Humor 12/19/99: Australian Code & Angels in Indiana

Hi everyone,

First of all, have a great Christmas and New Year!

I have been going out to eat with my family for the last two nights, so
it's been fun. I also hope to use this time at home to clean up my
email inbox and think about what I hope to do when I graduate. I have
an idea for a startup floating in my head, so I'll try to write some
things down. Also, there are quite a few movies that look interesting.

I left my question books in LA, so the questions for the next few weeks
will be completely original. This week's thought provoking question
is: "What is one gift that you have received in the past that is not
too expensive that you really value?"

This week's humor was forwarded by Max Handelsman, a high school
classmate, followed by an inspirational story forwarded by someone on
the UCLA GCF email list.

Enjoy!

-Josh.

P.S. Remember the true meaning of CHRIST-mas!
_________________________________________

The reuse of some object-oriented code has caused tactical headaches for
Australia's armed forces. As virtual reality simulators assume larger
roles in helicopter combat training, programmers have gone to great
lengths to increase the realism of their scenarios, including detailed
landscapes and - in the case of the Northern Territory's Operation
Phoenix- herds of kangaroos (since disturbed animals might well give
away a helicopter's position).

The head of the Defense Science & Technology Organization's Land
Operations/Simulation division reportedly instructed developers to model
the local marsupials' movements and reactions to helicopters. Being
efficient programmers, they just re-appropriated some code originally
used to model infantry detachment reactions under the same stimuli,
changed the mapped icon from a soldier to a kangaroo, and increased the
figures' speed of movement.

Eager to demonstrate their flying skills for some visiting American
pilots, the hotshot Aussies "buzzed" the virtual kangaroos in low flight
during a simulation. The kangaroos scattered, as predicted, and the
visiting Americans nodded appreciatively... then did a double-take as
the kangaroos reappeared from behind a hill and launched a barrage of
Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter. (Apparently the programmers
had forgotten to remove that part of the infantry coding.)

The lesson?
Objects are defined with certain attributes, and any new object defined
in terms of an old one inherits all the attributes. The embarrassed
programmers had learned to be careful when reusing object-oriented code,
and the Yanks left with a newfound respect for Australian wildlife.
Simulator supervisors report that pilots from that point onward have
strictly avoided kangaroos, just as they were meant to.

* From June 15, 1999 Defense Science and Technology Organization Lecture

Series, Melbourne, Australia, and staff reports
-----------------------------------------

But wait, it gets better. Being a compulsive fact-checker, I found an
e-mail address for the DSTO in Australia, and this was our
correspondence:

Hi Max

Yours is the fourth or fifth email about this in the last few days. The
story first started in about May 1999, but seems to have recently grown
new legs. As you guessed, it stretches the truth a little - and yes, we
probably will put a web page up to help to set the record straight.

The real story (from the researcher who looks after this simulation
work) is below:
__________

It's probably too late to recall and correct the story (it's already
been forwarded to me by several different sources) but since you ask,
here is the kernel of truth in it:

I related this story as part of a talk on Simulation for Defence, at the
Australian Science Festival on May 6th in Canberra. The Armed
Reconnaissance Helicopter mission simulators built by the Synthetic
Environments Research Facility in Land Operations Division of DSTO, do
indeed fly in a fairly high fidelity environment which is a 4000 sq km
piece of real outback Australia around Katherine, built from elevation
data, overlaid with aerial photographs and with 2.5 million realistic 3d
trees placed in the terrain in those areas where the photographs
indicated real trees actually exist. For a bit of extra fun (and not
for any strategic reason like kangaroos betraying your cover!) our
programmers decided to put in a bit of animated wildlife. Since ModSAF
is our simulation tool, these were modeled on ModSAF's Stinger
detachments so that the associated detection model could be used to
determine when a helo approached, and the behaviour invoked by such
contact was set to 'retreat'. Replace the visual model of the Stinger
detachment in your stealth viewer with a visual model of a kangaroo (or
buffalo...) and you have wildlife that moves away when approached. It is
true that the first time this was tried in the lab, we discovered that
we had forgotten to remove the weapons and the 'fire' behaviour. It is
NOT true that this happened in front of a bunch of visitors (American or
any other flavour). We don't normally try things for the first time in
front of an audience!

What I didn't relate in the talk is that since we were not at that stage
interested in weapons, we had not set any weapon or projectile types, so
what the kangaroos fired at us was in fact the default object for the
simulation, which happened to be large multicoloured beachballs. I
usually conclude the story by eassurring the audience that we have now
disarmed the kangaroos and it is again safe to fly in Australia.

well, now you know....
:-)
Anne-Marie
Dr Anne-Marie Grisogono
Head, Simulation
Land Operations Division
DSTO
___________________

Regards

Jane

--
This is *NOT* an urban legend. (Well, the first part is, as I said I
discovered.) It is being told by MaxH_42@yahoo.com.

--Max Handelsman
____________________________

Angels in Indiana

In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just
75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone. The boys ranged from three
months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been
much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his tires
crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their
beds. He did manage to leave 15 dollars a week to buy groceries. Now
that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no
food either. If there was a welfare system in effect in southern
Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.

I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best
homemade dress. I loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off
to find a job. The seven of us went to every factory, store and
restaurant in our small town. No luck. The kids stayed, crammed into the
car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whomever would
listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job.
Still no luck. The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town,
was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck
stop. It was called the Big Wheel. An old lady named Granny owned the
place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those
kids. She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven
in the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night.

I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for
people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a
night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already
be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a
deal. That night when and the little ones and I knelt to say our
prayers we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at
the Big Wheel. When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter
up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money-fully half of what
I averaged every night. As the weeks went by, heating bills added
another strain to my meager wage. The tires on the old Chevy had the
consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with
air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home.

One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found
four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note, no nothing,
just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in
Indiana? I wondered. I made a deal with the owner of the local service
station. In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up
his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than
it did for him to do the tires. I was now working six nights instead of
five and it still wasn't enough. Christmas was coming and I knew there
would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and
started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the
basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas
morning. Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of
patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.
On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big
Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper
named Joe. A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion
and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just
sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left
to get home before the sun came up. When it was time for me to go home
at seven o'clock on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping
the kids wouldn't wake up before I managed to get home and get the
presents from the basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut
down a small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.)

It was still dark and I couldn't see much, but there appeared to be some
dark shadows in the car-or was that just a trick of the night? Something
certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I
reached the car I peered warily into one of the side windows. Then my
jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was full-full to the top
with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's side
door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat.
Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was a whole
case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside another box: It
was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside some of
the other boxes: There were candy and nuts and bananas and bags of
groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables
and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and
flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And
there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll. As I drove
back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing
Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never
forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.

Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all
hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.
--
_____________________________________

Joshua Li
14400 Addison Ave. #119
Sherman Oaks CA 91423
(818)461-8930
Instant Messenger ID: joshli
Permanent Email: joshli@post.harvard.edu
http://personal.anderson.ucla.edu/joshua.li/