(no subject)
Well first to say is, obviously, my resolution has been broken.
I just got too much schoolwork in too short a period of time.
And that transmission project was just terrible. I mean, the work that I put out was good. It's more of the fact that I wanted to use a particular kind of setup of gears, and I had to go through nearly every combination of them only to find that no combination could possibly work. So, I had to use the same setup everybody else did.
But maybe Sprott wanted things like that.
As it reflects in my previous writing, resolution or not my posts were boring and uninformative.
Entirely the opposite of my intention for writing in this journal.
I find myself always contemplating things in areas of study or fields in which I am not entirely read in. I'm probably curious about things like that for the very fact that I am not well-read in the subject. Ethics has always been something of a curiosity to me, and something last night brought it up in my mind.
Every time I drive down 24th street at night while heading home, I will turn on my left blinker. However, I do not change lanes. Even if another car is next to me, or behind me, and even if it is a cop car. Why? Because this is where I killed another living being, years ago, when I struck a dog with my car.
As I was recalling this very instance while driving last night, two moths flew in from the darkness and disappeared into the beam of my headlight. Undoubtedly, they were stuck by the car and killed. Yet, I do not care that they were.
So, I ponder why this is: why do I care for the dog, yet not for the moths?
Is it because I know it is in the moth's nature to fly towards light?
Is it because the moths could never do things like sit, roll over, and play dead?
Is it because I myself place no value in the moths that the dog is inherently more "valuable"?
And how is "value" appraised in a matter like this?
How the phrase, "My car has killed something"
feels different from "My car has killed an insect"
Is it because insects have overwhelming numbers?
Is it because dogs take years to grow up?
Really, it is every part of that, and every combination of those parts.
So to say, it is holistic, in that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
But to me, ethics seems like it can be dangerously arbitrary and readily construed, much like statistics.
That is to say, a viewpoint can be instantly changed if some particular element is changed, removed, or introduced.
Which is to say (again), what fascinates me but unsettles me most about ethics is that it isn't a matter of principle and absolute right and wrong, but of that of perception, preference, and habit.
And it also unsettles me when, in this light, I think of my own ethics.
So the spring semester is over, and summer will start soon. I'm going to have Sprott in the summer for the next series of System Design. Why in the summer? Because otherwise I'd end up having to take it with professor Eke (the woman I had for Dynamics and MATLAB Programming), and I am NOT going to do that again. I'm also planning to take the EiT (Engineer in Training) test next fall, so I ought to prepare for that during the summer.
I've also got to start brain-storming on ideas for a senior project. I, and a group of fellow engineers, must design and create something. Most of the gear-heads in the M.E. program work on buggies, and baha cars. Some groups do things with alternative energy, such as solar collectors. One group made an adapter for DeWalt tools, so that you can operate the tool (via cable to an outlet) and charge the battery at the same time
I'm not sure what I want to make, but I've certainly got ideas.
I'm going to gear my specialty towards mechatronics, which is essentially fundamental control for robotics. Behavior stuff will still need to be learned later on. However I've always been fascinated with the idea of motion, and biomimicry. More to the point: I want to make robotic limbs and joints that operate with tension and compression along the structure rather than servo-motors at each joint. That is, I want to make a robotic assembly that moves by the same principle we do: the exchange/alternating of tension and compression, as is seen in muscles.
But therein lies another difficulty: funding. The group must fund its project either with its own money, or with a sponsor. If the group is sponsored, then intellectual property rights belong to whomever funds it (more fun in ethics!).
So my main thing with this project is...
1. I want to work on something relevant to my interests.
2. It has to be something fun/neat.
3. It has to be something useful and marketable.
Which led me to another though: airsoft guns.
I could possibly design a set of guns, or a single guns, and see if any local airsoft locations (like Airsoft Extreme) would be interested.
I'd better see what they think fairly soon...
Even though that's a year away, a year is ultimately not a long time.
But perhaps that's just my perception of time.
In the immediate moment though, summer has started, and I must also tend to my mom's house while she is away.
By having friends over, of course.
And, here's goodbye to meaningless every-day posts that just catalog my actions, and here's to meaningful posts that may stir a thought in its readers.
I just got too much schoolwork in too short a period of time.
And that transmission project was just terrible. I mean, the work that I put out was good. It's more of the fact that I wanted to use a particular kind of setup of gears, and I had to go through nearly every combination of them only to find that no combination could possibly work. So, I had to use the same setup everybody else did.
But maybe Sprott wanted things like that.
As it reflects in my previous writing, resolution or not my posts were boring and uninformative.
Entirely the opposite of my intention for writing in this journal.
I find myself always contemplating things in areas of study or fields in which I am not entirely read in. I'm probably curious about things like that for the very fact that I am not well-read in the subject. Ethics has always been something of a curiosity to me, and something last night brought it up in my mind.
Every time I drive down 24th street at night while heading home, I will turn on my left blinker. However, I do not change lanes. Even if another car is next to me, or behind me, and even if it is a cop car. Why? Because this is where I killed another living being, years ago, when I struck a dog with my car.
As I was recalling this very instance while driving last night, two moths flew in from the darkness and disappeared into the beam of my headlight. Undoubtedly, they were stuck by the car and killed. Yet, I do not care that they were.
So, I ponder why this is: why do I care for the dog, yet not for the moths?
Is it because I know it is in the moth's nature to fly towards light?
Is it because the moths could never do things like sit, roll over, and play dead?
Is it because I myself place no value in the moths that the dog is inherently more "valuable"?
And how is "value" appraised in a matter like this?
How the phrase, "My car has killed something"
feels different from "My car has killed an insect"
Is it because insects have overwhelming numbers?
Is it because dogs take years to grow up?
Really, it is every part of that, and every combination of those parts.
So to say, it is holistic, in that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
But to me, ethics seems like it can be dangerously arbitrary and readily construed, much like statistics.
That is to say, a viewpoint can be instantly changed if some particular element is changed, removed, or introduced.
Which is to say (again), what fascinates me but unsettles me most about ethics is that it isn't a matter of principle and absolute right and wrong, but of that of perception, preference, and habit.
And it also unsettles me when, in this light, I think of my own ethics.
So the spring semester is over, and summer will start soon. I'm going to have Sprott in the summer for the next series of System Design. Why in the summer? Because otherwise I'd end up having to take it with professor Eke (the woman I had for Dynamics and MATLAB Programming), and I am NOT going to do that again. I'm also planning to take the EiT (Engineer in Training) test next fall, so I ought to prepare for that during the summer.
I've also got to start brain-storming on ideas for a senior project. I, and a group of fellow engineers, must design and create something. Most of the gear-heads in the M.E. program work on buggies, and baha cars. Some groups do things with alternative energy, such as solar collectors. One group made an adapter for DeWalt tools, so that you can operate the tool (via cable to an outlet) and charge the battery at the same time
I'm not sure what I want to make, but I've certainly got ideas.
I'm going to gear my specialty towards mechatronics, which is essentially fundamental control for robotics. Behavior stuff will still need to be learned later on. However I've always been fascinated with the idea of motion, and biomimicry. More to the point: I want to make robotic limbs and joints that operate with tension and compression along the structure rather than servo-motors at each joint. That is, I want to make a robotic assembly that moves by the same principle we do: the exchange/alternating of tension and compression, as is seen in muscles.
But therein lies another difficulty: funding. The group must fund its project either with its own money, or with a sponsor. If the group is sponsored, then intellectual property rights belong to whomever funds it (more fun in ethics!).
So my main thing with this project is...
1. I want to work on something relevant to my interests.
2. It has to be something fun/neat.
3. It has to be something useful and marketable.
Which led me to another though: airsoft guns.
I could possibly design a set of guns, or a single guns, and see if any local airsoft locations (like Airsoft Extreme) would be interested.
I'd better see what they think fairly soon...
Even though that's a year away, a year is ultimately not a long time.
But perhaps that's just my perception of time.
In the immediate moment though, summer has started, and I must also tend to my mom's house while she is away.
By having friends over, of course.
And, here's goodbye to meaningless every-day posts that just catalog my actions, and here's to meaningful posts that may stir a thought in its readers.