3/14/2016 Octopus Warsby Alice Leung, BBN Colleague In 2008, a group of my friends was engaged in a game called Octopus Wars. We each had a small stuffed octopus which we documented performing a number of competitive quests, earning points towards becoming the exalted ruler of the octopus kingdom. One such quest was to be photographed buddying up with a famous person. Ray quite kindly agreed to be photographed with my octopus (Gertrude) for this contest. This was just another example of how Ray was entertained by things that other people might find a bit goofy, and how he had a sense of humor about being famous. I know that at least one junior developer in our department was thrilled to have Ray's autograph. Ray was also willing to help out with other unusual requests that took significant effort. In 2006, a group of middle school students from the Timilty School in Roxbury came to visit BBN as a reward for their good science fair projects. This school serves a largely minority community where many students don't know a lot of scientists. Ray volunteered to demonstrate software programming to these students. He came up with an activity where some students pretended to be computer robots and other students tried to "program" them to move around a room using a small set of commands on cards. Many "bugs" happened, and the student robots blundered into furniture and walls, entertaining the kids. For many of the students, this was the first time they heard about programming, and their first time meeting a professional scientist or engineer. I think this activity made a big impression on the kids. Though they were probably more immediately impressed with the cafeteria (pizza and french fries on the same day!) I hope that meeting a number of real-life scientists and seeing how friendly they were, and how excited they were to share their work, may have encouraged them to consider such careers for themselves. Comments are closed.
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