Stephen Spielberg Presents History II: Raiders of the Lost Syllabus, Friday, Period 1

[yakkoyaks.livejournal.com]

Today's class was a special class. For once, it wasn't taking place in a classroom. Today, they were at the pool, for a very dumb reason that would become apparent quickly.

"Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant in the 1200s, a time when the Western people of Europe and the Eastern people of China didn't cross paths a whole lot. But Marco's dad and uncle were travelers, so when Marco was about 17, they took him on a twenty-four year trip to China and back. And just to keep that in perspective, you're in a pool listening to a cartoon character talk," Yakko said. "Don't worry, I think you break even."

"Nobody's really sure exactly what Marky Marc saw or what he did, because right when he got back to Venice, he ended up in the middle of a war with Genoa and was taken prisoner. While he was in jail, he told his neighbor all about everything he saw, like paper money and coal burning, things that hadn't made it to Europe yet. But like any speech-to-text device, his neighbor got things wrong, added in stuff that happened to him, and maybe some stories he just heard somewhere. So of course The Travels of Marco Polo became a huge hit, despite having worse citations than your typical Wikipedia page."

"Eventually, Marco got out of prison, then even later he died, and today we remember him best for the game he invented where a person closes their eyes in a pool, shouts out 'MARCO!' and tries to echo-locate people when they call back 'POLO!' and hopefully not running across a group of people trying to throw a ball into a goal, because they'll probably get trampled and drown."

Fandom Trail [Thursday, Fourth Period]

[thefearwasreal]

"Congratulations," Oz told the class as they entered the Danger Shop. Which had not yet been turned on. Nothing suspicious there. "In the past week, you did not die of starvation, Stella did not break any more limbs, and Merry caught measles." One of those things was not like the other. Before they could comment on that fact, Oz continued.

"You've finally made it to the next stop along your journey, and can rest and resupply, but before you can do that, the townspeople have asked for your help, as several small children have been trapped by a rising river while berry-picking and they would be extremely grateful if you could help retrieve them. The kind of grateful that results in free board and supplies. Plus, rescuing small children is something that'll make you feel good about yourselves."

"So you have to decide if you're going to rescue the kids, and if so, implement the rescue." With that, Oz turned the Danger Shop on, displaying the scene of a gaggle of small children trapped on an island in the middle of a raging river.

Of lava.

Which the Midwestern United States was known for.

Study Hall: Friday

[multi-madrox.livejournal.com]

Yes. The oranges was still there. However Jamie and his dupes were making the best of the matter and was currently making fresh orange juice and smoothies for anyone entering study hall today.

Study = Get a smoothie.

It's a win.

Library, Friday [07/20]

[selfhelphero]

If anyone was looking for Billy today, they'd find him at the front desk reading one of the Space Battles books, and trying to ignore the cookbooks that had formed themselves into a circle on the floor. He'd try to shuffle them back into place when his shift was over, but for now, it was just easier to pretend nothing was happening.

Decision Making Skills, Friday, Period 4

[screwyoumarvel]

"Let's talk about morals," Steve said. "Certainly, the consideration of what's morally right should come into consideration when making decisions. Sometimes, this can be complicated--for instance, there are hypotheticals that will ask you to choose between killing one person and letting several die, although they're very black and white. I prefer to save everyone." Obviously. "But that's the thing, there are moral shades of grey, and it's important to remember what's morally right for you may not fall in line with someone else's beliefs. For example, many people believe it's perfectly fine to eat meat. A lot of people don't, and may even believe that the people who do eat meat are behaving immorally. Is either of them wrong? What do you think? And, can you think of any examples of things you believe are right that others might believe are immoral? Let's talk about it."

Introduction to Robotics, Friday

[not_a_whiner]

"I've been showing you a lot of different synthetics over the past two weeks," Kaidan began, "But the truth is, they're not all so flashy. Even in this time period, synthetics-- robots-- are put to good use in all kinds of places, and they don't necessarily have to look like anything you know. The food industry, for example, uses robots to help with packaging, and they're going to move on to do much more in that department over the next few decades. Cars are put together by robots specialized into one task, running on a simple script. Robots defuse bombs and mix our drinks and do all kinds of things that might be dangerous or difficult for a human being."

No pressure, Victor.

"Some of you already know how they work," he continued. "For the rest of you, maybe you've been poking at your schematics unsure what to do or what things are, so I'll give a brief explanation. Basically, every synthetic is made up of three components."

He tapped a few buttons on his omni-tool and displayed a very simple food-processing 'bot. "The power source. Usually a battery of some kind. That gets it going. Then--" He pointed on the picture, "The actuator, which turns the energy from the power source into motion." Another tap of his omni-tool, and the image started moving. "And the sensors, which pick up cues from the outside world and translate them, so the robot can run its script.

"You go a little beyond that, you've got the end effectors - the hands of the robot - and the manipulator, the arm. Some synthetics will have wheels or mass effect fields to get them moving. You can give a robot speech recognition programs, or build them to interface with humans through simulated facial expressions and interaction scripts..." He trailed off.

"How these components are used, which ones you put together, that's going to depend on the purpose you're looking for. A food processing machine isn't going to need wheels or a human face to do its job, and it can get by on a simple script. You want a mech to patrol an area, though, you're going to have to work in some rudimentary human interaction skills, find a way of locomotion that fits the environment, and come up with one hell of a script."

He closed off his omni-tool. "I want you guys to partner up and do two things," he said. "First, think about some form of industry you know of that could benefit from robotic assistance. What would a mech or a machine like that have to look like? What extras would it need? How complicated would it be? And second of all... think of what you want your drone to do. What are you going to need with that? Maybe your partner has some ideas."