons use light bulbs to indicate ideas, awakenings, understanding. "Let there be light," it says in Genesis. This is not just the warm, illuminating rays from the sun that allow us to read those cartoons, or do the crossword. That light is more efficiency inside our brains, the opening of doors revealing vistas unimagined in the darkest corners. They are, finally, the rays that show us there's much more work to be done, more efficiency to be sought.
In my own attempt to educate myself, returning to school after many years, I've come to believe that people differ in two basic ways: There are those who prefer sunrise, with its promise of the new, and the fresh and the different; there are those who prefer sunset, with its fading rays, and settled reality, and dimming chance of disturbing revelation to disrupt that which is tenaciously held.
Incandescence is slowly giving way to florescence, the more efficient use of power to produce light. From the French word for flower, or blossom, florescence is the sunrise, the acceptance of new possibility every new dawn. 

Come to the Faire

Long live the King!

Come to the Faire--May 1 on the Oval a chessboard was used to determine the Monarch of this year's Medieval & Renaissance Performers' Guild Faire, the 36th so far. A good time was had by all, with drinking contests, the normal carousing, jousting, madrigal feasting and lively swordplay as the annual Faire came to a satisfying conclusion. Several vendors offered everything from magic wands to period dress, to turkey legs (there's a difference?) The high point of the day, though, was the human chessboard with its array of feisty combatants, all in period dress, hefting swords and truncheons in bold attempts to gain the crown. All very fusty and quite romantic in a parsley sage rosemary & thyme sort of way. I expected to see Launcelot & Guinevere arrive in a chivalric rush at any moment.

The weather finally cooperated, proceeding went on apace, and at last performers chanted home one and all, with a joyous rendition of A Health to the Company: Till next year me hearties...

So here's a health to the company

And one to my lass

Let us drink and be merry all out of one glass

Let us drink and be merry all grief to refrain

For we may and might never all meet here again...

Indeed. Congratulations for a Faire well done.