View 520 May 26 - June 1, 2007 (original) (raw)
Friday, May 30, 2007
La Scala to present Opera based on Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth
Jerry,
Maybe by the time this happens, 2011, it will be cold enough to have it be seen as a comedy.
http://www.mcall.com/entertainment/
sns-ap-al-gore-opera,0,310738.story ,
Bob Holmes
Hoo Hah!
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1240: Fiction today. My head seems full of cotton wool and the tinnitus is worse today. Not sure why. Also sleepy. What I really want to do is go back to bed, but there's work to do. We managed our 1.8 mile walk, I have taken my pills, and it's time to get to work...
corner of inferno & purgatorio
http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/
blog/2008_05_01_archive.asp#5694661463506971776
Wade
Heh. I missed seeing that when I was in Florence, but it hardly astonishes me that there are those streets....
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A Modest Proposal for US Education
I had a thought while walking.
Our education system says that we must mainstream the disruptive, the crippled, the stupid, the uncaring, and the undisciplined, lest we condemn someone among them to a life of perpetual discrimination. The practical effect of this is to devote most of our educational resources to the left side of the bell curve in the hopes of getting everyone up to some average; while, of course, neglecting the right side of the bell curve.
It is as if a gemologist were required to polish coal up to some standard shine even if that meant giving only a cursory tweak to the garnets in his collection (not to mention the diamonds and rubies). This is probably not a very good analogy, but I think it's pretty clear what I mean. The future of civilization depends on getting the most out of the bright kids, so we have devised a system that insures that the bright kids will be neglected in favor of those who don't want or can't absorb an actual world class university prep education. Does this make sense?
I have a modest proposal: we spend about 10,000perchildperyearinoureducationsystem.Couldwehaveschoolsinwhichwewillspendonly10,000 per child per year in our education system. Could we have schools in which we will spend only 10,000perchildperyearinoureducationsystem.Couldwehaveschoolsinwhichwewillspendonly6,000 per child? The rules are: both teachers and pupils are volunteers. The budget is fixed; if this requires two grades per classroom so be it. Teachers and principals have full disciplinary authority including the authority to send disruptive and unresponsive students back to the mainstream. No one has a "right" to be in these schools, which are, by definition, "inferior" in that there is less spent per pupil here.
Principals have real control over which teachers are retained in these schools. There is no "tenure". Teachers who are removed from these schools go back to the "mainstream" schools.
Pupils who flunk out of these schools go back to the mainstream.
Parents and PTA and so forth are free to augment what's spent on the schools by fund raising.
The point is that we provide "inferior" schools for our bright kids; but it's voluntary. You don't have to go to these "inferior" schools; indeed, you have to compete to get into them if there are more applicants than spaces for them.
I recall that for my first 8 years in school, 1-3 in Catholic school, the rest in Capleville consolidated in rural Tennessee (half an hour on a school bus to get there in the morning), we had two grades to the classroom and about 30 pupils per grade. We also had strict discipline and fairly strict standards. In my case, I didn't get a lot of attention from the teachers, but I did get some from the librarian, and no one bothered me if I read a book during the half of the time when the teacher was concerned with the other grade.
Now I am sure we can do better than that for $6,000 per pupil, but my point is that if it were that bad it would still be better than what we have now.
Or have I lost my mind?
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It is of course possible to muck anything up.
Lunar X Prize
Bob Cringley has a very interesting post on the iron law of bureaucracy and the fellows running the Lunar X Prize.
In Summary - micromanagement, rule changes, too many rules, some of which make no sense...the iron law in action it seems. So Team Cringley is going to the moon without Goggle's prize money and plans to do so profitably to boot!
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080530_004991.html
Jim Coffey
I thought of forming a Lunar X-Prize group, but it was pretty clear to me from the beginning that the rules were not likely to be conducive to making the effort. Cringely's solution, to go it alone without reference to the X Prize Foundation, is probably correct, and using media money expectations for finance source makes sense.
I can recall way back in the 50's that the first earth orbiting satellite could have been done as a Disney special effect -- that it, the Minimum Orbiting Unmanned Satellite Earth (MOUSE) could have been financed and built as a private venture, but it would have taken some technology releases that government was unwilling to do, and while negotiations were continuing the Russians sent up Sputnik. But it wasn't impossible, and it might well have happened.
Rocket science is public. R0cket technology tends to arcana. Combustion chamber geometries are tricky. And so forth.
I haven't done the costing for soft landing a package on the Moon, but my first WAG is that 5millionisnotenoughunlessyoustartwithacompanywithconsiderableexperience.JohnCarmackhasspentabouthalfamillionayearforsometimenowandhaslearnedalotaboutrockets.Thereareotherprivatecompanies(otherthantheBigGuys,whocan′tevenwriteaproposalwithoutspending5 million is not enough unless you start with a company with considerable experience. John Carmack has spent about half a million a year for some time now and has learned a lot about rockets. There are other private companies (other than the Big Guys, who can't even write a proposal without spending 5millionisnotenoughunlessyoustartwithacompanywithconsiderableexperience.JohnCarmackhasspentabouthalfamillionayearforsometimenowandhaslearnedalotaboutrockets.Thereareotherprivatecompanies(otherthantheBigGuys,whocan′tevenwriteaproposalwithoutspending5 million) with some relevant experience.
We know the delta-vee for getting from here to the Lunar surface, and we can figure the mass ratio given the payload size. Indeed, I recall doing some of that back when we were doing some rough designs on Pilgrim in the 60's. (We also looked at preliminary design descriptions for hard landing supplies directed to a beacon.) It seemed marginally possible then with kerosene and LOX, and we have better guidance and control now; but I think it likely that the costs are going to be a lot higher than the estimates I have seen.
What I would really like to see is a $10 billion private effort to build a Lunar Colony. It could be the Microsoft Lunar Research Facility. There was a time when I was certain I could make that happen: not that I know so much, but those who can do it would work for me.
I said a long time ago that the philanthropist or statesman who successfully takes mankind to space will be remembered when Columbus and Isabella the Great are long forgotten...
Alas, I'm a bit old to take on such responsibilities now; but if anyone wants to go down in history and has the money, I could arrange to make it happen. I still know the people who know how to do it.
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And now it's time to go help Rick organize Roman Marines and do some navy stuff on Tran...
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