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For those of you who couldn’t attend DARPATech this week, or had no desire to, or don’t know what it is, please find below a parodic sample talk. Some of it is verbatim, some of the technology is real, and this is more similar to the actual presentations than you think.

[A man in a blue suit strides to the podium, the enormous ballroom is filled to overflowing with scientists and military officers. Cameras are focused on him from all sides, projecting his visage onto the screens behind him and into the many satellite viewing rooms throughout the hotel.]

Good morning. I’m going to talk to you today about the future: a vision of the future as seen by the DARPA Made-Up Technologies Office. The best of the best. DARPA’s DARPA. Rambo to STO’s Barney Fife.

Imagine a world in which soldiers cannot die. In which their armor adapts to new threats instantaneously, their weapons target flawlessly and inflict the desired damage, and their hair maintains its shine and bounce, even in the harshest of combat conditions. Imagine a world where a global information network is accessible at your fingertips, or even closer, like at your knuckles or wrists. Where you can detect enemies breathing behind concrete walls, clot and repair a bleeding femoral artery with a simple tourniquet, and where a universal replacement part can assume whatever shape or function you desire. A wrench becomes a hammer. Wings take dream.

We at the MUTO are imagining exactly that.

Soldiers must fight in extremes. In the snow dunes of the arctic, the sand drifts of the desert, deep beneath the ocean, on mountain peaks, and, someday, in outer space and in the center of our sun.

[Slide show displays the Sun. Speaker gestures meaningfully.]

Our opponents are smart, capable, well-trained, and fighting on their home turf. Some of them can yodel. Most of our soldiers can barely manage a passable Star Spangled Banner. Our Army Rangers train in the mountains of Georgia, while Afghani fighters are acclimated to altitudes tens of thousands, no, millions of feet higher. Geese can handle these altitudes, why can’t our warriors?

Our enemies have rockets launchers. Some of them have elephants. They may even have figured out how to put rocket launchers on elephants. You can’t prove they haven’t. And when they do, will you be able to say you did everything possible to prepare?

The work we do at MUTO represents not merely fundamentally unique technological achievements, but entirely new fields of research. A calculus of awesomeness, if you will. It revolutionizes not only urban combat, but warfare in its entirety. And also poetry.

Allow me to give you a moment for your brains to stop smoking.

[Stares wistfully into the distance.]

Now that you have some idea of the preponderance of cutting edge research that is discussed at length in our office, let me introduce the next speaker, who will frighten you with outrageously melodramatic nightmare scenarios, entice you with nonexistent but sexy technology, and ease you into a peaceful and meditative state with utopian vistas of the future. Your future.

But only if the money keeps flowing to DARPA. Thank you.

The talks were obviously not the main attraction of the conference, for me. Rather, I enjoyed walking around the exhibit hall and learning about the amazing projects already underway. I especially liked some of the simpler ones, like the sniper rifle equipped with a cross-wind detector, which would indicate where one should aim in order to compensate.

The project I was there to help present is called Vernier, which aims to leverage application communities to detect and control exploits. We had a live demo that showed Vernier successfully detecting, controlling, and recovering from a self-propagating worm as it spread through a community of twenty nodes.

It was strange seeing military officers, including a three-star general complete with military entourage, checking out the latest geeky wares. Then again… there, but for the funding from DARPA, go I.

In the thickest Scottish accent I’ve ever heard, as he drives me to my hotel, my cabbie asks what I think of Bush. I answer cautiously that I am not his biggest fan. “Fuckin’ prick, ‘e is, that one!” My cabbie yells over his shoulder. I laugh, and we discuss the exit of Tony Blair and the inauguration of a Scottish Prime Minister.

My paper talk goes well, and I post the manuscript and slides on my Research page. I make a surprise announcement at the end that we are able to release our data; there is much rejoicing.

I decide to skip a portion of the afternoon sessions to be a tourist. I hop into a cab from the Hilton and ask for the Scotch Whiskey Heritage Center. There is a pause. He mumbles something and starts driving. I say again, half-question, half-repetition, “Scotch Whiskey Heritage Center?”

“Scaaatch,” the cabbie retorts, mocking my American pronunciation.

“Scotch whiskey,” I try again in my best Scottish imitation.

“I understood ya’, I joos had ta think about it a wee bit.”

At the booze museum (for what else is it, really?), I meet a Canadian named Dean with whom I have lunch after the tour. We do a flight of scotch drams from the four regions of Scotland: Lowlands, Highlands, Speyside, and the Islands. According to an extremely scientific blind experiment, I can identify two of the four by smell, and all four after tasting. I win a 1 pound bet with him about whether our waitress was Scottish or Irish. Sláinte mhath!

The conference excursion takes us to Stirling Castle, where we have a guided tour followed by champagne in the garden and a banquet in The Great Hall. The meal begins with an Ode to Haggis. A bagpipist, instrument singing, leads in a waiter holding a plate of haggis aloft. The plate is adorned with napkins curled up like the ends of a viking long boat. The musician then recites Burns’s “Address to a Haggis“, in the most exaggerated accent he can muster.

The Edinburgh chapter of my travels is nearly at a close, and I will depart for London shortly after I post this. Pictures forthcoming once I settle in London and move them off my camera. I should really get a flickr account…

There are three elements to my Irritability Trifecta. They are heat, hunger, and exhaustion. With any one, I get a bit whiny. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Any two and you ought to wait before asking a favor. The trifecta is me at my most grumpy and stabby. This story begins with me at one out of three; I am on a red-eye from Los Angeles, having gotten only a couple of hours sleep.

As we descend into Heathrow, I see raindrops streaking the windows. Ah, raining in London: how predictably quaint. It was my brilliant idea to take a train from the airport to Edinburgh, rather than flying, so that I could spice up my trip with a pleasant tour of the English countryside. I take a light rail to Paddington, and then the Tube to King’s Cross, from where my train is to depart. The station is packed with people, and most of them look cross, or concerned, or disappointed. I sidle through the crowd to check the light board for the next train to Scotland. It reads thus: Canceled, Canceled, Canceled, Canceled, and so on down the line. The enormous flat-screens flash BBC images of the severe flooding that has washed out roads, and railroad tracks, all up and down the flourishing, green countryside.

“We advise you not to travel to Edinburgh tonight,” a gentleman with the GNER tells me. I advise him, in my turn, that I will be ignoring his well-meant words, wholesale, and seeking passage to my destination. We dance the frustrated-customer-and-powerless-terminal-operator jig for a couple of minutes, and I emerge with a ticket to Edinburgh that will leave “sometime” and take “probably a very long time”. The flooded sections slow the train to a few miles per hour, I learn.

Ticket in hand, I go stand dutifully underneath the giant light board with the throngs of passengers awaiting further instructions. The amber colors flicker and a single train is announced: Edinburgh-bound, Track 5. I bob and weave through the current of people as they rush toward the train (FCFS), my giant suitcase trailing heavily behind me as I curse myself for packing like a woman. I dive into a car and slump down in my seat, exhausted and, I realize as the train pulls away from King’s cross, hungry.

Sufficiently displeased with my condition, airline-rested and fed as I am, I immerse myself in The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman. A revered classic, to be sure, but I also took a writing course from Joe at MIT and felt ashamed to have never read anything he wrote. I finish the book on the train, pleased with the experience. The rain takes a break to allow the summer sun to blaze down through my west-facing window, driving me into a sweat and completing the trifecta. I stare out the window, pointedly.

Soon, though, the clouds roll over the sun again and food service sates my animal hunger. My status downgraded to whiny, I write this post. The train ride takes about seven hours. Total travel time to Edinburgh from home is roughly 24 hours, subjective time.

The countryside really is quite lovely. Speckled with white sheep and rising near Edinburgh into seaside cliffs and crumbling stone walls. Rolling, green, and well-watered.

I will be going on at least ten trips over the next three months, starting with San Diego last week for a conference. This Sunday I leave for Edinburgh, UK for another conference, followed by some fun times in London with Sisi and Yong-Hwa. There’s also DC, Portland, Vegas, Anaheim, Vermont, Massachusetts, Burning Man, and assorted camping trips. I don’t know if that will translate into more blogging or less, but I promise to keep you abreast of any and all debauchery.

At least three of the trips (Edinburgh, DC, and Anaheim) involve me giving a talk of some form, which means I have to convincingly feign cognizance. Sean is tying the knot in Portland, which will either make him a married man or qualify him to become an eagle scout. Or a sailor. Vegas is the MIT Pi Reunion, roughly 3.14 years after our graduation; I’ve got a room at the Wynn and tickets to Cirque. Vermont is a revivification of an old tradition, except in a better house and with people who care about each others well-being. I haven’t seen my family in a solid while, so I’ll be stopping there afterwards to raid the fridge and reluctantly (but with secret glee) accept numerous hugs.

Preparations for Burning Man have been ongoing for months now, beginning with the building of a 40′ diameter geodesic dome out of metal conduit piping (our trial assembly). The current projects involve making a cover for the dome, so that we can live inside of it happily, and designing the art car, which will apparently have wings. I joined up with a camp called DeMaTerial, which has gone to Burning Man before and includes several of my friends. I’m a playa virgin, so this will be a new experience.

I’ve been making an effort to leave my comfort zone whenever possible. I think it helps me grow as a person and inspires new ideas. Somewhere between Scotch tasting in the Scottish highlands and living in the Nevada desert in a colorful hemisphere of pipes and hotel sheets, I ought to be planted firmly outside of that comfort zone.

I hope it inspires more than just discomfort.

Sometimes I feel like a Pokemon trainer of academia. It’s as though I’m trying to catch ‘em all. I’ve got (or am working on) MIT, Stanford, IBM, Google, LLNL, Sandia, IEEE publications, ACM publications, book chapter, fellowships, two BSs, an MEng, and a PhD. I just need Dorkizard and I can take on Team Nerd in the tournament. My next conference trip is IPDPS in Rhodes Island, Greece. It looks like I’ll be making a stopover in England on the way home to visit Yong-Hwa at Oxford. She is truly a Pokemon Master.

This past weekend included Peter’s Australia Day party, during which time I ate copious amounts of guacamole, smoked salmon, and fairy bread. I know what you’re thinking: “Adam, you promised to fix your photo galleries and still haven’t done it. What gives?” Right after that, you’re thinking, “What the deuce is fairy bread?” It’s a popular dish in Australia, you uncultured buffoon. Now, bring me my brandy and sprinkles.

Before that, I spent a weekend at Sierra near Lake Tahoe, learning to snowboard. From what I now know of snowboarding, and from what Colin has told me about abusive homosexual relationships, I would say that snowboarding is a bit like an abusive homosexual relationship. You take a severe beating, convince yourself that its worth it and that you are happy, and at the end of the day your ass is killing you. There will be nonpornographic photos of the snowboarding and gorgeous Tahoe scenery posted as soon as I keep my word and fix the galleries. I hope this little metaphor didn’t offend anyone. Except Colin, obviously. I think it’s safe to say his panties will be considerably bunched.

I’ll leave you with today’s political gem. As you are aware, Hamas recently won in landslide Palestinian elections. These well-known supporters of terrorism were elected democratically, so you’d think the Bush administration would be thrilled. After all, bringing democracy to the Middle East was the reason for invading Iraq, right? Well, no, it was WMDs. Remember when Saddam was an imminent threat? Neither does the administration. Suddenly, they went from “we must fight for peace” to “fighting for peace makes no sense”:

“You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable.” - Condoleezza Rice, January 30th, 2006.

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.” - George W. Bush, June 18, 2002.