Matt's Insistence

At Matt's insistence, which I consider a good thing, I am writing a blog. It isn't going to be about much, `cause I can't think of anything to say right now. There isn't going to be much in the way of gushy sentimentality about Jessica today. I think I'll reserve most of that for her alone. Although, here's a picture of us from a party last Saturday. Awww..

I got back from New York the day of the party, having spent a quiet Halloween night in Manhattan. John and Alison were very kind to put me up in their apartment in Harlem for the night. It was a crazy night of pizza, The Omen, and wearing a lampshade on one's head. During the trip, I saw a friend from long ago who I hadn't seen in nine years. Lori Yamato, who was in most of my classes from third grade to the end of high school, is alive and kicking in New York. She went to NYU and is now going to get a PhD in something (German philosophy?). It was cool to run into her and hear how things had been.

By the way, the workshop I went to was about an autonomous ocean sampling network using underwater torpedo-shaped robots. They need to do things like navigate the chaotic seas using small subtle onboard controls. The analogy with space probes navigating the chaotic gravitational field of the solar system is one reason I was there presenting my work. Mathematically the problems are similar and similar concepts and computational tools can be brought to bear on them both.

Speaking of the solar system, seems one of the twin Voyager probes may have left the solar system, although there is debate about exactly where the solar system ends and interstellar space begins. The next milestone will be when Voyager reaches another star system, which will be about 40,000 years from now.

On the philosophical side, Stephen Thrasher wonders whether anyone really debates. Do people approach a question with an open mind and look at both sides, or have they made up their minds from the beginning? For example, questions of faith and morality, or which religion is the true one, if there is a true one. Can such questions be answered by an open mind?

A related question is, Are colleges preparing adults to debate issues before coming to conclusions, or do they simply indoctrinate? Before one debates, one has to have a firm foundation of what brilliant minds and faithful co-religionists have thought and done. My impression is that many young people go into a "debate" about an issue with a fuzzy emotional attachment to one side or the other. Their minds are closed. And that is no way to settle an issue. St. Paul warned of something like this. And the answer is to be firmly rooted in known truths, truths which the faithful wrote down
long ago.