I speed up* my software development work by keeping an AI code library which includes many of my own programs plus commodity software like RobotBASIC and its examples, ROS, various bookcode, code from and for LEGO, VEX, arduinos, raspberry pis, micro:bits, from repositories like GitHub, etc.
* I am less sure how this impacts code quality. It probably depends upon the source.
If the republicans make themselves sick it serves them right. But they're going to make the rest of us sick along with them. (See my blog of 22 April 2020.)
Again, values are vector quantities. The 10 measures the C-SPAN survey used:
Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative Skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice for All, and Performance in Context
should be considered components of a vector. They can not be combined into some single scalar. Crazy Donald would rank very high in Public Persuasion. He has convinced a great many people to believe complete nonsense. On Moral Authority, on the other hand, he may well rank dead last. In no way do these components somehow cancel or average one another out.
Over the years I've seen several UFOs. About 30 years ago I saw a sphere pretty much directly over Emporia. It was still there as I got home so I was able to get out binoculars. I could not keep them steady on the object but it looked perfectly spherical and with two tiny spheres attached to it one on each side at its equator. The next day the press reported it was a research balloon. No details at all were given. Having launched several research balloons myself I only thought that the shape was not what one would have expected.
In fall of 2020 driving to work in the early morning (just before dawn) on highway 35 I saw a silver square or diamond* over the road ahead of me. I considered pulling over to photograph it with my iPhone but I saw I was almost at my exit (Merchant street). While turning and driving I could not keep it in sight but had some hope I could see it again from my parking lot outside science hall. (only a couple blocks on from the exit.) Unfortunately when I parked it was either gone or behind buildings. Could it have been an aluminized mylar toy balloon? Or a drone? I found nothing in the press.
I had a third sighting perhaps 15 years ago. It was almost the same as my recent highway 35 sighting except that all I saw was a light (or small sphere?) in the sky up ahead. I couldn't make out any detail. Could it have been a child's toy balloon?
* One corner pointed straight up and the opposite corner straight down. There was a (inverted) v shaped cut out of the bottom corner of the square. It looked like two square sheets one on top of the other and not quite in alignment at the bottom. Perhaps hung from a balloon? But very flat and the balloon could not be seen. It was silver and did not seem to move. The weather was calm.
I've been busy doing a spring cleaning, weeding out my research files. In the hope that I won't discard anything of great value I've concentrated especially on my "X-files." Among other things Norman L. Dean thought he had invented an anchorless winch.* Hung as a pendulum the winch did not move as it pulled a load toward it. Dean thought that he had demonstrated new physics, the non simultaneity of action and reaction. In reality the load's contact with the ground serves as the anchor. Inside the winch an asymmetrically oscillating mass, M, first exerts a push on the load, F1, for a time period T1. The load doesn't move provided that F1 is less than the static frictional force needed to move the load across the ground. During this time an impulse F1T1 is delivered to the ground in the direction of F1. This serves as the "anchor." The mass, M, continues to oscillate, now pulling on the load with a force F2 for a time T2. Now the load moves provided that F2 is larger than the static frictional force needed to move it across the surface. F2>F1. F2 delivers an impulse F2T2 to the load and moves it in the direction of F2. The load is given a net momentum in the direction toward the winch while the winch itself remains stationary. (M is oscillating inside the winch.) Conservation of momentum is not violated since a net impulse has been delivered to the ground via frictional forces.
* One reference is Popular Mechanics magazine, September 1961, page 132.
Some of my early robots went through carbon-zinc, alkaline, or nickel-cadmium batteries quite quickly. This was one reason to operate tethered. Modern lithium ion batteries* have allowed me to untether most of my current robots. I have, however, lost one battery due to overcharging and several to undercharging.
* and small microcontrollers
"Memory theories" attempt to tie our personal identity to an enduring entity that is, ultimately, information.* But if quantum theory is correct quantum information is conserved, it is never destroyed.
* As opposed to "body theories" of personal identity. Early Christians, for example, expected people to be resurrected in the flesh.
