For want of a half penny, a future was lost…

Yesterday, my son shared the video below - Neil deGrasse Tyson's "We Stopped Dreaming (Episode 1)". It took me back to childhood memories when I was inspired to be a scientist. I remember watching the Apollo launches. I think I remember listening to the Gemini 4 space walk – I was four, and my father recorded it on reel-to-reel, but I don’t remember him ever replaying it. I remember staying up late and falling asleep…thankfully to be awoken by my mother just before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. ...Skylab, ...the test flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Years later, I left behind aspirations of a science career (practicalities…how much money does the average physicist make anyway?) for one of engineering, but the love of space, cosmology, NASA…all still with me…which is why what Neil deGrasse Tyson is saying in this video saddens me all the more.

I worry that decisions Congress makes doesn't [sic] factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow.
Apart from the applicability of that to just about any of the current Congress's decisions, he’s dead right in this specific instance. We are not funding science. We are not encouraging and developing engineers. We are failing in educating our young people, not only in the technical fields, but in general. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) compares 15 year olds in 65 industrial countries. From the 2009 report:
The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a collaborative effort among OECD member countries to measure how well 15-year-old students approaching the end of compulsory schooling are prepared to meet the challenges of today’s knowledge societies. The assessment is forward-looking: rather than focusing on the extent to which these students have mastered a specific school curriculum, it looks at their ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. This orientation reflects a change in curricular goals and objectives, which are increasingly concerned with what students can do with what they learn at school.
“…to meet real-life challenges.” Care to guess how the U.S.A. fared in the latest, 2009, assessment? You can see here for yourself, but I’ll spoil it:
  • Reading – 17th (out of 65)
  • Mathematics –31st (significantly below the average)
  • Science – 23rd
We fail. We fail across the board. We fail where it matters. I’m not sure how we will fare in the 2012 PISA, but I seriously doubt we’ll improve. Our system doesn't support it anymore. Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, in their book “That Used to Be us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back”, quote Matt Miller, one of the authors of a 2009 McKinsey & Company report titled The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools, who said
They [American students] are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs – not $40 to $50 an hour.”
I don’t know what the answer is. I admit a selfish cop out - we home educate our children – so I don’t think often on what can or should be done; we've taken responsibility for preparing our children ourselves. Still, one simple solution seems to be to promote science, math and engineering. And we start doing that by not cutting NASA’s budget. Fat chance. How much would YOU pay for the universe?

Continue ReadingFor want of a half penny, a future was lost…

New batch of quotes

I really enjoy a good quote; it's like getting a novel in a sentence or two. Here's are some quotes that I've collected over the past couple of months. No particular topic. I hope you enjoy them: “The initial mystery that attends any journey is how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place.” Louise Bogan, Journey Around my Room "The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy." Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947) “Things are going to get unimaginably worse, and they are never, ever going to get better again!” Kurt Vonnegut (at a graduation speech) (mentioned by Lawrence Krauss at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo ) To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. Voltaire (1694 - 1778) “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” Clarence Darrow "It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up." W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940), "The Crack-Up" (1936) "My point in Sexual Personae is that one cannot make any kind of firm line between high art and pornography. In fact, porn permeates the high art tradition." Camille Paglia Vamps and Tramps, p. 123 "Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today." Lawrence Krauss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo “A Universe from Nothing” (min 16:40) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss [More . . . ]

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Pure political speech outlawed, for some.

Check out Glenn Greenwald's discussion of a SCOTUS decision that blesses a "terrorism" law that clearly infringes on the First Amendment, in conjunction with blatant violations of that law by Washington insiders. Incredibly, the law allows the prosecution of people involved in pure political speech.

In June, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling in the case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law. In that case, the Court upheld the Obama DOJ’s very broad interpretation of the statute that criminalizes the providing of “material support” to groups formally designated by the State Department as Terrorist organizations. The five-judge conservative bloc (along with Justice Stevens) held that pure political speech could be permissibly criminalized as “material support for Terrorism” consistent with the First Amendment if the “advocacy [is] performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization” (emphasis added). In other words, pure political advocacy in support of a designated Terrorist group could be prosecuted as a felony — punishable with 15 years in prison — if the advocacy is coordinated with that group.

Until recently, only Muslims have been prosecuted for engaging in this activity, not Washington Insiders. That might be about to change, leading various Washington insiders to invoke the First Amendment.

Continue ReadingPure political speech outlawed, for some.

Everything you wanted to know about the universe, and the opposite

This is a highly entertaining and mind-stretching talk by Lawrence Krauss from 2009. The title is "A universe from Nothing," and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Enjoy. Here are a few of Krauss' quotes from his talk: The universe is flat, It has 0 total energy, And it could have begun from nothing. (min 40) Why is there something rather than nothing? There had to be. If you had nothing in quantum mechanics, you’ll always get something. It’s not simple. . . but it’s true. (Min 41) We live in a universe dominated by nothing. 70% of the energy in the universe resides in empty space. And we don’t have the slightest idea why it’s there. (min 42). We now know that “we are more insignificant than we ever imagined. If you get rid of everything we see, the universe is essentially the same. We constitute a 1% bit of pollution in a universe that’s 30% dark matter and 70% dark energy. We are completely irrelevant. (min. 43). There may be other universes that aren't conducive to life, and lo and behold there isn't life in them. That's a kind of cosmic natural selection. (min 46:00). [History of string theory in 10 seconds.] (min 49). Strive for cosmic humility. The recognition that we don’t know far more than we know. (min. 50). Galaxies are moving away from us at an increasing rate of speed. In 100 billion years, “all evidence of the big bang will disappear.” Scientists living then will derive a picture of the universe that is completely wrong. They will derive a picture of the universe being one galaxy surrounded by empty space that is static and eternal. Falsifiable science will produce the wrong answer. (min. 52). We live in a very special time: The only time when we can observationally verify that we live at a very special time!” (min 52). The universe remains mysterious, and that is great (min 53).

Continue ReadingEverything you wanted to know about the universe, and the opposite