advanced robotics

Instead of listening to JS talk about Hungarian-Transylvanians living in Romania and how Hungary did not encourage them to pursue ethnic conflict in order to make its transition into the EU smooth, I started thinking about ReBoot.  Not really thinking about it, just remembering it, quotes from it ("Does that kid remind you of anyone?" "Not really").  It occurs to me now that I may fail the midterm because I have not been paying very good attention to all his Yugoslavia stories, that is if the midterm is example-driven rather than theory-driven.  Oh well.  I already know what I think causes ethnic conflict and this class has not changed my mind.  Further I think I agree with JS. 

One thing I will say for realists, though.  They are very good at giving names to their ideas.  Nothing clunky like "constructivism" (although I give Smith some credit for making up pretentious, exotic-sounding words: ethnie, mythomoteur): they have Stag Hunts and Zero-Sum and Prisoner's Dilemma and Realpolitik and Tragedy of the (Freaking) Anticommons.  I mean, for being cold computers who believe people "can be reduced to basic mechanical parts" (Grendel: "New Flesh"), they are damn cool.  It's almost like they were made to be Magneto-esque villains, the kind that the audience secretly roots for because the good guys, the constructivists (or worse, the liberalists!  now they are truly dorks in spandex) are such losers who don't even have cool names for their attacks.

I don't want to study for anything.  I'd rather just wing everything and listen to Grendel: 1 2 3 4.  All day.