Follow-Ups

Often I tell a story to show a snapshot of an idea, but since these are all real people they have continued their lives. Here's what happened to a few of them:

My friend from Jump is in a happy relationship which has lasted over a year. He bought a house, and they happily live together in it.

The man from the fruit stand in Better People never even called me back to say he didn't want to hire me, but I did get a job with one of the better respected computer-related companies in the world. Go figure.

I did in fact almost fail my background check, but not because of all the moving, but because it was a little tough to prove I ever worked for the feds. Crash sorted me out, he's the man.

The bounty hunting team lost. We were carrying the robot live (long story) and the motherboard shorted literally as we placed it on the competition field. We lost the competition but wound up with lots of interested sponsors. Pippin and I lost track of the team after that, he's still being completely absurd and enjoying it.

I'm no longer homeless. My first housemate I lived with for a year. He has a little dog, but it's well trained and well mannered. Now I live in another crazy community, but thankfully I don't have to run it, so I never feel like I have to stop anything from happening.

Being barefoot at my new job is much better tolerated.

I did call Nexus once when I needed a hand. He hung up.

Scavenging never goes out of style, the Torii and my new home both have furniture from the adventures with the feds.

Joat had a baby.

Magpie and Gilby lived together for a whole year. Impressively, nobody wound up getting punched, though there were a few close calls.

Gadget is still the politician, and is happily doing grad research.

Mime got her life together and is now getting licensed to do real estate. She's still boy-crazy, but I feel her taste has improved significantly.

My new meds cause me to bruise all the time now. Hilarity ensues. Related: I did lose the weight again, but I never managed to get my little plant.

3Stack runs the program I ran with the feds now. He's grown a lot in some ways, but is still a little silly.

My grandmother from Rice is fairing poorly, and has trouble remembering a lot now. She's scared, and we're trying to be comforting. My other grandma is comfortable and as happy as she can be, given the circumstances.

I do less breaking and entering now, and mostly scheme about taking over the world with varied success.

The project from Up is put on hold more or less indefinitely but has been absurdly educational.

Drummer's geographical challenges haven't prevented him from getting an extraordinarily respectable series of software jobs.

My friend from Las Vegas and I realized the situation was a little impractical but we're both still good friends and remain in touch.

Vex runs his own company now, where he makes tools that suck less.

Arbor totally still is bitter about that damn burrito. He ran into PJ recently and brought it up.

Firing Squad Society

"You don't have any complicated ethical issues with working on military projects do you?"

"No," I lied, adjusting the hem of my blue interview dress shirt. Somebody in my position doesn't have the privilege to throw interviews. I figured I would make the best pitch I could and then untangle my ethics privately if somebody handed me an offer letter later.

My interviewer stretched out in his chair. He was in his mid-thirties with a wide face and a nice smile. He had bravely served his country for 9 years of active duty before leaving the army to become an engineer.

"I don't have any issue with it myself, I'm a military man, but I know some people do, so I just wanted to ask."

I nodded. There didn't seem to be much else to say.

"If it makes you feel any better," he continued, "a lot of people here say they sleep better when they realize that we don't actually make the bombs, we just make the auto-targeting and delivery systems for them. The actual explosives are manufactured elsewhere."

There was a pause.

"You see, you're not actually killing anybody at this job."

***

Firing squads are a detail of normally five shooters with guns. They are selected to execute a criminal by shooting this criminal at approximately 20 feet away. To help them hit their target a doctor locates the heart of the person being executed and pinning a target on the shirt just above it. The person being executed is normally tied down to a chair.

It is a tradition that one of the shooters be secretly given a gun with a blank in it instead of a gun with a live round. The shooters are aware that one of the rounds is a blank but nobody knows who has been given the blank.

Obviously the odds are incredibly bad of you having the blank bullet. However, the tradition purportedly exists for the purpose to help the conscious of the people who are charged with the task of the execution.

It is also worth noting that the firing squad as a method of execution in criminal cases has all but been outlawed entirely in America. This is, allegedly, because of the number of cases where being shot by four men with 30-30s aiming at a target pinned over your heart from 20 feet away was proving to be not immediately fatal.

I find that pretty impressive personally. Even if you don't quite hit the heart there are still a number of important organs near the heart which dislike hot lead in them enough to kill a person immediately. Modern firearms are more than sufficiently accurate even in rather amateur hands to hit a target 20 feet away.

I am never one to underestimate the stupidity or incompetence of humanity but I am pretty sure in this particular case it is because people have issues killing a person point-blank like that and flinch when they pull the trigger. If you look at the entire setup it is designed around easing the conscious of the executioners (the blank, the fact that in most cases the criminal's face is obscured). It is also designed to make it difficult for a single person to not shoot and feel like they make a difference. When all of the executioners fire at once the last person is left with an overwhelming feeling that the group is firing anyway and that their single choice to fire or to not fire is insignificant.

Essentially, people are dragged into doing things they do not want to do by two illusions: one is the inevitability of the outcome, and secondly is the concept that they, against all odds, are the ones holding the blank, that their efforts are not what did the killing.

***

Same shirt, different day. God knows I'm too broke to have in my possession much of a repertoire of interview clothing.

"You specialize in embedded systems?" the interviewer asked.

"Robotics in particular."

"That's wonderful, we're in need of an engineer for an embedded system for one of our projects."

"Oh?"

"Yes, we need an auto-pilot system to bring pilots to and from their battlefields in the dark."

"And they can't use radar?"

"They are very tired."

"I see."

We chat idly for a few minutes before I pretend to take a re-emerging interest in the project I'd be assigned to.

"About how many g's of force can this system handle?"

"Hrm," my interviewer said, "I think 15 or 20...not sure."

I was floored. I have never heard of a fighter jet pulling more than 9. If wikipedia is to be believed 16gs for a full minute can be fatal.

I looked at the man who I was speaking to and remembered thinking that this man had to be the most willfully ignorant man alive to possibly believe there was any sort of human cargo aboard this vessel. It seemed horribly obvious to me that they were simply designing auto-pilot software which somebody later would integrate into a missile.

My interviewer looked at me quizzically. "What's wrong?"

***

Vex Victim walked along the booths at the conference admiring various creations lined up along the tables. The TALON table naturally drew a crowd.

Vex was in a sense representing the school and so somewhat on his best behavior. He started up an average conversation at the TALON table which eventually turned to

"So does this...military stuff ever bother you?"

"Well," the engineer said, "When you think about it, we just make the robots. What people choose to do with it is their issue."

Vex was speechless for a long second.

"You built a gun on the front!"

***

I'm not here to tell anybody what is or is not an ethical way to live their lives. There are many noble aspects to military work and I have nothing but respect for the selfless sacrifices made of soldiers. Seems a shame that we live in a world where the only people selfless enough to live for anything more than being wrapped up in themselves are statistically the most likely to die. Guess it explains a lot about our society.

Military work has brought us many achievements in science which were pushed through the government funding which was made available to the military. Our road systems, the Internet, and many other things are thanks to the military. If you want to advertise to me that this is why you are doing it I may not partake but I am wholly unlikely to get in your face about it.

But you can go to hell if you're going to look me in the eye and tell me that's not what you're doing. That's an insult to your intelligence, an insult to my intelligence, an insult to the people you will kill, and a slap in the face to whatever God you believe in that you are intentionally doing something you believe is wrong and justifying it by telling yourself it isn't happening. How can you claim to have any sense of morals at all if you simply throw out all the facts which you personally find inconvienent to your life?

***

"Hung over pancakes" are a proud tradition in my house. We don't let anybody drive drunk so we just lay out sleeping bags and pillows on the floor and by the end we have a slumber party. Then the next morning either Magpie or I, depending on who gets up first, makes pancakes.

I stumble in and sit myself down in Magpie's desk chair which has been rolled into the kitchen to make up for our insufficient seating.

Krill takes one look at my face, laughs, and passes me a plate of pancakes. "Morning sunshine."

Somebody pours me a glass of orange juice and I drink it slowly. I'm not really a morning person.

"You alright?" Magpie asks.

"Just thinking..."

"'Bout what?"

"Firing squads."

I guess its a testament to how early it was in the morning or the tolerance of my friends that everybody just accepted this fact and quietly enjoyed their pancakes for a moment.

"Has anybody here ever fired blanks from a gun?"

"Yeah," Hammertime replies as she passes me the maple syrup.

I take the bottle and begin pouring syrup on my food, "Does it kick differently than a live round?"

"Yeah."

"Really differently? Like you can tell the difference?"

She nodded, "You'd really have to want to believe you were firing the other to confuse the two."

Sometimes its embarassing to be female

I was sitting in the lab today working when I overheard the following conversation:

Girl in lab: but our robot looks UGLY
Her project partner: it just has to work
Girl in lab: but more than half of things is how they look! If they don't look good...

On behalf of my sex: I apologize. I don't even have an excuse.

I'm sure she has a good side. In her defense she was a lot more moronic when she was in high school. She's much less rabidly feminist than she use to be, although the irony of seeing her lean over a guy's desk in a low-cut blouse and smiling to get what she wants does amuse me. "Working to break her own path in a man's field" my ass. Put a shirt on and cry me a river.

Its not that I don't enjoy the context myself where showing a little skin is ok, its just unprofessional to use it as an academic advantage. It begs the question "could you make it if you were a guy?"

And its not that I have a problem with the core ideas of what I believe were the original concepts of feminism. I just think somewhere something got revamped and went terribly terribly wrong...for example... I was talking to an old friend of mine who I had fallen out of touch with...guess we can call her "Bit" for this story. She had invited me to join a book club she was running. I like books...the book she was reading sounded somewhat interesting when she explained the premise. I was planning to attend.

Later on I was comatosely sipping my hot chocolate. I don't like coffee but as a resident of New England I'm somehow obligated to buy Dunkin Donuts products, so I guess this is what happens. It does wake me up a little...blood sugar I guess. Maybe its just a good placebo. I don't care: it works.

Anyway, so drinking my hot chocolate catching up with another old friend...we can call her Purple when Bit comes up and the two of them start about the book club...which is apparently the entitled "Feminist Science Fiction Book Club."

Pika: Oh man, no, you didn't tell me about that part
Bit: Its not like that! Its just a book with a female main character!
Pika: Then...why is a feminst book club reading it if it isn't a feminst book?

My friend who was the victim of the Vex parts on his senior project was sitting at the table too and laughing kinda quietly by this point. Purple and Bit look at him briefly and then the topic was dropped.

I mean, seriously? How does having a female main character make a book feminist? Does that make 12th Night a feminist book? Is the Iliad a feminist book? Its about the Trojan War...and the Trojan war is about Helen...right? Hey...Lolita is about a girl right?

And while I'm on a good rant about this: fuck affirmative action for women.

All of my negative sexist verbal sparring experiences in my career and educational experience have at some point included the following insult: "You never would have ___ if you were a guy." Fill it in with anything you want, I wouldn't have had the internship I had, I wouldn't have gotten into this university, I wouldn't have recieved the scholarship I did, I wouldn't have gotten (insert award name here), I wouldn't have the job offers I had, I wouldn't have this I wouldn't have that.

Here is the worst part: there isn't a lot you can say to that because, well, thanks to affirmative action, it could technically be true. Congradulations: you have sucessfully coined a loophole which will continue to call into question the merit of any sign of recognition any female recieves for her good work.

Many universities really want to boast x% women, and some are letting standards slide to do it. Some schools publically admit to it.

This problem is so bad that I don't even blame my interviewers or professors for being a little extra skeptical of me because I'm female. How can they tell at first glance that I'm not just one of the girls who has been handed from outreach program to outreach program up through middle school and then admitted because I was pretty close to good enough and rounded out some quota nicely? One of those girls with no real desire for engineering at all? The discipline has been dressed up in these outreach programs, they try to make it look fun, easy, and even glamorous. When it comes down to the real work... well...its work. It isn't always fun. That's just reality. A lot of women were herded in not really realizing that...not given any real exposure to the field...and nobody cares. The outreach program can brag how many female engineers it put into college, the school can boast a high quota of women enrolled. Nobody seems to notice the girls who might not graduate on time because they wound up changing majors...two...three times when they found out that none of it was quite as advertized.

Don't get me wrong: I volunteer in many engineering outreach programs myself. Many of them are good, but you have to judge program to program.

Then there are the spoiled brats who believe that doing something with two X chromosomes instead of one is a landmark of itself. These are the women who will tell you the names and dates of things such as the first spacewalk done by a female, the first female congressperson...

Are you saying women can not compete as equals to men in intellectual and political pursuits? That women need their own special set of firsts and records because they can't cut it competing with the men? The only parallel to that I can think of are the Special Olympics.

...And people say I'm sexist.

Additionally, while most of the women who really don't belong in engineering do get a different major by the time they are upperclassmen the sterotypes set by the underclassmen still permeiate the environment. Now you have the worst of both worlds: the graduating percentage of females in my major at my university hovering at a scrawny 5% with the lurking full dose of skepticism inspired by all the girls who flooded the lower classes out then left.

Why do "feminists" and politicians feel a need to hand sexist persons more ammunition to continue to make things worse? Why do they continue to push a system which make people who wouldn't normally be sexist skeptical of the professional skills of women candidates due to a flooding of underqualified candidates admitted to make some quota? The policy shows a total disconnect from reality and lack of research into the realities of the workplace and academic life. I don't know if the same thing is true of minorities who also have affirmative action programs: but I sure hope it isn't. Its a pretty rotten situation to be in.

Really talented women will find their own path. You can show women some of the opportunities available, but you can't just create excellent female engineers by declaring that a certain percentage of the accepted students should be female.

I'm sick of the ways people use Vex parts around here

See? Only had this a few hours and already two rants. My poor friends...put up with this for so many years...

Vex parts are an infestation in this school.

I've got a friend in a lab upstairs. His "senior project" is sitting near his desk. I think he did a second one. He's a brilliant guy. He did the electronics on that project, and they're absolutely beautiful. I'd hate to think that he has this project representing him forever and ever, because his partner did such a bad job on the mechanical side that it turned the whole project into a total piece of shit.

The machining is mediocre...well maybe that's being a little generous. By "mediocre" I mean to say that somebody waved a ruler somewhat in the vicinity of some stock tube aluminum and then threw this stock in a bandsaw. Then it was bolted together. I estimate each arm weighs at least a few pounds and is about a foot long on each of two links. These arms support a several pound body.

And its moved with Vex sprockets and chain. I'm sorry what? These little plastic pieces of shit? The ones that came out of a box of children's toys? You put those on a professional project and expect to be taken seriously?

These people spend tens of thousands of dollars on classes every year and sit through countless hours of lectures and homework. Then they come to their senior project. They could calculate the forces required and spec out proper parts... just like they spent four years training to do...

...or they could pick up some pieces from children's toys and bolt them on, call it a day, and stand there stunned when it doesn't work.

Another thing I can not stand is when people demolish Vex aluminum because they are too lazy to cut their own scrap pieces. They bend it up...rip it, break it...whatever...take a rather Its pretty absurdly expensive stuff to treat it like scrap. Its just not cost-effective. Nobody cares though, because its handy and its "not their money." (God, that's another rant in itself: the words "its not my money" make my blood boil.) This stuff gets picked up by students (they never buy it themselves) and just chucked on...everything.

I've fielded plywood robots. Fuck, I've fielded two competitive robots with cardboard on them with pride. But I was pretty ashamed to stand next to a robot with Vex used on it as temp scrap on it and said "yeah, that's ours."

That said, I'm not ashamed of my team, those kids are great. I wish I hadn't gotten the flu twice that competitive season so I could have spent more time mentoring them. They are really good kids. I'm proud of them.

I'm pretty not-proud though of that action. That action was basically somebody saying "well, I'm feeling pretty lazy right now so instead of slicing up 25 cents worth of stock aluminum on the bandsaw and putting a hole in it with a cordless drill I'm going to bend a rather expensive piece of metal so it will never be usable again." I'm definitely not proud that somebody did that particular behavior. S/he is still a good person, but s/he is still acting like a moron.

At least my high school kids? They'll admit they were being lazy when you call them on it and say sorry.

Some of the kids here? They just don't give a fuck. These people are going to make equipment which people's lives depend on: cars, tanks, airplanes, machinery, medical devices...the list goes on. You're going to spec those out right? You're going to suddenly care when you graduate and start doing your job right when you never did as an undergrad?

Nah, lets go get some kid's toys.