Seth and Howie

      At McDonald's Around the World

An incomplete history of the many McDonald's visits by Seth and Howie, and a long list of their friends.

Seth and Howie at McDonald's


In the summer of 2012, Howie came to London for the famous Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics.

While he was in town, he manged to find time for a visit to the McDonald's on the Thames (note the well known clock tower, and the etched arches in the window), in addition to attending the Symposium.
Howie gives his keynote lecture on snake robots. After the Symposium, what could be better than a trip to McD's for a cono. Pierre Dupont, Robert Webster, Nabil Simaan, Venkat Krovi, and Shigeo Hirose all agree.


ICRA 2012, St. Paul

Not so far from the conference venue, we found a McD's in Wells Fargo Place. RonnieMac was there to welcome us.
From inside the McD's, one can see to the left the local headquarters for the Church of Scientology, and to the right a multi-story mural of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's almost as if F. Scott is standing proudly on the double-arch logo.
It turns out that the Church of Scientology has a very welcoming information center, which includes a nice little cafe, where it is perfectly acceptable to eat ones McD's breakfast treats. In that information center, we made a new friend: Troy Wilson, who is the public contact secretary for the Church of Scientology in the Twin Cities (as far as we know, these are the only twin cities in the USA). Above, Troy points us to the start of the self-guided tour of the history of Scientology. We learned a lot of things. For example, did you know that L. Ron Hubbard was the nation's youngest Eagle Scout, or that he attended the nation's first class on nuclear physics (Atomic Molecular Phenomena)? You can learn about all of this, and more, in the St. Paul information center.