Hurting / Tuesday notes / Disruptive technologies / Humour? / Lean turned into fat /…

Hurting

Rajeev asked professor Simchi-Levi, who teaches system optimization and has a company producing optimization software, whether the tools are of any practical value (or something to this effect). Levi replied: "Please, this hurts", smiling. He then explained how the optimization software can save any number of millions of dollars. Funny thing, and a good class.

Tuesday notes

Tuesday is way too full of things. Basically, classes from 8 am to 6 pm, and some group work after 6pm, maybe even to 8-9 pm. And then there are things to prepare for Wednesday. It will get easier in mid-March when the some courses end.

Total Care Laundry Service delivered its promise. They picked up my laundry on Monday evening. When I came back from MIT at 10pm on Tuesday, they had already delivered washed and folded clothes at my door. They had even paired my socks. Excellent. Price was $25 for 24 pounds of washed and folded clothes. This service is highly recommendable! Use it, washing your own clothes is not really worth the effort when this kind excellent service is available.

Disruptive technologies

Professor Utterback asked us to think about current products which we will still produce and use in 100 years (like the current light bulbs). Here is my preliminary list, which is rather long.

• Kitchen utensil: forks, knives, spoon, vessels, frying pans, chopsticks
• Some basic tools: axe, screwdriver, scissors, combs, shovels, etc
• Clothing: suits, ties (fortunately not), etc
• Cloth hangers
• Pens, pencils, paper
• Basic furniture: sofas, chairs, tables, beds, etc, futons
• Bicycles
• Walking sticks
• Different bags: shoulder, back, etc
• Basic medication: tylenol, lotions, vitamins
• Needles and strings
• Blackboard and chalk (in universities!)

Humour?

See mr Bush and friends and foes singing and dancing. They are almost as funny as they are in real life. Thanks to Uday for the link.

Lean turned into fat

My lean studying efforts failed due to my stubbornness in using too much time and effort in solving some worthless equations (or actually just doing simple multiplications) for the first ERBA-assignment. In the future, I will just skip similar hard calculation, I will just develope the model and leave it unsolved. I have better things to do, and many of them. But one cannot learn without making mistakes. And because I am still at least a day ahead my assignments, I have no need to worry. But I had some success today, too. My product idea (of an exercise seat for class rooms) received warm laughter in the class. I am a happy camper, since my idea is to have fun and let others have fun too.

Judges deciding what is good science!

A set of chemical manufacturers are suing some historians and their publishers for trying to publish a book on the environmental history in USA. And not only the authors, but also the peer referees, who have supported publishing the book. They claim that the book is bad science and harms the reputations of the companies. This is strange. Not only will judges decide the presidents, but also the value of science. I wonder where this all leads to. See the the article and start to get worried. If this thing goes on, it is even worse that state censorship. Thanks to S for the link.

Who are heroes ?

Professor Apostolakis claimed, that astronauts are heroes, because they travel into space with the Shuttle, whose failure probability is about 1/100. I tend to agree that astronauts are heroes, but in general just doing something dangerous does not make anyone a hero. For example, I would not call BASE-jumpers heroes, nor would I call anyone who has non-safe-sex with a South African prostitute (or any prostitute for that matter, I guess) a hero. So, clearly there is more to being a hero than just taking risk. I would suggest taking risk and somehow contributing to the common good. This works rather well, if we can agree what common good is - but this is incredibly hard. And someone could claim that not all space flights contribute anything to any common good, but are just waste of money and effort (I would not). So, let's consider taking great risks and mitigating risks of others as a criteria for being a hero. I cannot come up with any counter example right away, so I will tentatively accept this definition (it would cover firemen, doctors, nurses, UN peace-corps, Doctor without borders, policemen, etc). You may send you own ideas by email, if you do not have anything better to do with your life. Like being a hero...

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs February 2005".