I spent 27 years in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I helped build a state of the art automated manufacturing system for bent sheet metal parts. (Sort of origami in metal.)
For many years I was an elected member of CMU's Staff Council and was appointed to serve on the University's Human Relations Commission. I played a significant role in winning domestic partner healthcare benefits for staff and faculty. I was unsuccessful in trying to get the university to care about light pollution. They lit a large, silly outdoor sculpture from the ground. In October 2007 I moved back to Texas.
I grew up in Port Arthur, Tx, and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1965. Until the end of 1968 I attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, majoring in Mathematics and Physics. I was at the University of Houston 1968-71. I got my B.A. in Philosophy in '69 and stayed to do graduate study for a couple of years. I was in the Ph.D. program in Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from 1971 until I left to become a research computer programmer in CMU's Robotics Institute in 1980.
Climate change risks are growing faster than expected. Compare the “burning embers” diagrams from 2001 and the present. Climate change poses a greater risk at lower temperatures than previously thought in 2001. For some risks the planet is already almost in the red.
