Monday, October 24, 2016

six-word formula for success

Another from Dan Galvin's Thought For The Day mailing list:


I can give you a six-word formula for success:
Think things through – then follow through.”

-(Eddie Rickenbacker)

Monday, October 17, 2016

When deciding between saying something or doing something

I like this thought from Dan Galvin's Thought For The Day mailing list:

There is little to say that has not been said.
But there is much to do that has not been done.”

-(R. Earle Atkinson)

Monday, September 19, 2016

Another reason to read: Yale Study: People Who Read Live Longer Than Those Who Don’t

I found this encouraging: Yale Study: People Who Read Live Longer Than Those Who Don’t.

One of the findings was:

"Further, our analyses demonstrated that any level of book reading gave a significantly stronger survival advantage than reading periodicals. This is a novel finding, as previous studies did not compare types of reading material; it indicates that book reading rather than reading in general is driving a survival advantage."

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Study finds: Universal Preschool May Do More Harm than Good

Research Review: Universal Preschool May Do More Harm than Good starts with:

A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that universal preschool programs fail to improve a range of outcomes for participants. New studies of large-scale preschool programs in Quebec and Tennessee show that vastly expanding access to free or subsidized preschool may worsen behavioral and emotional outcomes. In the absence of compelling evidence that subsidized preschool provides an important public good, the subsidies should be reduced, not increased. Policymakers should recognize that expanding subsidies for preschool is unnecessary, provides no new benefits to low-income parents, and would create a new subsidy for middle-income and upper-income families, while adding to the tax burden for Americans.


Monday, May 23, 2016

Fascinating: More children homeschooled than in private school, in North Carolina

I find this fascinating - In One State, More Children Homeschool Than Attend Private Schools. Why That Shouldn’t Shock You.  The article starts with:

In North Carolina, the number of homeschoolers has now surpassed the number of students attending private schools.
That statistic may seem shocking if you’ve been a stranger to the growth of the homeschooling movement, which has rapidly increased in recent decades.
In 1973, there were approximately 13,000 children, ages 5 to 17, being homeschooled in the United States. But according to the National Center for Education Statistics, as of the 2011-2012 school year, that number has grown to almost 1.8 million or approximately 3.4 percent of the school age population. Other sources report numbers well over 2 million.
In the Tar Heel state alone, homeschooling has increased by 27 percent over the past two years.

It will be fun to see what other states cross the boundary over the next couple years.

(Hat tip Joanne Jacobs)

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

A Time To Talk by Robert Frost

I was recently introduced to A Time To Talk by Robert Frost.  I like this thought about the importance of priorities and friendships.

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?  
No, not as there is a time to talk. 
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, 
Blade-end up and five feet tall, 
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.


Friday, April 22, 2016

A new space drive?

It would be really cool if this were true.  The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster:

About 10 years ago, a little-known aerospace engineer called Roger Shawyer made an extraordinary claim. Take a truncated cone, he said, bounce microwaves back and forth inside it and the result will be a thrust toward the narrow end of the cone. Voila … a revolutionary thruster capable of sending spacecraft to the planets and beyond. Shawyer called it the EmDrive.

Shawyer’s announcement was hugely controversial. The system converts one type of energy into kinetic energy, and there are plenty of other systems that do something similar. In that respect it is unremarkable.

The conceptual problems arise with momentum. The system’s total momentum increases as it begins to move. But where does this momentum come from? Shawyer had no convincing explanation, and critics said this was an obvious violation of the law of conservation of momentum. 

Shawyer countered with experimental results showing the device worked as he claimed. But his critics were unimpressed. The EmDrive, they said, was equivalent to generating a thrust by standing inside a box and pushing on the sides. In other words, it was snake oil.

Since then, something interesting has happened. Various teams around the world have begun to build their own versions of the EmDrive and put them through their paces. And to everyone’s surprise, they’ve begun to reproduce Shawyer’s results. The EmDrive, it seems, really does produce thrust.

An update: Some German researches say the drive could get us to the moon in four hours!

Monday, April 11, 2016

Thursday, April 07, 2016

Space Access - The moon has moonquakes

I am at Space Access for the next couple days.  I won't be blogging about it as much as I have in years past.  One thing I learned today that I found interesting is that the Moon has moonquakes.

NASA reports:

There are at least four different kinds of moonquakes: (1) deep moonquakes about 700 km below the surface, probably caused by tides; (2) vibrations from the impact of meteorites; (3) thermal quakes caused by the expansion of the frigid crust when first illuminated by the morning sun after two weeks of deep-freeze lunar night; and (4) shallow moonquakes only 20 or 30 kilometers below the surface.

The first three were generally mild and harmless. Shallow moonquakes on the other hand were doozies. Between 1972 and 1977, the Apollo seismic network saw twenty-eight of them; a few "registered up to 5.5 on the Richter scale," says Neal. A magnitude 5 quake on Earth is energetic enough to move heavy furniture and crack plaster.

Furthermore, shallow moonquakes lasted a remarkably long time. Once they got going, all continued more than 10 minutes. "The moon was ringing like a bell," Neal says.

On Earth, vibrations from quakes usually die away in only half a minute. The reason has to do with chemical weathering, Neal explains: "Water weakens stone, expanding the structure of different minerals. When energy propagates across such a compressible structure, it acts like a foam sponge--it deadens the vibrations." Even the biggest earthquakes stop shaking in less than 2 minutes.

I find this mind boggling, quakes that go on for hours.

Saturday, March 05, 2016

Forbes article on The College Majors With The Highest Starting Salaries

I liked The College Majors With The Highest Starting Salaries.

According to Forbes Computer Science graduates starting salary is $66,000. The bottom of the twenty listed is Social Services at $35,000.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Choosing how to respond

I like this thought from Dan Galvin's Thought For The Day mailing list:

When tempted to fight fire with fire,
remember that the fire department
usually uses water.

                            -(Anon.)

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Interesting shift from humanities to tech at Stanford

I found this quote in What’s eating Silicon Valley interesting:

If you want to win big, you have to get the best troops. Well-resourced tech companies are now on the hunt for talent like never before, building massive recruitment pipelines to hoover up top prospects and engineers. Google recruits the heck out of Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and other top schools offering six-figures to start, plus bonuses. Facebook sponsors hackathons at the top schools, stays in touch with professors, and invests tons of resources in order to be the most visible and obvious employer.
Don’t think that the smart kids haven’t noticed—the proportion of Stanford students majoring in the Humanities has plummeted from over 20% to only 7% this past year, prompting wails among History and English professors whose classes no longer have students. One administrator joked to me that Stanford is now the Stanford Institute of Technology. In 2014, more Harvard Business School Grads went into technology than into banking for the first time since the dot-com era.