Tag: Neutron

Juris Dog-Torate

Neutron in profile from his shoulder up, wearing his graduation cap and gownHi! Hi hi hi! It’s Neutron Star again! My person is studying for the bar, so I’m here to tell you about my hat. Do you like my hat? It wasn’t very comfortable, but everybody says I was the most handsome.

Yes, the hat means what you think it means. This week, I graduated from Harvard Paw School with my Juris Dog-torate. My person and I got up bright and early on Thursday morning (actually it was just early, nothing bright about it, because the sun wasn’t awake yet), and we got dressed in our giant robes and my person helped me with my hat, and we went over to school. We had to stand around a lot, and then we had to sit, and then stand some more, and lots of people were talking. My person got a plastic hammer that I wanted to chew. I was disappointed that it didn’t squeak. Jameyanne grinning in her cap and gown and waving a plastic gavel There was a bit where everybody stood up and waved the hammers in the air and screamed like crazy.

Then more sitting and listening and trying to be patient, but there wasn’t a lot of room. My person said I was a good boy and gave me lots of snuggles though. Jameyanne and Neutron, both in graduation regalia, snuggling on the grass

Finally, we lined up with all the people we’ve had classes with, and they said my person’s name, and we walked across the stage and got my person’s diploma. Jameyanne smiling in her cap and gown and holding her diploma

There was no diploma for me, but I don’t need a piece of paper. I had the hat.

There were a lot of people and a lot of new smells and the hat was very distracting because it was very handsome, even though it kept slipping. But I did my job like a superstar and guided my person all over. And I only tried to eat her tassel a couple times.

I know I know. But it was just so floppy and dangly and I had to try.

I was sad that Mopsy couldn’t come, because she was with our person for the first year of paw school, but she doesn’t like crowds anymore, so she decided to stay home with our other buddy, Rocket.

I’m also sad because even though school is over and we’re all graduated and everything, my person is still studying all the time. I guess there’s this big exam called the bar that she has to pass before we can go to work as lawyers, so there’s going to be a lot of sitting this summer. So my job this summer will be to bring my person plenty of balls and bones and snuggles and make sure she doesn’t work too hard and takes me for walks, because I need to stay in shape for all the adventures coming this fall.

Summer 2018 Part Two: Space Law and Space Lasers

Last week, I talked about the first half of my summer and my internship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Now I’m going to talk about the second half of my summer and my internship at Analytical Space, Inc. First, though, I’m going to back up and tell you about space law.

Since my post a few months ago about why I want to go into space law, a lot of you have asked me what exactly space law is. Lucky for you, I was expecting this response, and I did in fact promise a post about this. So here is my quick and dirty—dare I say nebulous?—explanation of space law. (All space puns are 100% intended.)

When I say space law is nebulous, I mean two things. One, it’s kind of fuzzy. And two, it is still very much in its infancy.

Quick astronomy lesson for you: A nebula is a cloud of dust and gas surrounding a baby star.

A baby star like this little guy! Picture shows Neutron as a puppy sitting in front of a white and blue background. He is all head and paws.

Sorry, there was a picture of me and Neutron Star, and this picture of baby Neutron, in Seeing Eye’s quarterly magazine, and I couldn’t resist sharing it with you.

But seriously, nebulae are nurseries for stars and solar systems. A nebula is a vast cloud of interstellar dust, hydrogen, helium, and other ionized gases. The gas, dust, and other matter in the nebula clump together, gravity starts to do its thing, there’s some spinning action, and eventually the clump becomes dense enough to form stars. The remaining material, through a process called accretion, forms planets and other objects. This is how our own solar system and our own planet were formed. Cool, right?

So space law is nebulous in every sense of the word. It is fuzzy and confusing, and there’s no simple way to define it, but that’s because it is still being formed. Space law has been around since the USSR launched Sputnik in the 1950s, but as far as legal fields go, space law is pretty young.

Okay, you say, but what is it? The oversimplified answer is space law is the legal framework for anything to do with outer space. That legal framework is being built as we speak. I’ve heard that within ten years, space law is going to be the next big thing in the legal world. Which is why I’m trying to get aboard this rocketship now.

The way I understand it, space law is happening in multiple orbits in the U.S. First, there are the international treaties and agreements that govern what nations can do in outer space. Then, there are the federal agencies, like NASA, which are doing things in outer space. There are the federal agencies like NOAA, FAA, FCC, and the Department of State, which are creating regulations for what can be done in outer space. And finally there are all those new commercial space companies (you know, the ones sending cars to Mars). This is obviously not a complete picture, but it’s a basic outline.

There are five international treaties and a slew of memoranda of understanding between countries which make up the international law governing outer space. The gist of these international agreements is that outer space cannot be claimed by any one country, and space is only to be used for peaceful purposes. There are also agreements on rescuing astronauts, liability for damages caused by objects launched into outer space, and of course agreements governing the international space station.

On the domestic level, there are a whole bunch of federal agencies doing work in space. There’s NASA, of course, which runs the U.S. space program. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates weather satellites. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulates launch vehicles, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates radio frequency spectrum use (I’ll explain that more in a minute). There are more—Department of State, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, NIST, and more.

Finally, there are all the private space companies, which are doing everything from sending cars to Mars and launching inflatable modules for the International Space Station, to operating weather, GPS, and safety system satellites and conducting experiments on new medicines in microgravity. There is a lot of really cool stuff happening up in space, guys. The private space industry is growing very quickly, and this is one of the big reasons space law is growing so much as a field. The growing private space industry raises a lot of questions that will need to be answered. For example, no one can own bodies in space (like the moon or Mars or asteroids), but what about resources that could be extracted from asteroids by asteroid mining companies? And, on a simpler note, all these new space companies will need lawyers to do regular lawyerly things like drafting contracts and negotiating agreements and litigating disputes and such.

At the end of June, I left NIST and returned to Cambridge. I moved back into my apartment, returned to my habit of buying ice cream in Harvard Square every day (only kidding, I got myself down to once a week), and started my second internship at Analytical Space. Analytical Space is a small startup in Cambridge building an in-space data relay service using satellites about the size of shoe boxes. Basically, everybody has satellites up in space, but it’s really hard for these satellites to get data down to the ground, because as you all know, 70% of the world is water, and as you probably don’t know (because I didn’t) satellites need to connect to a specific ground terminal to get their data down to Earth. So Analytical Space is planning to put a bunch of satellites up in space to act like cell towers and connect other satellites with the ground much faster. And my favorite part, they’re using lasers to do it. I repeat: space lasers.

Right after I got here, our first satellite was deployed from the International Space Station, and we’ve been testing everything and getting ready for tests with customers. I’ve been helping with the regulatory side of that, which mainly means working with the FCC regulations. Which brings me back to the spectrum regulations I mentioned earlier.

Think back to high school science class and the electromagnetic spectrum, radio waves to gamma rays and all that stuff in between, including the rainbow. All communications take place on the electromagnetic spectrum. The FCC regulates how the spectrum is used and makes sure that no one is interfering with anyone else. This is why radio stations broadcast at different frequencies. Basically, the FCC is trying to minimize those awkward spots where you’re hearing two radio stations at once, except they’re not just doing it for radio stations. They’re doing it for satellites too. This is a very simplified version of what’s going on, but it’s the general idea. For the past two months, I’ve been learning how all this works, getting everything ready to get FCC approval for our beta tests, and drafting comments on the FCC’s proposed regulations for small satellites.

Apart from spending the last two months being thoroughly amazed and getting to geek out about cool space things, I’ve really enjoyed getting experience at a startup and seeing how the private space industry works. The people are all a lot of fun too. We had a big party to celebrate our first satellite’s deployment, and the interns had a Dungeons and Dragons night, and it’s been a really great experience on the whole. I’m going to be continuing part time at Analytical Space through the fall semester, or until 3L eats me.

So that’s what I was up to for the second half of my summer. I’m going to go enjoy the last few days before I have to crack the law books again, but I’ll be back next week with my August reading roundup and to talk about how I overcame my writer’s block this summer.

A Year in the Life of a Neutron Star

Neutron sitting down and looking up at camera, his mouth stretched wide open to hold a neon green softball. His tail is midwag.Hi! Hi hi hi! Do you like my ball? Do you? Do you? Good. It’s a good ball.

Yes, you guessed it, I’m the Neutron Star. My person finally let me on to talk to you. Hi! I’m very excited to meet you.

I’ve been with my person for a whole year now. I can’t believe it’s been that long, but I also feel like we’ve been together forever.

One morning a whole year ago, I got a bath, and then my trainer brought me into a new place. And in this new place was a new person. She was very excited to meet me, and she smelled like puppies, and she figured out my favorite place to be scratched right away (my Neutron noggin). But then my trainer left me with this new person, and I liked her lots, but I was confused. I saw my trainer again soon, though. Now he was teaching me and the new person to work together. We went all over Morristown, New Jersey and New York City together. My new person and I became good buddies.

Then the new person and I got into a big flying tin can and went to a new place. I finally got to meet the other puppies my person smelled like. They’re black labs like me, and they’re named Mopsy and Rocket. Mopsy told me that she was my person’s guide first, but she couldn’t do it anymore, so I better do a good job. I said I would, and she let me snuggle with her. Rocket didn’t want to be left out, so he snuggled with us too. And we’ve been buddies ever since.

Soon after we went to the new place, my person and I started law school. My person was actually going back to law school. She took time before all the classes started to teach me the campus and the places she liked to go. I paid good attention, because I knew I needed to catch up, since I was starting in the middle. I learned the campus, and I caught up on the law stuff I needed to know (Mopsy taught me lots when we went back to see her and Rocket and the other people). And then the adventures really began.

In the last year, I’ve been all over Cambridge and Boston with my person. I went up to Vermont twice, and we went back to New Hampshire a lot too. We took classes at the law school and Harvard College and MIT. I learned some French with my person, and we learned a lot about negotiating in all sorts of scenarios and international business transactions and diplomacy and artificial intelligence. When the school year ended, my person stopped practicing French and started teaching me Italian. I like how Italian sounds better than French, and I think she’s better at it anyway.

In January, we worked at MIT for three weeks. Well, almost three weeks. There was a big snow storm one day that meant we had to stay home. When we went out in the big snowstorm because I had to go out, there was so much snow I had to swim.

Sidenote, I got to go swimming for the first time with my person yesterday. Once I figured out that she hadn’t taken me to some giant magical water bowl and I was supposed to swim around, not drink the whole thing, I had a lot of fun. (I like the idea of the giant magical water bowl too though.) It was less fun when my person decided that now I needed a bath.

Anyway, after we finished classes for the year, my person and I and my person’s mother went to New York again, which I remembered from last year. I zipped around through all the people on our way to meet my person’s brother and to get food. Then we went to a new place my person called Gaithersburg, Maryland. She says she’s going to talk about it more later, because she was doing a lot of stuff on the computer and I was taking nice long snoozles under the desk. I made a lot of new friends in Maryland, and we were both sad when we left, even though I was kind of bored with the walk to work by then.

Now we’re back in Cambridge, and my person is doing more stuff on a computer, and I’m taking snoozles under the desk. But I’m closer to Mopsy and Rocket, and the walk to work is much more interesting here.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last year. I love my new person and all our new adventures. She buys me the best bones and balls and other toys, and she knows all my favorite places to get scratches, and she’s always happy to snuggle with me. Also, she’s given me all the best names. I’m not just Neutron the subatomic puppy. I’m the Neutron Star, the Neutron Superstar, just Star, Starship, Starfish, Starburst, and a whole lot more. She even renamed my crate my Nucleus.

It’s been a great year, and I’ve learned lots and lots. But the biggest thing I’ve learned is that I am a real superdog now. I finished my training, and I have a sidekick I have to watch out for. It’s my responsibility to get her where she needs to go and make sure she has fun along the way.

And that’s what we’re off to do now. I guess that means I have to put the ball down.

Neutron in Time Square

Jameyanne standing in front of a crowd in Time Square with Neutron at her side. Both person and puppy are smiling.As I write this, I’m flying home from Seeing Eye, with Neutron at my feet under the seat in front of me. This is Neutron’s first plane flight. I’m glad to be going home, but this has really been a fabulous class with a great group of people, and I’m not sure I’m ready to get back to the real world. There have been a lot of things I’ve been putting off while I’m here, saying I’ll deal with it when I’m back from Seeing Eye. Well, I’m almost back from Seeing Eye, so now I’m going to have to deal with all that stuff. (Note: At the time I’m posting this, I’ve arrived home, been mobbed by dogs, and started unpacking, organizing my life, and catching up on sleep).

 

I’ll talk about arriving home in the future, when I’m awake enough to string two words together. This post is about my last week of training with Neutron.

 

We cruised through our second solo. There were a lot of challenges: dog distractions, planned and spontaneous; an idling bus sticking out of a driveway; the facial salon Neutron was intent on taking me into; people not looking where they were going and nearly mowing us down. Neutron was fabulous the whole way through, and we had a lot of fun. I’m not sure when, but somewhere between our first solo and our second, things really clicked into place for us and we just started zooming along.

 

After our solo, we began freelance work. During freelance, we did some standard things as well as work that was similar to what we might face at home.

 

We started with escalators. Yes, it is possible to take a dog on an escalator, and no, the dog doesn’t have to wear shoes to do it (though I must say Neutron has some super snazzy shoes for snow storms and extra hot summer days). The trick with escalators is to keep your dog resting at your left side and reach out along the railing with your right hand, and the second you feel the railing start to flatten, you and your dog start moving and walk off the escallator. If your dog is moving, there’s no chance of their feet getting caught. Neutron is a huge fan of escalators. His tail was wagging all the way, and when we got off, he was all wriggly and prancy because he did it right.

 

Revolving doors didn’t go so well. On our second morning of freelance, we went to do revolving doors. I never learned how to do revolving doors with Mopsy—I always took the regular door—and once I found myself in a situation where the regular door was locked and the security guard refused to open it for me, so we had to wing the revolving door and it stressed everybody out. So I wanted to make sure I actually learned how to work Neutron through a revolving door. We practiced primarily on manual revolving doors, the kind you push. The trick with these is to keep your dog on your right side, rather than your left, so they’re in the widest part of the door. Keep them up as close to the glass in front of you as possible, and push the door with your left hand. I didn’t do so well my first try, and I accidently bumped Neutron’s butt with the door, which caused him to get nervous and not trust me so much on revolving doors. The second time I did better. And yesterday, we went to another, bigger door to practice on (because I wanted more practice to feel confident), and we nailed it. Neutron was super happy about it. We learned how to do the automatic revolving doors too, but we didn’t actually practice on them, and honestly those freak me out so we’re going to generally stick with the regular door to the side, which by law they have to have (so there, random security guard who wouldn’t let me in with Mopsy).

 

We also did work on roads with no sidewalks—country work. Neutron and I walk on the left side of the road, so we’re facing oncoming traffic and I’m between Neutron and the traffic (I’m  more visible and it makes Neutron feel safer). We went to a grocery store and practiced using a cart with Neutron. I said it seven years ago and I’ll say it again: there’s a reason I didn’t pass driver’s ed. We wandered through the Morristown courthouse, which was a maze of interconnected buildings with lots of trick staircases and short turns and narrow hallways. We also went to the pet store, where I got Neutron another bone and an ID tag and we worked through all the distractions (there was literally a wall of dogs). We worked on how to deal with medians in the middle of streets, and we cruised around a shopping mall where we practiced getting directions for different stores and in general dealing with the public. Personally, I prefer Amazon, but we found Neutron some nice lacrosse balls to play with, and we fended off small children who wanted to pet him and people who were trying to take sneaky pictures of him. Folks, I can hear your phone make the little camera noise and I will chew you out for it, because taking pictures of my dog can distract him and possibly endanger my safety, and also it’s just rude and an invasion of my privacy. Flip the situation and ask how you would feel if someone was sneakily taking pictures of you without asking and you get it. Just don’t do it. Rant over.

 

We worked with buses and trains as well, and we used the clicker to get Neutron to target the bus stop (more training me to use the clicker than Neutron). We did a trip in downtown Morristown at night, so I could practice with Neutron when my residual vision isn’t nearly as good, and we rocked it. And of course, we took a couple trips to get ice cream, because ice cream is life and we had to make sure Neutron had proper exposure to ice cream shops with me.

 

Finally, we went to New York City for a day. We started at Port Authority and walked down to 30th Street, where we encountered a lot of construction. I wanted some construction work because there’s a lot of construction in Boston. We worked on how to deal with construction that blocked the sidewalk and funneled you out into the street with a barrier between you and the cars, as well as scaffolding slalom, both things I had to handle this summer on my way to my internship. Then we took the subway up to Columbus Circle. In the subway station, we worked on platform awareness with the dogs in the subway. If you tell the dog forward thinking you’re facing the way to go but you’re actually facing the platform, the dog won’t take you into the platform but will steer you right or left, guiding you along the platform. Neutron brought me close, following my direction, saw the edge, went “oh nope,” and then steered me away. When I insisted, he steered me even farther away from it. All indicators that, if I was confused and thought I was heading somewhere else but was really facing the platform, I would need to reassess where I was. We also did more practice with the clicker, teaching Neutron to target the turnstile to get onto the platform. When we got out at Columbus Circle, Neutron took me right to the turnstiles even though it was a totally different station. From Columbus Circle we walked down Broadway to Time Square, where we worked through the crowds of people and dogs over to a burger place for lunch. And after lunch, we walked back down to Port Authority and went back to the Seeing Eye. Neutron was just flying through New York, weaving around pedestrians, poles, dogs, pigeons, bicycles, mail carts, gratings, and the one guy in a wheelchair with three off-leash chihuahuas in sweater vests. It was really an incredible experience, and I feel like if we could handle that, we can definitely take on Boston.

 

It’s taken me longer to write this than anticipated, because Neutron was a bit anxious during take-off and landing on the plane (it was his first flight and there were so many noises so he tried to climb into my lap). But he was zooming through the airport. I can’t wait to get home so I can see Mopsy again and Neutron can meet her and our pet black lab, Rocket. We’re going to have a relaxing couple of weeks as much as we can, letting Neutron settle in and get familiar with home and my new apartment at school.

 

It’s the sleep-deprivation talking, I’m sure, but all of this still feels really surreal to me. I just can’t believe that I went to Seeing Eye, was matched with this super smart, sweet, curious little boy, and now I’m almost home with him. But we did it. For me, training at Seeing Eye this time was almost all about learning to listen to this new dog, and this new dog learning to work with you. Training’s over now. We’re a team, and off we go.