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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.

Japan was beautiful, charming, and occasionally surreal. I was propositioned for sex in Tokyo, drank water from a spring at a temple overlooking Kyoto, and practiced my talk in a hotel room in Yokohama that overlooked the world’s largest ferris wheel. These are some of the moments by which I will remember the trip. What follows is a whirlwind summary.

Day 0-1

After landing in Narita, I took a bus to Tokyo, where I was picked up by the Iwase family. The Iwases have known my family since I was a baby, and they were kind enough to host me for part of my time in Tokyo. I’ve already thanked them profusely for everything they did for me, but if they happen to read this: thanks! I spent the night in their home and set out alone the next morning, headed for Tokyo. This was my first time out of the United States (I actually had to get a passport just for this trip), unless you count a brief journey into Canada, which no one seems to. Having never seen anything outside of America, many of the small differences struck me potently. Consider driving-related issues: they drive on the left, which freaked the crap out of me the first time I was in a car, luckily as a passenger. Many cars have the side-view mirrors on the hood, which may partially account for what I perceived to be an uncanny ability of the Japanese to back-in park with unparalleled speed and accuracy. Many roads are absurdly narrow, with two-way streets having a width of 1.5 cars; courtesy is required to avoid death. The signs are friendlier: instead of a child crossing sign just having a smaller-looking adult figure, the little girl has a bow in her hair and is carrying a lunch box. The racoon crossing sign shows an animal with huge anime-style eyes. Oh, and everything is in Japanese.

I took the subway to Shinjuku, which is roughly divided into a commercial and an entertainment district. The commercial part has some department stores and office buildings, and the entertainment district has restaurants, arcades, theaters, and a red light district full of Yakuza. I accidentally meandered into the red light district, and was approached by a shifty-eyed gentleman. “Massage?” he asked me. “No, thanks,” I said politely. Then, as though perhaps I might naively think he was suggesting something purely orthopedic, he added, “Massage and sex, japanese?” I declined and thanked him again. I was going to make a joke to him about not paying for sex before 2 PM, but it would have been wasted. I walked through a section of Shinjuku that inspired the cityscape in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. I snagged some strange tea from one of the ubiquitous vending machines and hopped back on the subway to Akihabara. Akihabara is a bit of nerd heaven, with an electronics district filled with hundreds of tiny shops selling the most obscure electronic goods you can imagine. Need a purple 2 picofarad capacitor with copper connectors and, whatever, a Hello Kitty design? Akihabara.

Day 2

I visited Kamakura, which is an old-style city outside of Tokyo. Among the sights was a giant bronze Buddha. You could actually walk inside the Buddha, which I of course did, never being one to pass up a chance to get inside a deity. Despite being the rainy season in Tokyo, the weather held out for the first 4 days of my trip. Instead of being rainy, it was mid-80s and humid. I recommend not going inside a giant metal deity on such a day; analogies to an oven would not be hyperbole. That night, I ate dinner with the Iwases and one of the father’s IBM coworkers, Kato-san. We had some delicious Japanese BBQ. Oishii!

Day 3

We drove to Yokohama and parked at the Grand Intercontinental, where I would be staying for the conference. I then hopped on the Shinkansen (bullet train) and went to Kyoto. For the record, the bullet train goes fast, to the point where I felt almost dizzy watching the countryside fly by at 175 mph. Frequently, we’d slip into a tunnel, emerge for a moment to reveal a small valley in which a village was nestled, only to zoom back into darkness a moment later. In Kyoto, I went to a Buddhist shrine with hundreds of beautiful statues, in front of which were 12 sculptures of Buddhist gods. There, I met Jasmin, a model from Germany, who was doing some shoots in Tokyo and visiting Kyoto alone. Of course, I invited her to join me for the rest of the day.

Next, we went to Kinkakuchi, the Golden Temple. This was a gold-leafed temple sitting at the edge of a gorgeous lake. Then we went to Kiyumizu (”pure water”), which is a series of temples atop a hill overlooking Kyoto. The path up to Kiyumizu was lined with small shops, which Jasmin and I browsed for gifts. The temples themselves were brightly colored and imposing. We took drinks from the fountains that gave Kiyumizu its name. Jasmin told me about a commercial she had shot while in Japan, in which these women are swinging pick axes in a gold mine and, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, they strike Canada Dry ginger ale. After saying goodbye to Jasmin, I wandered parts of downtown Kyoto. Then I checked into a hotel for the night. I flipped on the TV, because trying to figure out what’s happening without understanding the language is a real kick. Suddenly, there was Jasmin, toiling in the mines, searching for a vein of soda.

Day 4

More Kyoto. We checked out Roanji rock garden, which was truly peaceful. I sat down by the edge and just spaced out for a bit, still not entirely sure that all that I had seen in this country was real. I liked one particular carving that read “I learn only to be contented.” We also checked out a huge fort. The front gate was guarded by two huge statues, one of which had its mouth open and a hand up and beckoning. The other had its mouth closed and hand held up in a gesture to stop. One is meant to keep evil out and other is to let good in. We took the Shinkansen back to Yokohama, where I said gooodbye to the Iwases and checked into my hotel for the conference. My room on the 22nd floor overlooked an amusement park with the world’s largest ferris wheel, as well as Landmark Tower, which is the largest building in Japan. At night, the wheel displayed a beautiful cycling light show.

Day 5-6

The convention center and area around the hotel seemed to be very active in terms of the film and television industry. One evening I saw a bunch of people spreading cotton over some bushes, and spraying them and the ground with water. This was meant to simulate melting snow for a movie scene that was being filmed. I tried to take pictures of the set, but was largely foiled by a woman who knew just enough English to instruct me that I had better put away my camera. It wasn’t a thrilling scene, anyway, just some hotel bellmen yelling at each other in Japanese. The next few days, however, they were filming an episode of Power Rangers in a space next to the hotel. From what I could tell at a distance, the Rangers were fighting a monster of some kind. They got blown up a few times, but I think they won in the end. In between takes, crew members would gather around the monster with little paper fans; he would remove the head of his costume and allow them to wag the fans at him for a few moments before the next scene.

My talk, which I gave on the first full day of DSN, went well. I got the same comment I got last time, which was that I kept my audience awake. Granted, this is the same praise I could have achieved by standing on stage and lighting stuff on fire, but I take what I can get. In my slides, I included an anecdote involving a character who I described as “your average blonde-haired, blue-eyed, computational astrophysicist.”

Day 7-9

I was disappointed to discover that the hotel gym was not free. In fact, it was 3800 yen (~$38) per use. So, instead, I asked the front desk whether there were any running paths I could use to get some exercise. They gave me a little card indicating 3 km and 1 km running paths. These proved to be really beautiful, taking me past Yokohama harbor, the giant ferris wheel, an old ship, and Landmark Tower. The conference included an excursion, which took us to a Japanese garden, to a theater to see a Noh play, and on a dinner cruise in the harbor. The Noh play was not what I expected, but interesting. Apparently, the words in the songs of the play are deep and multifaceted, much like Shakespeare; unfortunately, the translator barely spoke English, so these subtleties were lost on me. The conference ended uneventfully. I took a bus back to Narita and hopped a plane home. As soon as I got into Boston, I packed up my things again and drove up to Vermont, but that’s another story for another day…

You can now check out my Japan pictures in all their imported glory. I left out several stories, so if you’d like to hear more just ask me about the trip sometime. It was really a spectacular voyage in a wonderful country. Domo arigato gozaimasu! Sayonara!