New Semester

The new semester has begun at last. After the first two days of classes I have a fairly optimistic view of my course line up. Although several classes I wanted to take filled up, I have a fairly good back-up selection.

Multi Body Dynamics: This class explores, shocker, the dynamics of systems with multiple bodies, something rather relevant to robotics. There are German and English offerings of the lecture. I have settled for the English version. My only two options for taking the exam are performing an oral exam while in Germany or taking the test with some proctor in the US in September. Both options seem a lot more doable in my native tongue.

The same professor also teaches Electromechanical Motion Technology. It focuses on electrically powered...moving...thingies. Descriptive, I know. However, seeing how much fun I have trying to design electrically powered moving thingies, I have a good feeling about this.

The next class, whose recitation quite unfortunately conflicts with the previous class's lecture, is all about machine tools meaning machines used to cut, hammer, bend, etc. Hopefully I will not need the material in the recitation too terribly much.

The last of the courses I have visited so far had a bit of humanity to it: Discourse Ethics. In all honesty, I had no idea what that meant. I just knew that it was an introductory level philosophy course and that I enjoyed History of Philosophy in high school. After the first lecture I think that discourse ethics means examining universal rules in language to find a universal basis for ethics rather than subscribing to total moral relativism. Suffice it to say, Nazism made a pretty convincing argument against relativism. I found it interesting how the professor qualified any mention of the Nazi concept of morality. He took great pains to make it clear that he simply meant a system of values with clear rules, regardless of how terrible they were. Hopefully I will get a better grasp of discourse ethics than i have now. It certainly seems worth the effort.