From Jim Gibbon:
"How succinct can you be in describing your research? Most of us have probably tried to whittle our work down to a 2-minute or 30-second "elevator speech" we can use while mingling at conferences. Doing this not only helps us clarify our work to ourselves, but also smooths out a lot of the interactions we're bound to have down the road while chatting about our projects. I'd say it's pretty GTD: you invest time in thinking up front so you don't have to while you're in the middle of networking, interviewing, etc.Well, I wondered how far we could push this, and to that end, I'm sponsoring an academic haiku contest on my site. A $10 iTunes gift certificate will go to the person who submits the best haiku based on original research. How much can you communicate in 17 syllables?"
What's your Haiku?
Here's my friend Jason's Entry:
Wield your mind better:
offload thinking, and improve
metacognition.
Enter the Contest Here (but make sure you share your Haiku's on the comments thread!).
Comments
Equations, models,
approximations to code -
Convergence error
From a computational chemist.
Posted by: Elia Diodati | February 18, 2007 11:12 AM
Attention's limits:
How much can you remember?
I'll look at your brain.
Posted by: Katherine Moore | February 18, 2007 11:44 AM
I worked on half a dozen Space Shuttle Safety contracts at Rockwell International, all of which had actual fraud in them. I testified to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, and NASA Inspector General. If that counts as research:
EIGHT HAIKU for CHALLENGER
by JONATHAN V. POST
March 1986
The Commander
--------------
"My kind of weather,
What a great day for flying!"
Clear cold winter dawn.
The Last Breakfast
-----------------
Breakfast for seven
followed by white-frosted cake
names drawn in icing
The Launch
----------
Cape Canaveral
icicles melt: sudden dawn
of "Rocket Summer"
The Shuttle
----------
Painted bird rising,
rolling upside down, so bright
against the blue sky
The Last Words
--------------
"... go at throttle up."
"Roger, go at throttle up."
And then: explosion!
The Fireball
-----------
Scorpion of smoke
Two flame-tipped claws, shrapnel legs
above the ocean
The Promise
-----------
After silence, tears.
One right way to honor them:
We will reach the stars.
The Crew
---------
Smith, Onizuka,
McAuliffe, Scobee, Resnik,
McNair, and Jarvis.
Copyright 1996, 1997 by Emerald City Publishing.
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without permission.
May be posted electronically provided that
it is transmitted unaltered, in its
entirety, and without charge.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | February 18, 2007 2:01 PM
Thanks for posting about this Steve. I've been getting a lot of great contributions so far!
Posted by: Jim | February 18, 2007 2:36 PM
General Description of my digital human modeling research...
Simulate Humans
Model Both Mind and Body
Cog. Sci. Not A.I.
Another one related to some work in the lab looking at the impact of armor and equipment on law enforcement officer performance. Reads like a bad commercial. :)
Armor weighing you down?
Making performance trade-offs?
How much is too much?
Posted by: Daniel Carruth | February 18, 2007 2:49 PM
There exist problems
intractable to decide
yet easy to check
The paper hasn't been written yet (well, you could say it's a long-term project), but it is ostensibly to be titled "On an open problem of Cook".
Posted by: Kurt | February 18, 2007 4:49 PM
The line is a world.
The black count remains the same.
So, what can you say?
(Preparing a review on conservative cellular automata. Alas, I can't submit chez Jim, since the rule asks for "original research".)
Posted by: dileffante | February 18, 2007 5:16 PM