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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016
BOOKS
WHAT ARE THEY READING?
he Daily Astorian invites people to submit
titles of books they are reading and share
a few thoughts about the work. This week, Jean
Hooge, who worked as a nurse, taught nursing,
and was a psychotherapist for many years, shares
some of her favorites. To submit, send to news@
dailyastorian.com
T
I
got rid of giant stacks of
books on moving to Asto-
ria a little less than year
ago from San Antonio, Texas.
I love books and even with
the best of intentions the books
are piling up again.
‘The Wright Brothers’
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Wright Brothers” by David
McCullough. We all know the
story of the invention of the
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much more. The brothers were
so dedicated to the precise sci-
ence of their work. They went
about everything so methodi-
cally and never seemed to get
discouraged no matter what
happened.
They were never self-glo-
rifying. They were honored
and celebrated on two con-
tinents but never let it go to
their heads. There was never a
hint of scandal associated with
their name. They took off what
time they needed to work in
their bicycle shop to support
themselves. They never quar-
reled with each other or their
sister.
It is a fascinating story
about a great invention and a
study of two beautiful Ameri-
can heroes.
Jean Hooge
“In a Special Light”
‘A Common Struggle’
“A Common Struggle” by
Patrick J. Kennedy is one of
the most enlightening books I
have read on mental health and
addiction and I have a mas-
ters in psychiatric and men-
tal health. According to Ken-
nedy we have wasted so much
money, time, and lives impris-
oning the addicted instead of
realizing that addiction is a
mental health problem and
we need to put the needed
resources into treatment.
Kennedy, a former con-
gressman an son of the late
U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy,
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hand as he admits to belonging
to a family of addicts and how
the sickness is handed down
because of the denial.
He explains how he worked
16 years in the U.S. House of
Representatives trying to get
the Mental Health Parity and
Addiction Equity Act passed.
It is a story of a family and
a prescription of how we can
get out of this serious public
health problem.
‘Rogue Lawyer’
“Rogue Lawyer” by John
Grisham is just another one of
his books that I have to gobble
up immediately like a choco-
late donut. They are not nec-
essarily nourishing but they
are real entertainment. Grish-
am’s books make me feel
good because they seem to
advocate against our system
of punishing the poor more
than the wealthy for the same
crimes. Sebastian Rudd, the
rogue lawyer in this book,
does things very differently
from the standard lawyers and
accepts clients they would not
take. All told in the easy read-
ing Grisham style.
‘In a Special Light’
“In a Special Light” is writ-
ten by Elroy Bode, who is a
longtime friend living in El
Paso. This is the last of the
eight books he has written. He
writes about where he lives
and the hill country where he
was born. As an avid observer
of his world — and the art with
which he describes the sim-
Some of Hooge’s favorite books.
ple world around him — has
obtained him many followers.
In this book he describes
searching for his son, what it
was like teaching high school
for 48 years, and his experi-
ences as an intellectual pro-
tester to bigotry and the Viet-
nam War in Texas in the ’60s.
‘Team of Rivals’
“Team of Rivals,” by one
of my favorite writers Doris
Kearns Goodwin, doesn’t need
me to sing its praises. It is the
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
The underwater robot is shown on a table in the Clatsop Community College physics lab.
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Lincoln.
Goodwin explains how Lin-
coln put his rivals in his Cabi-
net and learned to govern with
their wealth of opinions. She
so beautifully tells how this
humble man guided this nation
through its most turbulent time.
There are a host of books
on Lincoln but none so well
researched. Another goal of
Goodwin’s was to show that
there can be decency and com-
passion in politics.
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Georges Oates Larsen activates the robot simulator on his computer.
Robot: Success at regionals could lead to spot in international competition
Continued from Page 1C
by their interest in mathemat-
ics and engineering. Pat Keefe
is a focal point for the techni-
cally minded students through
his physics in calculus course.
Budget robotics
The competition chal-
lenges students to become
entrepreneurs who develop
a robot on their own dime
to perform simulated real-
world tasks underwater and
in outer space.
The college, which has
at times outperformed larger
research universities on a
shoestring budget, has been
in the competition for at least
a decade. The college stu-
dents were recently joined
by several more teams from
Warrenton High School tak-
ing part in the lower levels of
the competition.
Two months before last
year’s competition, Larsen
said, the college decided to
overhaul its robot, dropping
out of the competition in
order to perfect its design.
“I was just mucking pro-
gramming with a little video
game, and I was like, ‘You
know, I wonder if I could
come up with a way to con-
trol a whole bunch of thrust-
ers on a space ship,’” Larsen
said during a robotics club
meeting last month, paus-
ing for a self-deprecating
laugh, “‘automatically so it
moved the way I wanted it to
move.’”
For less than $2,000,
the college’s team has built
a sparse, cubical metal-
lic frame ringed by six con-
verted RC airplane motors.
In the middle is the encase-
ment holding the submers-
ible’s control module, the
brain translating commands
from the team above water
through a power and Ethernet
tether to the robot below.
Real-life video game
Pool time is a premium
for the college. But Larsen,
drawing on his program-
ming skills, needs only to
plug the robot into his Mac-
Book through a USB cord
DQG¿UHXSDYLUWXDOHQYLURQ-
ment he programmed to sim-
ulate the underwater oil well
the robot needs to explore for
the competition.
Using a game controller,
he pilots the robot on his com-
puter screen, while the sub-
mersible’s engines — high
and dry — whir on a work
bench in the background.
“Once we’re done, then
it’s just a matter of going to
the pool to calibrate it, then
we’re good” he said. “That’s
quite useful. It’s also useful
for giving people something
tangible to actually play with,
other than motors spinning,
which is cool to me, but —
you know — not necessar-
ily the coolest thing in the
world.”
Larsen handles the elec-
tronics and programming. As
captain, he also assigns tasks,
from soldering and water-
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nents and building the claw
to fundraising to buy parts.
Darby Cullen, from Asto-
ria, and Jonathan Kaminski
from Jewell, engineering stu-
dents who joined the team
this year, focus largely on
another submersible the col-
lege is building to dive for
shipwrecks this summer
in support of the Maritime
Archaeological Society.
From the Gulf to
Jupiter
NASA has called for a
robot able to survive in both
deep space and ocean envi-
ronments on Europa, one of at
least 67 moons orbiting Jupi-
ter and on which scientists
believe exists a large ocean
underneath a sheet of ice.
Hypothetically, the col-
lege’s robot needs to be
able to survive transport to
Europa and deploy instru-
mentation underneath the
ice sheet. The competition
also has the robot simulat-
ing a damage assessment in
the Gulf of Mexico after the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill,
and turning a wellhead into
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Another prospect that
gets Larsen and other local
robot-builders giddy is the
possibility that, if they succeed
at regionals, they can earn a
spot in the international com-
petition at the neutral buoy-
ancy lab at NASA’s Johnson
Space Center in Houston.
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