A Bachelor’s Degree But No Job – Shouldn’t Colleges Stand Behind their Product?

August 3, 2009 by Thomas / 27 Comments

We see where a New York woman has taken the extraordinary step of suing the college where she earned her bachelor’s degree. Trina Thompson, 27, recently filed a lawsuit against Monroe College seeking to recover the $70,000 she spent on tuition.

Thompson was awarded a degree last April in information technology. She is suing the school based on her failure to attain employment in her field of study, insisting that the college’s Office of Career Advancement did not provide her with the leads and career advice the school had promised.

According to her mother, Thompson is “very angry at her current situation.” Indeed, being without work and with student loans now coming due, Thompson finds herself in a real predicament.

Expected Response

Not too surprisingly, Monroe College took strong exception to being sued on such grounds. College spokesman Gary Axelbank used very strong language in responding to the claim, stating that suit was “completely without merit” and did not deserve further consideration.

We suspect that the response of many other school spokespeople would be similar if their school were to be served with such a legal claim. We also have to say that Axelbank is essentially right on legal grounds.

Certainly a college cannot be held liable simply because one of its graduates cannot find employment. Even if the student successfully completed her academic program and was awarded a diploma, a degree is not a job guarantee, certainly not in this job market.

But while Monroe’s response might be expected, it is interesting to note that there are colleges who take this matter to heart. In fact, one small college in Maine, Thomas College, has what it calls its “Thomas Promise.”

Yes, this school stands behind the education it provides and insists that it will help graduates find a job in their profession. And the school backs it up with real dollars.

The Promise

Thomas College is in Waterville, Maine, sharing the town with one of the nation’s top small liberal arts schools, Colby College. For ten years now Thomas has made a special promise to its graduates: a guaranteed job after graduation.

And we are not talking about summer fill in, part-time work. We mean a real job in the student’s chosen field of study.

If a student is unable to find a job by graduation, he or she continues to meet with a college career advisor to find a permanent job. If the student does not find such a job within six months of graduation, then Thomas College will pay the first year of the student’s subsidized federal loans or until they find employment, whichever comes first.

Perhaps even more amazingly, if a graduate finds employment but does not like their chosen profession, he or she may return to Thomas to study tuition-free. The offer includes the costs of up to two additional undergraduate years to take more courses or half of the graduate courses required to complete a Master’s degree program.

The school does set forth two criteria that students must meet to be eligible. You do have to earn at least a 2.75 grade point average and you must, during your undergraduate years at school, do an internship.

Both requirements make sense. You cannot simply skate by, you need to show decent academic progress. And doing an internship just might be one of the most valuable aspects of any college program as it gives students first hand experience working in their chosen field.

Colleges Should Deliver the Goods

The promise represents an amazing commitment but clearly the school works hard on behalf of graduates. Thomas has a placement rate of better than 90% for the ten years of the program. In 2008, in a normal job market year, the school’s placement rate was 96 percent.

Of course, Maine is a bit unusual as only one in three Mainers has a college degree. So, graduates certainly have enormous advantages when it comes to applying for work.

Though the school is the only one we know of making such promise, the steps taken by Thomas are definitely more in line with what one would expect if colleges were to operate within the business sector. Standing behind a product is something we have come to expect especially if that product represents a significant purchase dollar-wise.

Monroe might be okay with its response in a legal sense. And it may be a bit unfair to pass any judgment on the suit; certainly it must be a collaborative effort between the student and the school when it comes to the job search process and we cannot fairly comment on the efforts made by the plaintiff.

But given the cost of a college education, the overall matter deserves serious thought. In fact, we think that it is time that every school stands behind the product it delivers.

‘Teacher Man’ Frank McCourt – Role Model for those Entering Education Profession

July 31, 2009 by Thomas / 0 Comments

The latest Internet spin-off site, The Awl, has noted that 2009 is well on its way to being a record year for a few mythical figures: the Rain Gods and the Grim Reaper.

Here in the northeast we cannot quibble. It has been a phenomenal year for the Rain Gods.

And nationally the death toll seems to be matching serve. Without a doubt, after the recent passings of Michael Jackson, Walter Cronkite and Frank McCourt, it would seem that 2009 is shaping up to be an phenomenal year for the Grim Reaper as well.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Author and Teacher

While the deaths of Jackson and Cronkite have dominated the news cycles, the passing of McCourt surely ranks as another noteworthy loss. The author of Angela’s Ashes earned literary stardom late in life, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for his heartfelt memoir of his Irish-Catholic upbringing.

The author was also a teacher who plied his trade in New York. McCourt later revealed some great tales regarding that time in his life in yet another strong work, Teacher Man.

One of the most referred to stories in the book features the true brilliance that embodies McCourt and the best of the teaching profession: the ability to make a relevant lesson plan. In this instance, McCourt returns to his students some of the excuse notices that he has received, the very notes they forged in an effort to pull the wool over the old man’s eyes.

Understanding that following up on such notes would require near 24-hour-a-day vigilance, he instead collects the notes before one day he has an epiphany. Though forged, the notes represented a piece of creative writing from his charges, a treasure trove of fiction and fantasy that could serve as a catalyst to some great writing.

Teacher Extraordinaire

One day, McCourt typed out roughly a dozen of the notes he had received and distributed them to his senior classes. After the students read them silently, McCourt informed them they were about to become the first class to “study the art of the excuse note.”

He tells them one day they may well need to construct excuse notes for their own children. McCourt instructs them:

“Imagine you have a 15-year-old who needs an excuse for falling behind in English. Let it rip.”

The results were so astonishing, a “rhapsody of excuses” so brilliant, so creative, and so exciting that even the students liked what they were doing. They wanted more. McCourt was able to deliver once again.

He asked them to write excuse notes of mythical proportions: ‘An Excuse Note from Adam to God’ or ‘An Excuse Note from Eve to God.’ Not only did students come to class the next day with their homework done, they had taken the lead, one bringing in Lucifer and another young lady who simply claimed she was tired of God sticking his nose into other people’s business.

Those notes promptly created heated discussions of guilt and sinfulness and that perhaps God could “have been more understanding of the plight of the first man and woman.” So enthralled were the students that McCourt kept going, throwing other names up on the blackboard, and asking the students to write a good excuse note for some historical figures: Eva Braun, Judas, Attila the Hun, Lee Harvey Oswald and Al Capone.

Not too surprisingly, at that point one student wanted to know if McCourt could put the names of certain teachers on the board.

If You Are Thinking of Teaching

The story reveals a special trait that great teachers embody: a full understanding that to get students interested, one first has to first reach them where they are at.

If he could, he had the chance to do great things, to then take them someplace they would never have gone on their own. Ultimately, McCourt doesn’t just get these kids to review the notes they forged (oh my, what lessons were never discussed), he takes them on the creative journey of a lifetime.

For those considering teaching as a profession, Teacher Man is a must read. The author certainly was someone to emulate.

And with McCourt’s passing, one can’t help but wonder how his charges might handle this news, what they might pen for a note these days. No doubt, many would seek to chastise the Grim Reaper for taking their ‘teacher man’ so soon.

Swearing, Make that Good Old-Fashioned Cussin’, Can Be Good Therapy

July 15, 2009 by Thomas / 0 Comments

At long last the folks at LiveScience have confirmed what many of us have known for a long time. Swearing, if not good for the soul, at least makes our pain and suffering more tolerable.

But unlike what I was taught, that instead of keeping those colorful no-nos locked up and in its place you should utter some other more appropriate phrase, something like, OH FUDGE or CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, well that was just plain wrong. It seems that it takes the real thing, one of those down and dirty expletives that your mother best never hear to make the pain and suffering truly more tolerable.

Universal Human Linguistic Trait

Yes, it seems that when one stubs their toe, it matters not if we are American, British or some other nationality. It is essentially a reflexive matter – the pain causes us to promptly mutter a curse word that instinctively makes it easier to withstand the pain we have been so blessed to receive.

In connecting the uttering of a cuss word to the actual physical experience of pain, the researchers noted that the reactive phrase emerges from our emotional brain center. Whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain, a truly blistering expletive comes forth from the right side of the brain.

The researchers began with a supposition that did prove false. The initial idea was that swearing was more of an exaggerating effect that sought to overstate the severity of the pain striking the recipient. Because of that assumption, the researchers thought that swearing would lessen a person’s tolerance.

Not so.

The Experiment

According to LiveScience, the results were based on the following experiment:

The researchers enlisted 64 undergraduate volunteers and had them submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice. The experiment was then repeated with the volunteer repeating a more common word that they would use to describe a table.

The surprising result?

Contrary to what the researcher expected, the volunteers kept their hands submerged longer while repeating the swear word.

Accordingly, the researchers surmise that swearing triggers the body’s natural “fight-or-flight” response and therefore allows for an increase in pain tolerance. Ultimately, the belief is that swearing may increase aggression (seen in accelerated heart rates) and downplays weakness to appear stronger or more macho.

Just Let It Fly

So if you stub that toe or more to the point, if you have to stick your hands in ice cold water for a really long time, don’t utter some ordinary word like fudge or table. Not if you want to reduce your pain and suffering.

Instead, just let those cuss words roll off, hard and fast and as nasty you can fire them. It seems, it is in fact, good therapy.

Just as long as your mother doesn’t hear you.

MIT’s Charles Guan on Constructing the LOLrioKart and Electric Vehicle Technology

July 8, 2009 by Thomas / 0 Comments

Regular readers of “The Digital Student Blog” know first hand our fondness for technology. That is why we were so smitten with Charles Guan’s LOLrioKart, the electric powered shopping cart that has been seen tooling over the asphalt in Cambridge.

After learning about the cart at Gizmodo, we had to call our readers’ attention to Guan’s whimsical attempt to strap a set of large nickel cadmium batteries and a massive brushless motor to a derelict shopping cart. But our own fascination with technology and moving vehicles had us yearning for more – we simply had to hear firsthand from the creator himself.

So we spent some time with Charles, he of the web site Equals Zero with URL etotheipiplusone.net (yes, that’s Euler’s Identity buried in his call letters), discussing his recent fame, the MIT campus culture and his desire to construct something, anything when given such wonderful parts. We think you will enjoy some of the lessons Charles has learned from constructing the LOLrioKart including dealing with steering slop, his Fred Flinstone braking system and the initial construction of a vehicle featuring only two speeds, zero and fast.

The folks at Gizmodo gave you some great publicity but they also called you a nerd on their site (seeing a motorized shopping cart with a nerd inside tooling around on the street). Are you OK with that, I mean their site is read by somewhere near a gazillion readers?

Pop culture comes up with new ways to describe “someone smarter or craftier than you” every once in a while, but the classics seem to be ‘nerd’ and ‘geek’. Besides the occasional (and inevitable) grade school hijinks, I don’t recall ever really being victimized or shunned when referred to in that fashion. Part of getting over that is acknowledging the reality of the game – that what you do or who you are is not what the majority of people are used to. It’s useless to be sensitive about every descriptive term that comes your way, especially since they evolve so quickly, and people are multifaceted enough that anyone could come up with a word and pretend it’s derogatory or obscene. I mean, just take a look at the sheer number words that we have turned into sexual slang.

Speaking of which, just make sure you’re careful to not call someone a dork. In reality, you are indicating that they are a whale penis. Whales tend to be larger than you in every single way. I’ve been unwittingly complimented in this fashion many times.

Just so we know, what in your eyes is the difference between a geek and a nerd – does it have anything to do with the desire to strap technology to something that moves?

I have never really discerned between ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’. The running joke between my friends years ago was that a geek was someone skilled or passionate in a specific, tangible field of interest or hobby – computer geek, band geek, robot geek, etc. the list goes on. We sort of chose to designate “nerds” as being the underclass – those who are incredibly, almost frighteningly smart, but in a purely academic sense.

This definition is clearly not the universal one, some may argue it’s the exact reverse, but you know what? I don’t really care. Labeling me as one thing or another doesn’t really impact how I do things, and it shouldn’t affect you either.

Can you talk a bit about your first “attempt to strap a massive brushless motor to something?” I believe you called the electric vehicle: Snuffles the First?

Back in the summer of 2007, I came back from a trip to China with what I considered at the time to be “exotic equipment” – that is, brushless motors, precision-made actuators, lithium batteries, etc. The stuff that R/C hobbyists used to drop big money on but is now incredibly affordable, except my version of “affordable” was an order of magnitude or two lower. Keep in mind that for years before this I’d been hacking together robots with cordless drill, remote control toy, appliance, and other random parts, so this was pretty damned exciting.

One of these “exotic” parts was a large model airplane electric motor. Better-made equivalents from the depths of Germany and Switzerland are used to fly electric models with wingspans of 20 or more feet. Absolutely enormous. I didn’t really have anything that large (or really anything) to fly, so I sort of mulled over it wondering what I should do.

I frequented an area flea market, naturally to search for prospective robot parts. One of the usual toy vendors that day had a small electric scooter – the Sharper Image ElectricX2, roughly Razor scooter sized. Needless to say, when I saw this thing, the proverbial light bulb probably went off with enough intensity to start fusing hydrogen. It was totally trashed, the batteries were gone (and the guy had no charger, manual, or other support equipment), so I got it for a few bucks.

The first thing I did when I got home was tear everything down for inspection. When I discovered that the airplane motor could swap into the stock scooter motor’s place with minimal modification, it was pretty much on.

I kept all the build reports for that scooter on my website if you want to browse through it.

How successful would you categorize that endeavor?

While the execution was shaky – literally, because I didn’t have access to machine tools like I do now, it was absolutely a success in how much it taught me about Electric Vehicle technology. Stuff like what batteries would work the best, what motor controllers, and places to mount components. Spec-ing out these things for an EV is a lot different than for a combat robot. It was what threw me into the world of EV and hybrid technology that I’m sort of pursuing now.

Since the scooter was actually wired up and finished a few days before I moved to Massachusetts, I brought it along with me to campus. It was hilarious, and a big hit with the other frosh. People never really expected an electric scooter to kick them off like that.

The other way it was a success was that it landed me my first (and still ongoing) on-campus job as an undergraduate research assistant for Smart Cities. They posted an opening for a team that will be designing and building a light electric vehicle, a (street-legal, Vespa-style) electric scooter. Vespa…Razor… close enough, right?

Part of what I enjoy about engineering is the degree to which you can engage yourself in learning a new skill. You HAVE to DO it. It’s not something that can be read out of a book and repeated. If you measure success by how much you have improved your condition, then Snuffles the First was one hell of an accomplishment in that it taught me things which I can’t get from just sitting in class.

From your site I gathered the Nickel Cadmium batteries powering the LOLrioKart are not your ordinary flashlight batteries. How powerful are these?

The large-format NiCd cells I ended up using in LOLrioKart were donations to our club from the Solar Electric Vehicle Team years ago. They were pretty tired batteries. Each pack comprises 11 cells, for a nameplate voltage of 13.2 volts. Problem is that nickel batteries are prone to developing internal crystalline parasitic structures that cause quick self-discharge, so many of the cells were just plain dead. I used a procedure called “zapping” to revive them. It pretty much boils down to injecting a massive high voltage and current spike into the battery in an instant, such that the crystals just vaporize.

Kind of like a heart defibrillator, except the “vaporize” part.

When new, big NiCds like this can easily dump a thousand amps in an instant and maybe a hundred or two amps for a while. For the uninitiated, 1,000 amps at 54 volts (the voltage of LOLrioKart’s 4 packs when charged), is 54,000 watts, which is very roughly the same power consumption as a thousand 60 watt household light bulbs, or about 72 electrical HP, if it were actually doing something useful.

Note that “instantaneous” is the key here. It takes only about 500 watts to keep the kart cruising at a constant speed. It only takes about 6-10 horsepower to keep a *real car* cruising at a constant highway speed, on flat ground.

Realistically, I think the cells have deteriorated to the point of only being able to burst-discharge a few hundred amps. Still not something you want to drop a wrench across. I really don’t have proper facilities to take care of batteries this large (chargers and battery managing equipment get very expensive at this scale), so all I’ve been able to do is charge and discharge them slowly – which doesn’t really help with reviving them all the way, since fast charge and discharge cycling is what helps batteries stop being stale. Regardless, the rest of my electrical system will not handle the cells at full flow.

So, if Ahmadinejad had access to these Iran probably still could not go nuclear?

Ahmadinejad could probably use one or two to power his lights in case he has to go hide somewhere, but he’ll need a few hundred thousand more if he actually wants to kick a reactor into shape with them.

What was the impetus for the name, LOLrioKart? Where there any other names that you seriously considered?

It was incredibly spontaneous. I had no idea how the project even spawned, but the name ‘LOLrioKart’ was the first and only name, inspired of course by the MarioKart games. Adding the scrambled syllable takes after the classic internet meme of “lollifying” things. You may have heard of “LOLlerskates”, “ROFLcopter”, “LMAOplane”, et al. from a few years back. That, too, was sort of
spur-of-the-moment.

How much practice did it take to be able to drive that puppy? In the video you make it look easy. Isn’t the center of gravity a tad high with you inside?

When you’re the builder and overseer of something, you kind of naturally get used to it due to being constantly with the construction and testing of the project. Piloting the kart during test runs wasn’t all that difficult when it was under control, but there were definitely a few moments where I thought somebody else was going to have to call home.

The kart’s center of gravity is actually very close to the ground. The battery pack in total weighs about 120 pounds, and it is all in a solid mass that is 3 inches above the ground. The motor and transmission in the back add another 30 pounds that isn’t much higher. I am not a heavy person, so sitting on top of all that probably raises the CoG only a few inches above the wheels. The kart does have substantial tilt when cornering at high speed due to the tires compressing, which amplifies the “I am about to roll over and die” effect.

How about the steering mechanism?

The kart steering is a simple “drag link” system commonly used on go-karts, except more aluminum-y. There’s no rack and pinion or hydraulics. It’s a simple mechanical linkage that transmits steering wheel movement one-for-one to the wheels. This means it’s very squirrely on the handling, and I had a pretty bad problem with slop in the whole steering shaft on an earlier build of the front end. This slop would cause the front wheels to not match the steering wheel angle often up to +/- 5 degrees. That doesn’t sound like much, but now just driving your car pretty fast and suddenly twitching the steering wheel a quarter turn. Then a quarter turn back. Not something you’d want on a busy street.

How do you actually stop the kart?

The short answer is that I stop it by willpower alone. Originally, I designed in a set of mechanical, cable-actuated band brakes for the front wheels. Electric motors have this cool feature that you can use them as electric brakes, and at the same time capture power back into your batteries. This is known as “regenerative braking”, and all the cool electric trains and hybrid cars do it. Because of this, I already had a really big brake on the rear axle – the drive motor. Adding a regular “sprocket brake” on it, like most simple karts have, was just redundant.

Problem was that these band brakes I spec’d out were for children’s toy electric scooters. The kind that go about 5 miles per hour. Long story short, they sort of vaporized on the first stop. I now know that you can get disc brake packages for mountain bikes and larger electric scooters. Guess what is coming in the mail soon?

So firing this baby up was truly a walk on the wild side?

The culmination of all of these safety non-features is that at one point in time I had a brakeless kart with a completely loose and sloppy steering linkage that was capable of exactly two speeds – zero and fast. I had recently blown a custom motor controller that I had built, and out of frustration, put the kart on “contactor control”. That’s just a very fancy way of saying “touch the battery wires to the motor.” On all 54 volts, the thing would kick up and wheelie on start and hold the front end in the air for two seconds, reaching some absurd speed in the meantime. After which, of course, I couldn’t really *STOP* the thing, and it would occasionally take off in a only slightly tangential path due to the steering slop. To slow that version, I would either just Flintstone it or perform an analogous maneuver that airliners use when approaching a runway and need to burn off speed – make little S-turns.

But no major crashes to this point?

The closest that I ever came to a real crash was when I made the mistake of closing the circuit making a turn. When the front end of the kart is off the ground, the steering is mysteriously missing. As soon as it crashes back down, of course, I am still attempting to be in the apex of a turn. The combination is that I sort of take a path midway between the two, which conveniently led to a curbside. It was a very elastic collision and I was certain the kart was going to catapult me out onto the ground, but somehow I landed back in.

That impact took out the right wheel and bent the 1/2″ hardened steel bolt that was the axle stub for it. The upward force of jumping the curb pretty much trashed the steering linkage and steering wheel mount. That’s when I finally had a good reason to rebuild it – the new setup includes a right-angle transmission that one, got rid of the slop and two, allowed me to add a gear ratio to the steering. It wasn’t much – only half a turn of the wheel from lock to lock, but oh boy was it a godsend compared to a quarter turn plus or minus an eighth.

I am still alive. Not sure how, but it feels okay. The two videos that I shot were well after these incidents, after the (variable speed) controller was refinished and the steering linkage made more solid.

But don’t mention the brakes.

Don’t know if you saw the results of the British study regarding the importance of what a man drives when it comes to impressing the ladies? What kind of reaction do you get from folks when you buzz by them in the rio? Is it attracting looks from members of the opposite sex?

One of the more depressing misconceptions about MIT is that, like many tech universities, it has an unbalanced gender ratio. This is patently untrue, and I am personally glad, since the actual ratio is near parity. The kart gets its fair share of attention from engineering women, but then again, I haven’t really tried using it as a chick magnet. I would attribute more of those reactions to novelty and “what on earth…” than anything else, though. Pretty much all of my female peers know about its existence and construction. A majority of them actually want to try driving it themselves, but due to the, ahem, health concerns, I have yet to let anyone else try.

General reactions to the kart have been diverse. If you’ve seen the videos, you have clearly seen people who don’t seem to notice it. Quite a few comments on other places where the kart has been featured seem to say that MIT students are jaded or ‘used to’ weird things flying/driving/crusing around. I would say that this is at least partially the truth, since there are many projects here which move around, and therefore the kart, while funny, isn’t really that weird.

For comparison, the DARPA Challenge guys occasionally take their autonomous forklift for a test spin. This is a 10-foot tall full-size pallet lift with dozens of sensor boxes, computers, spinning LIDAR rangefinders, cameras, and green underbody lighting hanging off it. Let me emphasize the fact that it is AUTONOMOUS. You don’t want to piss it off.

How about if you take it off-campus?

The reactions on the streets of Cambridge are much more varied. This is unsurprising, really, since outside of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge is just a suburb of Boston. I had more interested looks and people trying to catch the kart on their cell phone cameras when I wandered off the confines of the campus buildings.

The whole thing sort of reinforces my feeling that colleges in general tend to be little idyllic bubbles. The problem comes when people try to extrapolate the knowledge they gain in this bubble to the world at large, some times recklessly, in my opinion. I have gotten the impression that adults often think that college students are idealistic and naive, and I guess I can’t blame them. However, that
gets into politics of a completely different subject matter.

Any issues with the campus or Cambridge police? I wondered if someone might have been a bit unnerved at you bombing by them in this puppy and decided to call security?

At the end of the day, the campus police are around to maintain order and to make sure we don’t mire ourselves too deeply in the legal quicksand. Keeping people in line and enforcing every rule? Not so much. They’re pretty much all chill folk from my experience, and I’d conjecture that little oddities here and there make the workday all that more interesting. I have never yet had a problem with the CP with any of the club’s shenanigans.

I haven’t had enough encounters with Cambridge Police to really give an opinion, but have yet to get flagged or pulled over. My older peers tell me that they don’t mind unless you get really egregious (e.g. I start blowing red lights or driving the kart to work every day), because the history of being around MIT means It Can Happen Here™.

I tried to stick to every traffic rule that I could on the test runs. Not having turn signals, I used motorist hand signals. I did stop on red lights, and went on green ones. I would think at least part of the reason nobody ever called it in was because of this visage of sanity – instead of, you know, flying around at random.

So no speeding tickets? Hey can the cart really do 45 mph?

Nah, speeding was never a problem, since the kart maxed out at around 30 mph. Originally, yes, it was geared for the full 45, but I switched to a smaller sprocket on the motor because it… was, well, too suicidal.

I like my projects only *somewhat* suicidal.

What’s on the horizon for the LOLrioKart? Any other ideas about strapping brushless motors to other objects or other ideas percolating that we should be looking for down the road?

Up until now I considered LOLrioKart a terminal project – finished and done, time to move on. However, with the attention it has gotten, and the encouragement I’ve received from professors and peers, I’m going to see what part of my research I can integrate into it.

Remember that the work I do with the Media Lab is centered around electric vehicle technology. Part of what we are working on is a small, “foldable” compact urban vehicle. It features a lot of cutting-edge goodies, such as integrated in-wheel electric motor modules, steer-by-wire, lithium nanophosphate batteries, one-piece passenger shell, etc.

One of the ideas I had for the kart was constructing four wheel modules – each with their own internal motor – and mounting them to an updated subframe that has a suspension. The biggest shortcoming of the kart is that it’s a solid frame, which means every pothole they pave the streets here with goes straight into me. Not very fun.

While this would just be a go-kart with independent suspension, I also want to incorporate steer-by-wire into the wheel modules. The innovative feature in the car project is that each wheel can actually swivel up to 120 degrees, controlled by electronics. This is best explained with a picture.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I want to have a kart with four independently suspended, driven, and steered wheel modules. Fortunately, all the knowledge and experience I’ve been able to pick up because I work for them has gotten me to the point of being able to fabricate my own 3-phase brushless DC motors for the wheel modules, given some starting material (e.g. the hard-to-make-and-expensive-to-have-made laminated iron core that resides in most motors).

I’m pounding on the electronics side pretty hard now to learn how to make a functioning AC inverter for driving those motors. What this entails is essentially three of my custom DC motor drivers back-to-back, all controlled in a fancy cycle by one microprocessor such that I can do what amounts to moving something with my mind. Then I need to make four, then network them all.

Pretty freakin’ tall order, eh? Hell, I might even try to get this graded or something.

The Power to Create: Studying Science More Interesting at the University of Copenhagen?

July 6, 2009 by Thomas / 0 Comments

A liberal arts education may sell itself but science, well sometimes you just might need to use the age-old college staples: gorgeous young ladies and that drink of choice.

Such seems to be the case for ScienceCopenhagen, the new YouTube channel from the Videoer fra Det Naturvidenskabelige Fakultet, Københavns Universitet (translation, the Faculty of Science, the University of Copenhagen).

I suppose we should be offended when sex is used to sell education – but we could not help but smile when we first saw this little gem:

And how about those lyrics:

Do you want a piece of me, my creator, I am your creation??

We couldn’t get a specific translation for cafeen but this sure looks like the classic beer bottle domino line – oh, the lengths a student will go through when he is too tired to hoist his own:

And defying the laws of physics, times three. Yes, we did say times three. And the music, another killer track!

Yep, with the right efforts, it seems you can even sell science. Is anybody in America paying attention?:

Boys Will Be Boys and Geeks Will Be Geeks: The LOLrioKart

July 1, 2009 by Thomas / 0 Comments

Who needs a skateboard when you can simply fire up that shopping cart.

Sometimes you wish you had just applied yourself a bit more while in school. In fact, the folks at Gizmodo lay it all on the line:

When you were in college, you spent your free time drinking tallboys of Bud Ice and playing Mario Kart 64 until 5am.

Instead, an adventurous and yes, more serious MIT student has spent his time turning a standard shopping kart into the LOLrioKart. There is much more on the notion of choosing something other than longnecks for a good time at EqualsZero but here are some of the key elements:

……a whimsical attempt to strap a set of large nickel cadmium batteries (a cache of massive aircraft wet-cell NiCd batteries), discovered in a dusty back room, to something – anything……

……the logical progression from the insane electric vehicle project of yesteryear……an attempt to strap a massive brushless motor (a 15 horsepower brushless motor) to something – anything……

……a derelict shopping cart……

……a barrel of monkeys……

The Key Specs on LOLrioKart 1.0

Drivetrain: Midship-Rear 2WD

Hackermann steering geometry

Mechanical front brakes

Mechanical Welded steel tubing stock frame 6061, 2024 aluminum addenda

Motor: MARS Electric ME0201013001 (OEM brushless Etek) 15HP peak
Controller: 200 Amp Kelly BLDC KB72201 with regenerative braking
Battery: 54 volt giant nicads
Instrumentation: Dead Wreck-oning
Top Speed: 45MPH
Acceleration: ?!
Curb Weight: 350lb

Back to the folks at Gizmodo:

And you’ve got to assume that in Cambridge, seeing a motorized shopping cart with a nerd inside tooling around on the street isn’t all that shocking.

While we agree far too many us of spent way too much time with the tallboys, we are not so sure what the reaction might be when folks see this puppy coming at them. In fact, you just may want to make that judgment yourself.

For more on this wondrous little toy watch the YouTube video or explore the great fun these guys are having building and playing with the LOLrioKart at EqualsZero.

Purchasing a Netbook – The Good, the Bad and the …..

June 25, 2009 by Thomas / 0 Comments

A new report from a leading research market company, the NPD Group, reveals major confusion regarding netbooks, the latest portable computer option. According to the study, 60 percent of those purchasing a netbook did so thinking that the portable device would offer the same functionality as that of a laptop or notebook.

Because of that faulty thinking, only 58 percent of consumers who bought a netbook instead of a notebook said they were very satisfied with their purchase. Perhaps most significantly, in the 18- to 24-year-old age group, 65 percent indicated they had expected a better performance from their netbook.

However, that dissatisfaction, according to NPD, comes primarily from a lack of understanding by the purchaser as to what the capabilities of a netbook are.

Just What Is a Netbook?

Before you consider purchasing a netbook, it is important to clearly understand what the machine is designed to do. First and foremost, the idea of a netbook is increased mobility.

In simplest terms, a netbook is a small, cheap, and under-powered computer that runs either an old (Windows XP Home) or the unfamiliar Linux operating system. If you are a fan of or extremely used to specific software, it is extremely important to understand that a netbook will not run XP Professional, Vista, or OS X.

By small size, we are talking generally 7- to 10-inch screen sizes and machines weighing somewhere between 2 and 3 pounds. That small size also translates to keyboards that are roughly 80 to 90 percent of that of a laptop.

As for price, these new computers range from $300 to $500 (if the price exceeds $500, there is no sense considering a netbook, go with a laptop instead).

What You Get and What You Don’t Get

The key concept here is cheap, basic computing ability with a high level of portability. If you are not interested in mobility, i.e., routinely taking it out of the dorm room, then there is no reason to consider a netbook. You can and you should go with a desktop with far more power for the same price.

With a netbook you have to give up playing CDs and DVDs and generally have to accept an older version of Ethernet/Wi-Fi that is functional but not quite as fast. Essentially, netbooks can be thought of as last year’s technology – instead of being cutting edge the intent is to perform using old staples, the proverbial computing that is not necessarily the best but is in fact good enough for most applications.

That said, one key element of the netbook concept is that it could render the Kindle or other e-readers to the scrap heap very quickly. As experts have noted, why would you want to carry a small device that does only one thing when you can carry a small box that does more than one thing.

While its screen and keyboard are small, a person can always connect their netbook to another monitor or use it with a mouse and/or traditional keyboard. Of course, without these external connections you still can do basic web tasks (web surfing and email) as well as other computer basics such as word processing and data spreadsheet work.

When purchasing, it is imperative that you consider the various models available. Screen sizes vary from 7 inches to 10.2 inches. It is critical that one understand just how small 7 inch screens are. Of course, the larger is less mobile so it is critical to be sure of your objective.

Keyboard sizes are also worth looking at if you are going to be doing some serious amounts of word processing. Again, the larger the screen, the larger the device so if you go for a 10 inch screen you get a keyboard that is about 90 percent traditional size, a huge positive if you will be typing a lot. One other factor to consider is that some machines offer non-standard board arrangements – if you are a skilled typist you do not want a machine where keys have been moved to different locations.

Lastly, a key consideration is battery life. There are generally two options, standard or extended battery packs (these correspond usually to 3-cell and 6-cell batteries respectively). The standard provides about two hours of computing power, the extended about four hours. But again, know your needs as the extended battery pack is of course much larger and therefore heavier.

Know What You Are Purchasing

While netbooks are very inexpensive, the last thing any of us need is another electronic device we do not use. Therefore, it is critical that purchasers understand the rationale behind the creation of the netbook and the stated purpose of these portable computers.

Don’t be one of those in the 18- to 24-year-old age demographic that is disappointed after shelling out the dollars by the limitations of these machines. If those limitations are in fact disappointing to you, just spend the additional money to purchase a laptop.

But if you do so, just be sure you are in good enough shape so as to be able to cart the beast around with you.

Do Not Place Too Much Emphasis on U.S. News College Rankings

June 10, 2009 by Thomas / One Comment

Each year, U.S. News & World Report compiles its ratings of American colleges and publishes its summary findings for students. The publication is seen as a must-have for any prospective college student, a factor that makes the annual edition a best seller each and every year.

Because of it’s strong reputation, the magazine is one of the fundamental publications for students and families to review. However, when it comes to the college selection process, many college admissions folks have questioned the validity of the ratings.

Today, officials caution students to contrast this publication with other literature that examines their respective college of interest. To get a sense as to why the US News ratings should not be considered the be-all and end-all, we turn to a recent incident involving a presentation by Catherine E. Watt of Clemson University

Seeking Higher Ratings

It seems Watt, once the head of Clemson’s institutional research office and now the point person for a research center at the school, raised more than a few eyebrows with her presentation at the Association for Institutional Research in Atlanta. Apparently, she was a tad too outgoing with her acknowledgement of the importance of the ratings to schools and her subsequent explanation as to how the school might have been able to manipulate the ratings system.

Clemson has publicly aspired to being considered a top 20 public research university. Some of the actions Watt claims the school took to help it climb rapidly up the ratings system were steps that took advantage of flaws in the U.S. News rating system.

For example, to increase the schools standings, Watt claims the school had lowered class sizes in specific classes below a critical U.S. News threshold. The magic number of 20 was obtained, again according to Watt, by increasing class sizes in other classes that would not harm the school’s rating.

A second element was the astonishing claim that school officials had taken the step of rating other schools lower scores on the reputational rankings survey of other colleges. In other words, the school sought to improve its standing by downgrading the standing of competitors.

A third involved assertions of duplicate salary summaries, with U.S. News perhaps getting a doctored version. Ultimately, her statements were reported in numerous higher education publications and subsequently discussed by bloggers everywhere.

Clemson Officials Take Exception

Needless to say, the comments created a storm of controversy. Therefore, it is not too surprising that shortly after Watt gave her presentation officials at Clemson sought to regain a certain level of integrity.

According to published reports, Cathy Sams, Clemson’s chief public affairs officer, released a public statement that took exception to the comments from Watt’s presentation. Again, not too surprisingly, the gist of the rebuttal focused on the potential that school officials may have engaged in unethical behavior.

Those same sources noted that while Sams gave “alternative explanations for the reduced class sizes and other outcomes” there was no direct evidence to challenge or contradict Watt’s assertions about the steps related to class sizes. In other words, Clemson had in fact definitively raised its percentage of classes containing 10 to 19 students while decreasing the percentage that held 20 to 29 students.

One area where Watt was rebutted centered on the notion that Clemson might have cooked some books regarding faculty salaries. In that area, Watt asserted that the school may have provided U.S. News a set of faculty salary numbers that were not entirely accurate. Clemson officials unequivocally denied that assertion.

Bloggers also noted that the university was essentially silent in its public statement regarding the claim that Clemson officials had rated the programs at other institutions below average.

Indirect Evidence Provides Some Answers

While the school took the extraordinary step of providing a written rebuttal to Watt’s assertions, the ultimate assessment of the situation is that Watt is still employed by the school. In fact, when the school was reportedly asked if Watt might face disciplinary action, Sams indicated otherwise.

Therefore, though the school has insisted that their employee did not accurately represent the school, the fact that they did not take action against the employee speaks volumes. If it was as simple as school officials insisted, it is hard to imagine that the institution would not have taken some form of disciplinary action.

Regardless of the hoopla and whether or not Clemson specifically sought to game the system, the revelations of Watt appear to match those of others who insist that the ratings can be manipulated.

Meanwhile, U.S. News insists it is one step ahead of those seeking to game the system. Still, Clemson climbed from 38 to 22 making us wonder whether they are indeed one step ahead.

Ultimately, we think the lesson for students is that they should look well beyond the placement of a school within the U.S. News college rankings when considering their choice of college.

Going Green – Instead of the Dumpster, Start Recycling these Items

May 27, 2009 by Thomas / 0 Comments

If you are a college sophomore or upperclassman, you have experienced the full-frontal assault of the end of the year dorm clean out.

Because some students have exams right through Friday afternoon, then have only until 12:00 p.m. Saturday to be out of their room, there is no time to appropriately deal with all the items in the dorm room or on-campus apartment. Not only is there simply too much accumulated stuff to fit all of it in your car without making multiple trips home, you simply don’t have the time to deal with breaking the stuff down so that it might fit.

The result, loads of valuable items get tossed into the dumpster or in most cases by the end of the week, piled alongside an overflowing trash unit. Chairs, couches, tables, VCRs, and even television sets can be seen sitting on top of these containers or resting on the curb beside these huge bins.

Perhaps the most appalling aspect is the realization that the space in your car is already spoken for yet you are now witness to literally piles of items that you would scoff up in a minute if it were the beginning of the school year.

Schools and Students Taking Action

More and more, as green-eyed students across the country become aware of the earth and the need for greater sustainability, recycling programs have started to emerge for this end of the year clean out. The goal is simple: reduce the number of reusable items heading to a landfill or transfer station and get them into the hands of another potential user.

There are many successful ways to deal with the process. One simple step is for a group of students to locate a place for storage of viable items, especially the larger units such as mini-refrigerators and other electronic gear. Then, using a group of student volunteers, these unwanted items are collected and taken to the storage facility to be sorted out.

The following fall, those very same items are put up for sale to the incoming students at the school. Any collected funds that remain after the costs of storage have been taken care of are either donated to worthy charities or to the school’s nonprofit sustainability organization to further sustain a school’s green mission (if one exists).

Another common method of dealing with the leftover items is to involve community organizations and use them to solicit volunteers for all the handling tasks as well as the storage of items. Instead of selling them to students, the collected items can be sold in a massive community yard sale. Later, the proceeds from any sales can then be divided among the nonprofit groups according to the time each specific organization puts into collecting and selling the items.

Want to Start a Program?

Many other programs are underway with variations on these themes. In certain instances, students can simply leave unwanted items in their dorm room where they will be collected later.

Still, there are a number of schools where the idea has not caught on.

If you are interested in getting such a program started at your university, a nonprofit called Dump and Run helps interested groups. They can offer ideas regarding item collection, donation and storage, as well as appropriate ways of handling the cash that comes from selling the collected materials.

If the end of the 2009 school year has come and gone and your school still is not on board, it would make a perfect project for next year. Students interested in starting a program at their school can contact Dump and Run for assistance and advice.

Ultimately, the end-of-the-school-year recycling program is a true win-win. No student ever feels good about throwing such material in a dumpster. And our landfills/transfer stations are already strapped with mountains of trash.

Computer Lessons from Pipi Quinlan; The Somewhat Tech-Savvy Three-Year-Old

May 25, 2009 by Thomas / 2 Comments

Stating that the internet has changed life as we know it is an understatement of epic proportions.

Still, even for those who understand the power of the internet, it is hard to imagine stories like that of Miss Pipi Quinlan, certainly not prior to the technology age. But her story offers some critical lessons for those of every age.

For those who missed it:

Three-Year Old Purchases Excavator Online

Young Pipi Quinlan had, at last, been given permission to use the family computer. Of course, at three-years-old she was still a tad on the youngish side for such permission and her access had been allowed for but a week when she made internet history.

You see, her mom had done what so many of us do (here’s the first place we all need to pay attention). Ms. Quinlan had asked the computer to store log-in information to make it easier to bring up those sites she would use frequently.

Mom had set up such a log-in on an auction site which Pipi then managed to reboot. While mom had used the site earlier to bid on some toys, Pipi took a little different track.

Instead of a kid’s plaything, she bought a man’s toy, managing somehow to place a bid on a Kobelco, a “digger” as folks in New Zealand referred to the excavator. Though still no one is not quite sure how, the youngster had posted a bid of 20,000 New Zealand dollars, about $12,300 by our standards, for an earth mover that was anything but a toy.

Momma Quinlan learned of her daughter’s action when she opened her e-mail the following morning. There she found several e-mails from, the auction site TradeMe, announcing she had won an auction and from the seller noting that she would love her new purchase.

Fame and Notoriety

The story of course reminds us why we should never store personal information on a computer. It also makes it clear that when we become parents we need to think things through a wee bit more carefully because children are amazing little creatures.

In the age of the internet, technology can create issues we never conceived of previously. Most of the focus has been on the actions of the youngster.

And of course, the press had a field day with one liners (toddler usually prefers high-heeled pink shoes over giant yellow and black diggers).

But what is truly amazing is an internet search of the name Pipi Quinlan now reveals page after page of links to reports and commentary of this cute little story (OK, us too). It reminds us that in this day and age, privacy is minimal and our actions can be shared globally in the matter of minutes.

Whether she likes it or not, this information will always be part of her online brand. Fortunately, this could be one of those cute stories that ultimately works in her favor sometime in the future. We hope so as it will be archived forever.

All’s Well that Ends Well

Meanwhile, it seems the story has ended positively. The auction site has negated the winning bid and reimbursed the seller’s costs. Reportedly another adult went on to make the purchase for real.

The elder Ms Quinlan also noted one of parenting’s greatest challenges. You see, it was extremely difficult explaining to the three-year-old the gravity of her actions, especially doing so without laughing.

In addition, the parents have learned another valuable lesson. Pipi has since been banned from using the computer by herself but, just in case, the Quinlans have deleted all their automatic log-ons just in case.

The only question remaining is how long before you delete yours?