What should J. K. Rowling do next.

Rowling is too good -- she has learned too much -- it would be a waste if she let some longing to be acceptable to the boneheads at the New York Times and the various university English departments keep her from writing more novels that use all that she has learned from writing this massive work.

I truly hope she doesn't stop writing. At this point there is no reason to even attempt to seek the approval of those critics. The NYT and the rest have already rejected her and like any clique they can never accept her for what she is and it would be painfully embarrassing to have her change to something they might accept.

They deserve to worst punishment we can give them: To be ignored.

J. K. do what you want, it will be good. We'll wait.

I am forcibly reminded of this quote:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have
challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."
-Anton Ego, Ratatouille, 2007

Becoming a Ham

Not a cheesy actor but rather get our Ham Radio Technicians License. Our church is running a 6 week course to get more people able to provide alternative communications for the area in event of a disaster.

My sister and her husband have theirs and it came in handy last winter when we had a blizzard every week for 5 weeks and it was hard to get around.

Once Water, Food and Shelter are taken care of Communication is the next big thing in a disaster. It means being able to call for help and helping others.

Whenever there is a disaster the hams become very valuable people who help coordinate communications efforts which can bring to bear the most appropriate resources to each area.

We'll also have to save up for a transmitter but that is a good goal too.

Dominate Your Market What's Your Dash?

If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1. Become the best at one specific thing.
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.

The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort.

There is a lot of advice out there of people saying become the best at something. Often these same people forget to explain what it takes to do that. If you want to become Olympic-class (top 1%) at anything you're going to have to put in a lot of time to practice.

To master any skill it take about 5000 hours of practice to get to that level. If you work at it full time 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it will take you about 2 and a half years to get that time in.
Most people don't have the capability to do that, but you may be able to squeeze in 1 hour a day. That will take 20 years.

On the other hand, if you just want to get really good at a skill (top 25%) that can take only 1000 hours or less. That will only take 4 years at 1 hour per day. A college course often is only about 50 hours of study and you end up knowing quite a bit.

Becoming good at two or three things and presenting it as a package can be a really great way to break into a market. Look at Ben&Jerry, there were lots of big ice cream companies, so they dual-classed with organic-ice cream. Haggen-Daas went with gourmet-ice cream.

What is your dash?
I am an engineer and I also write. I am an engineer-writer. Can I dominate in a market with that? I think I can.
How about you?

Serious Literature

I've been surfing the web to read about what people think about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I came across this amazing comment.

...my husband, a Tolkien scholar, often observes that these days, in literature, to write about deep and ultimate themes, it is almost impossible to do so in, say, poetry or "adult" literature and be taken seriously - for that, you must write in fantasy and/or children's literature - and then your readers will find you.

I certainly believe it. One of the worst parts of high school were the English classes. I love to read and even back then I was a voracious reader, reading lots of material outside of the requirements of school. But all that "great literature" was something I read but couldn't really stand. All it showed was that life and living was pointless and we all died even if you win you lost. "The Old Man and the Sea" was particularly nasty that way. They all ended with the protagonist (I can't call them heroes) either dead or insane. The best case for one was merely social and financial ruination. We only studied the tragedies of Shakespeare where everyone pretty much died. After 3 years of that is it any great surprise that the average American doesn't read for fun. There is no pleasure in it. Then I find a post like this that just pegs the sad/pity-meter.

I sampled all kinds of genres when I was young, it was fun to wander into the library and choose a book at random to see where it might take me. I still do that but not so often. I settled on scifi and fantasy because some of them would deal with hard and troubling questions.

What makes us human and different from the animals?
Why do people make choices that are obviously bad for themselves and others?
Why are so many people listening to someone who despises them and doing what he says?
How can good people do awful things?

There are plenty more questions but these are a good start. Too much great literature is only based around jealousy or envy, that isn't necessarily bad but there are far more emotions out there then just those.

Harry Potter generally is a coming of age story, but is also about love and the nature of good vs evil.

If schools really wanted people to learn to read they would offer a huge variety of material to read. Encouraging people to find the books they like best. That will help them learn to like to read if find some they want to read.

But it is still interesting that the literature that explores the hard stuff is considered kids stuff. Is that irony I smell.

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

We didn't get the book until very late on Saturday and while I read the first three chapters out loud of my family I after our daughter went to bed I settled in for a a couple of hours good reading before bed. I was slightly annoyed with myself when I closed the book and noticed the sun up coming up and my alarm clock going off as I stood up.

We are reunited with many old friends and revisit just about everywhere we've been before, before ending up back at the beginning.

A good strong opening with Harry equipping himself of the hunt. Like the heros girding themselves for battle Harry is readying himself for what he expects to be coming, but he knows that he doesn't have all the knowledge that is wishes he had, not being able to heal a small cut is the key image here. The goodbye with the Dursleys was not what I expected and Dudley seeming dimmer then usual. A harrowing battle as the protection breaks and Harry is taken to safety. It was a good plan and it mostly worked.

This is followed by a wonderful interlude at the Burrow, Hermione tells Harry just how much she trusts him and how important what he has to do is to her. That blew me away. The wedding is broken up by the fall of the Ministry.

Then we are off on the Quests. There is more then one. They are pretty smart together and very courageous, but they are still just three kids. Harry has so much to overcome within himself that the story seems slow in the middle, but that is only because we expect fast, easy resolutions to conflict in our sit-com world. Harry has to make serious choices and he actually spends time working them out and not just going with whatever pops into his head. He has learned from the mistakes he's made in the past and that is really important. He knows people are on his side and fighting for his cause, but he has to focus on winning the war instead of turning the tide on any particular battle. He shows great maturity. He also learns of the ultimate choice he has to make. He shows just how powerful love is.

There are some great scenes in this book that I am sure the special effects artists reading now are beginning to sweat over. The Battle for Hogwarts may not beat the Battle of Pelinor Fields but it may come close. They better get to work now.

Snape rocks.

Molly is not just a quiet little homemaker, she never really was since she had been in the original Order of the Phoenix but we finally see her at full power and she is something else. They better not leave that out of the movie!

Voldemort has his weakness but he is smart enough to learn from his encounters with Harry. He never does take a stupid pill, but his weakness sends him down wrong paths. And that is just fine for a well written villain.

There are few books out there that have enticed me to stay up all night reading them. This was worth it. The obvious comparison is Lord of the Rings. Do I think that Harry Potter will be celebrated in 100 years? Yes, I do.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I saw this film with my wife as a date which we haven't had in a long time and we gave it a solid 3 of 5 stars.

The opening scene with Harry, Dudley and his gang was well done and quite intense. In general he stayed as close to the book as he could, using quite a bit of the dialog, but given the nature of book 5, very introspective which is hard to put on screen, there was a lot to skip over as well.

The wizards battle at the end was extraordinary, the rest of the movies have something to live up to now.

My biggest problem was that the music was too bland, it didn't support the movie as much as it could have. I was also disappointed in the lackluster attention to detail. There were many things I was expecting to be in place that just weren't there, particularly in the second act which lacked emotional intensity.

Daniel has improved tremendously as an actor as have the others, if not as much, though it maybe because they didn't have as much to do. I really enjoyed Luna, she really got into that character and tended to steal the scene. I hope to see more of her.

Build You Own Machine Tool

multimachine : Intermediate technology machine tools

Get the pdf from Popular Mechanics

Could be very useful someday.

Mega-mushroom a savory stunner in Mexico

Mega-mushroom a savory stunner in Mexico

Now all we need is lightning and some saffron. :)

Ratatouille Review

Ratatouille is the best film I've seen in a long time. While the images were great on their own that isn't good enough by itself to make a great film. The story has heart and soul. It is not a summer blockbuster type film and that is just fine. It is a story that is very moral. Yes, the good guys lie and cheat and steal trying to do the best for themselves, but it is only after they confess and make amends that their true abilities come forth. 

Reme just wants to have food that tastes good but his abilities were about more then being just a food sniffer or even a chef. Linguine just wanted to keep his job. They weren't losers, just not in the right place doing the right things for them. 

After Reme gets separated from his family as they try to escape from a shotgun wielding little old lady riding a cookbook he ends up in the sewers of Paris, though he doesn't know it yet. We see a wonderful set of vignettes introducing us to Paris before the big reveal at the top.

It is the astonishing attention to detail that is most brilliant thing about Pixar. We come into a world that feels like it existed before the movie starts and will continue beyond the end, but not as an obvious sequel bait or happily ever after, just life continuing on.

That was one of the most disappointing parts of the Star Wars prequels it was lots of fun but had no depth like this or The Lord of the Rings.

The food was brilliant, they took cooking lessons and it showed. We were so hungry afterwards but chose to do something better then the standard fast food burger joint. They really understand foodies; food is more then fuel and it was amazing how well they were able to translate that to the big screen. The climatic shot captured it completely, it was beautiful. 

Not everyone is a foodie, that is okay, though we have a friend who grow up in a family where they called a three course meal, meat, potatoes and a vegetable. Usually it was just a single food item like hamburger or potato. 

It has heart and the characters are deep and complex, far more so then is usual. The character development time is well spent, it is not an action feature and don't even try confusing it with one. Though the big chase scene with Skinner chasing Reme across Paris was great, that bit with the tablecloth was choice.

I loved the characters, Colette was great a tough, no-holes barred up-and-comer, with real heart.

The pivotal character was Alton "The Grim Reaper" Ego, food critic. He just comes on scene at the very end but even then he steals it completely. It is amazing what the power of love can do. 

I highly recommend this film and plan on buying it later.

Massive GTD Resource List | zen habits

Massive GTD Resource List | zen habits: "My tribute to all the GTD junkies out there (a group that includes me) — a massive list of GTD stuff. It’s far from comprehensive, but who can be comprehensive on a topic this huge?"

A honking big list I need to keep handy for myself.

Social Bookmarking

Social Poster - Best Social Bookmarking Solution yet? | Tech Spikes : "Well, now apparently Social Poster allows you to submit links to 34 social sites including Digg, Reddit, Technorati, Stumbleupon, del.icio.us and more."

I'll need this later

Safari 3 Rocks

Safari has one absolutely great feature no one else seems to have talked about yet.

The in-page search really stands out now. In Safari 2 and the other browsers I've used the in-page search has been rather understated: a simple highlight, that may be in the middle or bottom on the page never consistent and often plain hard to find.


Safari 3 changes all that.


No only is the page darkened and the word highlighted in orange with a white background, it is also magnified. As you got to the next one the previous one is still highlighted so you can see where you just were.

I really like this and it is great. I can't remember how often I've searched and missed something because the highlighting wasn't noticeable enough.

Great job Apple, but why didn't you mention this?

Steve Jobs WWDC2007 Keynote

That was maybe not one of the most exciting keynotes Steve has given, mainly because he's talked about almost all of it before.

Stacks was new to the keynote but a patent showed up on that years ago. It is really great to see it come up. Though to be honest about it I've been doing something similar for ages, I put Home, Applications, and a few other folders in the dock to accomplish the same thing.

The Core Animation stuff looks wonderful. I presume he was using a maxed out Mac Pro, I wonder if that cool animated video search tool is going to be available or was just a developer plaything. I also wonder if a MacBook could handle all that video playing at once.

A lot of developers are bummed over not getting a real SDK for the iPhone. In all likelihood one will be forthcoming in time but not now.

Going cross platform with Safari is pretty interesting. I am going to be thinking about that a bit more.

That huge picture of the Library of Congress was great. You could almost read the titles on the books when he zoomed in all the way. And that the title he added was smooth all the way in was awesome.

I am still curious about the other 290 features that are coming to Leopard will be. Actually Apple's website lists a whole bunch though I didn't count them. I am really impressed by the new voice they have, that will be nice.

Mini Maglite LED Upgrade

Out daughter likes flashlights and often she will fall asleep with one on in her bed. We got one of those windup ones to save on batteries but it is to big for her and she doesn't like it. She loves the Mini Maglight that is much more her size. At some point she took it apart and lost the bulb, while I could have used the spare in the base I decided it is the perfect time to get the LED upgrade I saw at Walmart, It is from NiteIze and has 3 white LEDs in it.

It is a nice little kit, with a 3 LED bulb system and a replacement reflector. The new reflector is the hardest part to deal with, I needed a couple of pairs of pliers to unscrew the face of the Mini Maglite but the LEDs were a simple drop in replacement though it is polarized so if it doesn't light up when you pop it in you need to try it the other way. The LED is big enough that even if she pops it out it is big enough to find easily.

The light it produces is very bright and lasted for hours on old batteries. The flashlight itself gets rather warm after that much time but doesn't seem to be a problem.

Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better | OEDb

Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better | OEDb: "Life-changing knowledge does typically require advanced learning techniques. In fact, it's been said that the average adult only uses 10% of his/her brain. Imagine what we may be capable of with more advanced learning techniques. Here are 77 tips related to knowledge and learning to help you on your quest. A few are specifically for students in traditional learning institutions; the rest for self-starters, or those learning on their own. Happy learning."

This is a fantastic list. It is more geared for the High School/College crowd, but it is well worth reading in detail.

Wound Care: An Emergency Room Doctor's Perspective, by E.C.W., MD

For the concerned individual who must deal with a wound outside the emergency room or clinic setting, for whatever reason, I have some reasonable advice on avoiding infection that is not widely taught, even in some health care settings. (The following applies to wounds that an experienced parent could evaluate and immediately know that a band-aid alone would not be appropriate.)

A major essay. Well worth reading.

How to bootstrap technology

Kevin Kelly -- The Technium: "A favorite fantasy game for engineers is to imagine how they might re-invent essential technology from scratch. If you were stranded on an island, or left behind after Armageddon, and you needed to make your own blade, say, or a book, maybe a pair of working radios, what would it take to forge iron, make paper, or create electricity?"

This is a fun exercise. I like to consider what to take along to colonize another Earth-like planet. I am also assuming clean enough air and water and living soil to start with. And finally I am assuming the colony ship has a good library available, so we are not reinventing the wheel at every stage.

The ship won't be able to carry very much since it takes so much to support the colonists. So it won't have tons of pipe for water handling or things like that. However it would have a full machine shop and a small semiconductor fab to produce some technology. The biggest thing the fab would be needed for would be radio parts. Communication is one of the biggest forms of leverage you can have.

That thing that makes our modern world work best is the division of labor, people who are best at mining may not be the best at farming. That is want we are trying to recreate as quickly as possible. If we do this right we should be able to recreate a goodly sized potion of our technology in 50-60 years or less.

The first thing is to produce food in excessive quantities. If we can make more food then we need we will be able to repurpose much of the population to other specialties. Most of this comes down to domesticating beast of burden so relief ourselves of doing the muscle work, and we want to replace then with machines as soon as we are able. The nice thing about farming is that it is only labor intensive for two periods of the year: Planting and harvesting.

At the same time we need to be sending a few knowledgeable people out to find ores and extract them. If they're close together farming and mining can be done together. As the metals start piling up we refine them and using blacksmithing techniques to make better farming equipment.

One of the next things to start doing is recreating Roman-level sanitation technology. Clean safe water and public hygiene are pretty important. They even had hot and cold running water, sure they used stone instead of metal or plastic piping but it still worked.

Now that the basics are covered we can start building more creative tools: at this stage is where a lathe makes sense to build. Once you have a machine shop you can build steam engines and you are at the Industrial Revolution. The ships has a machine shop but creating another one from local materials would be a great step.

There is also glass making and paper making and textile creation to be considered.

This would take about a generation.

Now you can start building tractors and textile machines and all kinds of labor saving devices. This is when we can start climbing up the tech curve fairly quickly. With all the research in the library we can skip a bunch of blind alleys and dead ends and move more quickly. Even with refrigerators and washing machines and the like the biggest limitation I see is just the sheer size of the population. It is just too small to allow enough specialists to rebuild quickly.

So decisions would be made as the to best use of the available labor pool. It would definitely be worth going for electricity at this point just for the leverage it provides. A bunch of small electric motors in each home does wonders for labor savings, Add to that bunches of simple computers and things get even better.

This is a fun problem to think about, and a lot of interdependent technologies that make it really a lot of fun. But then what things would you do differently if you knew what we know now but where starting over on a new planet from scratch?

The radio spectrum could be used a completely different way and not be a crazy hodgepodge of laws.

though in any case we wouldn't be able to completely recreate modern society but then we probably won't have the need to create many things until we had a big enough population to support sit-com production and all those types of things.

TCS Daily - L'Eggo My Lego

TCS Daily - L'Eggo My Lego: "So they first explored with the children the issue of ownership. Not all of the students shared the teachers' anathema to private property ownership. 'If I buy it, I own it,' one child is quoted saying. The teachers then explored with the students concepts of fairness, equity, power, and other issues over a period of several months.

At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that 'All structures are public structures' and 'All structures will be standard sizes.' The teachers quote the children:

'A house is good because it is a community house.'

'We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.'

'It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building.'"

Interesting lessons in those schools. Much more important then things like reading and math.

Stories like this make me want to hurl!

The implosion of the Soviet Union confirmed that socialism just doesn't work. When we visited our relatives in East Germany it was amazing to see bomb damaged buildings still un-repaired after 50 years.

And what have the children learned. Low-level mediocrity. Woopee

How Much Emergency Money Should You Have On Hand?

The Simple Dollar has a post on why you might need to have some emergency cash on hand. However, he doesn't really give you any guidelines on how much.

Is a Franklin enough? A week's salary? something else?

It depends on what you can do and what you are expecting to happen.
For example the various relief agencies will take 72 or more hours to get on scene for most disasters. But it often takes about 2 weeks to restore services. In any case it may take longer to get to your particular home.

Having some cash on hand is great to help cover some items you may have forgotten. If you lose your job you need to understand that it generally takes 1 month per $10,000 your make to find a similar job. For example, if you had earned $60,000/year, it will generally take about 6 months to find an equivalent paying job. So having 6 months of expenses (mortgage, bills, insurance premiums, &etc.) saved up is a good thing to have, but that is a family emergency and you'll still have access to banks. Though if you identity is stolen you may have a job but no way to get to your bank accounts, so having a month or two's expenses handy may be very handy.

If there is an evacuation having enough cash on hand to drive across the country, eating fast food and staying in motels and filling up the car is useful to have. Things will cost more near the site of the disaster so expect to pay more.

If you want gold for a economic disaster, like Post-War Germany (doesn't matter which one) or current Argentina, the best choices are plain gold jewelry like necklaces and rings. My parents and grand-parents made use of these are an alternative currency on occasion.

Most people have a good idea of what they are worth as you see them for sale in every mall, unlike gold and silver coins which very few people are familiar with. Besides they are pretty and most people want them.

For emergency supplies a good progression is this:
• A 72 hour kit for the office/car to get back home.
• A 2 week supply of food, water and fuel for a BBQ at home.
• A 1 week supply of cash for food, gas, motels in case of evacuation.
• Expand home supply to 2 months built up over time to a years supply.
• Increase cash supply to cover 2 months of expenses built up over time to a job search level.

Browse Random House books

Random House has created a new ability to browse their books on line. This is a good way to get people to buy since it is more like the bookstore experience.

Paycheck Calculator

This is a useful money hack. You can fine tune your tax exemptions and the like.

You know you're a foodie...

when you have six different kinds of salt in you cupboard.

We made a run to the Penzey's spice store over in Old Town Arvada. That is always fun because they have jars of spices that you can get a good sniff from.

Among other things we picked up some Diamond Kosher salt, which is a much different size compared to our standard Morton's Kosher flake salt and so I wanted to try how that works in food.

We also picked up some course salt for grinding as we have a salt grinder that is almost empty.

We have some Pacific Sea salt that makes for a nice finishing salt.

Finally we have ordinary table salt and popcorn salt. The popcorn salt is a very fine salt that is great on popcorn and fried foods.

Why Johnny Can't Think

READ!

Why Johnny Can't Think

READ!

LEARN CPR - CPR information and training resources.

LEARN CPR - CPR information and training resources. : "Learn
CPR is a free public service supported by the University of Washington School of Medicine.� Learn the basics of CPR - cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Updated with new CPR Guidelines issued by the American Heart Association and published in Circulation, Dec 13 2005."

Everyone should know how to do this. An actual class would be best but this is better then not knowing at all.

Teach your children your self they aren't learning in school

This video lasts 15 min. If you have children in school you must see this.



We are helping a 10 years old neighbor and have been wondering why her reading and math skills are so poor. Now we know. :(

Bother. Lattice Math is nothing more then warmed over Diagonal Math, was big during the Renaissance, it was taught at only select Italian universities. It was dropped like the Albatross it is once the Standard Algorithm was created. It is slow, tedious and was just a stepping stone to a better way. What kind of dunderhead dredged that up to sell it to our schools.

The Standard Algorithm is the standard because it is fast and error resistant. I am sure if someone comes up with something better we'd convert to that before too long.

Does it seem darker around here to you?

Let's just burn them all and get this dark age off to a rousing start.

Independent Online Edition > This Britain: "All public exhibitions would close, along with schools learning programmes. The permanent collection, which includes a copy of every book published in the UK, would be permanently reduced by 15 per cent. And the national newspaper archive, used by 30,000 people a year, including many researching their family trees, would close."

The great civilizations all had libraries, maybe not as a heart maybe more like a panaceas. Destroy your panaceas and with some help you can live a good long time, but you are not going to live quite the same again.

Libraries are the Institutional memories of our civilization. They are more important then most people recognize.

But few people read much anymore. Sure they surf the web and scan the newspaper and read a pertinent chapter from a book but rarely do we read whole books from front to book anymore. That is sad because as we stop reading, we stop thinking that the places where we keep our books are important. Soon they decay and are lost to us forever.

Google and Microsoft are both scanning books for all they are worth and that makes me very happy.

Few people would put the burning of the library of Alexandria as the start of the Dark Ages. By itself it wasn't but that it was not restored was a strong sign that dark times were coming.

Books are the most powerful time savers out there.

Today the American Library Association's posters have employed Denzel Washington to encourage kids to read. But how many of these students really buy the message?

I recently spoke with a junior who was stressed about her decreasing ability to focus on anything for longer than two minutes or so. I tried to inspire her by talking about the importance of reading as a way to train the brain. I told her that a good reader develops the same powers of concentration that an athlete or a Buddhist would employ in sport or meditation. "A lot out there is conspiring to distract you," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "That's your opinion about books. It doesn't make it true." To her, the idea that reading might benefit the mind was, well, lame.

This totally misses the point of books, at least non-entertainment books, they are a short cut to learning. Those posters are propaganda and obvious propaganda too. We don't live long enough to recreate all the thought out there and most of those thoughts were wrong anyway.

It is not unusual for an author of a book to work on a problem for 20 years, wasting lots of time on false ideas and dead end theories and then writes a book that filters out all the bad stuff and leaves just the best stuff for us to use to get to the next level.

" If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." -Isaac Newton

Those giants were only able to leave books behind so that others could continue the work.

A book will condense a lifetime of work into something that you can read in a matter of hours or days.

How valuable is that? I read about people that do time management who recommend taking 2 minute showers instead of 7 minute showers to save time. That's pretty good but it is like clipping coupons or buying in bulk, sure they save some money but it is better to buy a good used car and save thousands of dollars in one fell blow then to clip hundreds of coupons over years. If I can condense 20 years, 5 years, or even just 1 year of research into something I can read in a matter of hours how much better is my life? How much further can I go? If I read just 4 books that condense 20 years of research into a weeks worth of reading I have saved an entire lifetime.

What is that worth to you?

That is what is so important about reading and books.

Public Libraries

Public Libraries: "Welcome to a community of public
libraries! Here you will find the most extensive directory of
public libraries of the United States."

This is a good resource for finding your local library and their online portals.

The Longitude Dial Time and Elegance.

"My original goal in this," he said in response to my surprise, "was to produce an accurate timepiece with no moving parts—an original creation that combined art and science, drawing from the long traditions of both in its design, and incorporating the finest craftsmanship and latest technology in its construction."
William Andrewes

This is a gorgeous piece of engineering and craftsmanship, I find it amazingly beautiful. It is as simple as a sundial and yet requires laser engraving of a particular type of stone to get it just right. It also embodied a man's passion like nothing else and it shows! This is one of those thing were form and function didn't follow one another but made love.

"A clock or watch may keep time, but only a sundial can find time—a distinctly different function—by deriving the hour from the relative positions of the Earth and Sun."

He is a time geek, I knew that there is a difference between what we use for time keeping and what the Earth's actual time differed slightly, the need for leap seconds and the like. But this takes it to a whole new level.

This time finder combines a sundial and a projection map, into a something more then just a sundial. It is designed around it being in a certain place on this planet and it will work best only there and maybe the antipode, but I am not sure about that.

I like sundials. I remember walking into one in Germany, I say walking into since it was make up of the church spire and the adjoining courtyard with the hours laid out on the surrounding buildings. That was a marvelous blending of form and function.

We have a sundial for our garden that says "Time started in a garden."

This would make a fabulous centerpiece to a formal garden. This calls out for not just a garden but a house worthy of it. A solid house that would last for generations make not of sticks or bricks but of great blocks of stone with a slate roof. This timepiece is a call for timelessness in our lives.

Thanks to Boing, Boing

Software Bisque: Paramount ME

Software Bisque: Paramount ME: "
"

This may be utterly geeky, but I have been dreaming of a telescope mount like this for a long time. It gets cold in a hurry once the sun goes down up here in Colorado and it would be a lot of fun to just watch the stars at night without having to freeze.

A really cool bit of software would be to link a whole bunch of these together to create a massive amateur telescope array.

Now if I just lived somewhere where you could see the sky at night. :(

OpinionJournal - Extra part 3

OpinionJournal - Extra: "In short, I am calling for a revival of the classical definition of a liberal education, serving its classic purpose: to prepare an elite to do its duty. If that sounds too much like Plato's Guardians, consider this distinction. As William F. Buckley rightly instructs us, it is better to be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University"

DevonThink For Writing Your Next Book at The Apple Blog

DevonThink For Writing Your Next Book at The Apple Blog

I've been using VooDooPad and it is pretty good. I'll have to check this out.

Running a solar home

Solar power eliminates utility bills in U.S. home - Yahoo! News: "for Strizki and his colleagues, the house is about a
lot more than the bottom line. It's about energy security at a
time when the federal government is seeking to reduce
dependence on fossil fuels from the Middle East, and it's about
sustaining a lifestyle without emitting greenhouse gases."

This is seriously good, not so much because it is good for the environment but because you can fully power a home this way. The cost of solar has been steadily dropping for some time and will continue to do so as long as computers are being made faster and cheaper, they are the same basic technology.

With the recent ice storms and other back weather it certainly looks like a good idea to start to develop a backup power plan for your home.
It can be as simple as a generator (USE OUTSIDE ONLY!!!) or as complex as a full solar power system.

My plan is to have a backup generator, then expand that to include some batteries and an inverter that will allow the generator to only have to run occasionally which will let the fuel last a lot longer.
The first batch of batteries will be for running the refrigerator and freezer and the gas furnace (the blower needs electricity) and a few basic items like lights and maybe a laptop.

There is something to be said for having a satellite-based internet connection, it would allow communications in fairly bad conditions once the rain fade is past.

Eventually I would add solar panels to eliminate or reduce the need for a fuel supply, the generator would then be the backup to the backup.

What makes a good flashlight?

Every once and a while I come across a flamewar about which flashlight is better. There is a lot of passion about flashlights, mainly because light is a major concern during a disaster.

Maglites

Over Christmas I was talking with one of my nephews and he mentioned that Maglite have come out with LED upgrades for their D cell models. And the local Walmart just happened to have some, which was pretty good since the blizzard had caused people to nearly empty the store of many other items. While it was a little expensive, I now don't really worry about running out of light in just a few hours, online reviews are showing that batteries will last 20+ hrs with these LEDs. This is a good thing as in a disaster you won't have easy access to fresh batteries and that longer they last the better.

It has passed my cold weather test very well. I have a 3 D cell that I left in the car during some sub zero cold and it lit up just fine. The alkaline batteries are not at their best when it is that cold. They have rings and holes in their light pattern which is annoying sometimes.

The thing about the D cell Maglites is that they are (as Alton Brown would say) multitaskers: clubs that just happen to emit light. I like the 3 D cell models as they are hefty without being too big to put under the front seat of the car. I've hefted the big ol' 6 D model and it is a heavy monster, I think the reason it exists has little to do with how much light it can put out.

Surefires

Surefire makes some excellent lights: very durable, very light and very expensive. They were developed for attaching to weapons so you can see what you're shooting at. That is a great design philosophy.

They have good clips that you can use to clip to a belt or to the bill of a hat so you can work hands free. Battery life is disappointing, being only good for a few hours of use and they use special batteries that might be hard to get in a disaster situation. I prefer these over a Mini-Maglite for general carry situations as they are very bright and are single handed operated, but I still have some old Mini-Maglites kicking around as they take standard batteries which would be easier to get in a disruption situation.

Do you have any favorite flashlights?

Maybe we're just measuring the wrong thing.

"There's a very interesting strain of economic research showing that our sense of well-being is determined more by our relative wealth than by our absolute wealth.
In other words, we care less about how much money we have than we do about how much money we have relative to everyone else. In a fascinating survey, Cornell economist Robert Frank found that a majority of Americans would prefer to earn $100,000 while everyone else earns $85,000, rather than earning $110,000 while everyone else earns $200,000.

Think about it: People would prefer to have less stuff, as long as they have more stuff than the neighbors.

The point -- and this is still a nascent field -- is that a nation may be collectively better off (using some abstract measure of well-being) with a smaller, more evenly divided pie than with a larger pie that's sliced less equitably. Reasonable people can and should argue about that."

The main thrust of the article is that CEOs getting $50 million bonuses while very good for them are not so good for the country as a whole.

There is certainly pressure there, we saw looting after Katrina, but then again we didn't see it after 9/11.

It would seem much more important to me the gap between the bottom and the point where basic needs are met. This may be the poverty line or not, the band for what defines the poverty line is rather large and depends a lot on where you are living, and I won't go into detail about that.

One of the problems the poor in our country is facing is obesity, that does tell us something very important, they are getting enough to eat. In many countries of the world, being poor means staring starvation in the face and missing work means no food and maybe death.

So to me the Gini coefficient is an interesting but meaningless number, it just doesn't seem to measure anything useful. But it is an easy number to find, find the lowest wage offered and the highest and divide. There are people who will be very shrill about "getting that number more in line with {something memorable}"

That needs to be answered in some manner. How do we measure something more useful?

An easy number to come up with might be the ration of those under the poverty line versus the whole population. But what do we define as the poverty line? The number we are looking for is probably along the lines of: how much does a family of 5 need to feed, lodge, transport and maintain themselves per year. the problem here is that the poverty line isn't a simple number to find, it is depends on where you are living, the poverty line in California is way higher then in Arkansas. Then you have to find the number of people below the poverty line in each area and that is a big mess because we see lots of arguments over that topic every time it comes up.

This just goes to show you that what you measure is as important as what you measure.

FEMA Independent Study Program - Course List

FEMA Independent Study Program - Course List: "FEMA Independent Study Program"

Whether FEMA as an organization is useful or not is another discussion but their material is quite extensive and useful.

University courses available to the public via MIT OpenCourseWare Master Course List

MIT OpenCourseWare | Master Course List

This is a treasure trove material if you are looking at any of these fields. If you are a teen looking at college, this is a great introduction to the material.
And if you are just looking for something new to learn this is good stuff.

A List of what they offer.
Aeronautics and Astronautics
Anthropology
Architecture
Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation
Biological Engineering
Biology
Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Chemical Engineering
Chemistry
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Comparative Media Studies
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Economics
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Engineering Systems Division
Experimental Study Group
Foreign Languages and Literatures
Health Sciences and Technology
History
Linguistics and Philosophy
Literature
Materials Science and Engineering
Mathematics
Mechanical Engineering
Media Arts and Sciences
Music and Theater Arts
Nuclear Science and Engineering
Physics
Political Science
Science, Technology, and Society
Sloan School of Management
Special Programs
Urban Studies and Planning
Women's Studies
Writing and Humanistic Studies

Free goverment skills training handbooks

I was surfing through Jerry Pournelle's site. He is one of my favorite Scifi and SciFact authors. From time to time he and his readers discuss education. This time around they are pondering the difference between symbol based (mathematical) and skills based education. One of his readers pointed us to some wonderful handbooks kindly created by our goverment.

Machinist handbooks

Math, Physics, Chemistry and many others

Okay, the second is from the training programs for nuclear engineers and technicians, but that just doesn't matter as the laws of physics are pretty stable for us. Just get the Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry handbooks and you are good.

These are good solid handbooks to learn from and since we've already paid our government to create these they are free.

How many parents have said follow your dreams but have a solid skill to fall back on. Machinist is a good and so are plumber, electrician and furnace repair. These are jobs that cannot be outsourced, they have to come to your house.

What's Up 2007:365 Days of Skywatching

This is a wonderful free guide to the night sky.

Filled with the history of astronomy, of people and their discoveries, it is worth it just for these. It helps bring astronomy down to earth.

The images are mostly of what you would see with the naked eye or with a good pair of binoculars, though there are some from very large telescopes.

=
The site seems to be down but here is a direct link that should work.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/astronomycast/365day s2007.pdf

BBC World Service Discovery - Fessenden: King of the Radio Waves

BBC World Service Discovery - Fessenden: King of the Radio Waves: "� Reginald Fessenden
BBC World Service Discovery -
Fessenden: King of the Radio Waves
The world's first radio broadcast took place a hundred years ago on Christmas
Eve 1906.
The broadcast, a programme of live music, readings and phonograph recordings,
was transmitted to ships in the Atlantic Ocean by Reginald
Fessenden %u2013 a prolific inventor largely forgotten
by history."

This was a significant feat. Radio was first used by Tesla, but he got sucked into fighting with Edison about electricity which ended up wasting a lot of time, energy and money that could have been far better spend on invention and development. Marconi was already sending signals for quite some time, but he was using Morse's code to send information. This, however, was the start of broadcast radio as we are familiar with it today.

To fix US schools, panel says, start over | csmonitor.com

To fix US schools, panel says, start over | csmonitor.com: "What if the solution to American students' stagnant performance levels and the wide achievement gap between white and minority students wasn't more money, smaller schools, or any of the reforms proposed in recent years, but rather a new education system altogether?

That's the conclusion of a bipartisan group of scholars and business leaders, school chancellors and education commissioners, and former cabinet secretaries and governors. They declare that America's public education system, designed to meet the needs of 100 years ago when the workplace revolved around an assembly line, is unsuited to today's global marketplace. Already, they warn, many Americans are in danger of falling behind and seeing their standard of living plummet."

There are obviously systemic design flaws in the schools system as it stands today. There are many movies and books out there about amazing teachers changing a school, but always after the teacher leaves the school reverts to the norm. Something more substantial needs to be done.

The graphic at the end of the report is an amazing thing to behold. While it looks like there has been a recent upswing in reading scores if you work the math it is only a 3% change, that is the typical margin of error. Statistically speaking, there has been no change in reading scores over the past 20 years even with a ~75% increase the money spent on the topic.

cbs2chicago.com - Teen Expelled From School For Turning In Found Gun

cbs2chicago.com - Teen Expelled From School For Turning In Found Gun: "(CBS)
PLAINFIELD, Ill.
A 13-year-old Plainfield boy and his parents are stunned and outraged after the teen found a gun in school and turned it in to authorities, who then expelled him."

Ah the wonders of zero tolerance. Maybe they should consider the power of homeschooling.

An Online Graphing Calculator

calc5.com - online calculator with symbolic calculations and graphs

I remember paying nearly $500 for a HP 48G graphing calculator and how totally cool Graphing Calculator was on the Mac in OS 9 but it is amazing how it is now so easy to create something like this.

A Java Slide Rule

This is a cool bit of work, I've never used one but my Dad did and he even had a circular one.

Switch 101: On Windows, I used to...

Switch 101: On Windows, I used to...

If you are switching from Windows to a Mac this is a really good introduction of the changes in how things are done. for all the talk about how Windows and Mac are copying each other there are still some major thought differences between how they do things. Mac is not Windows and vice versa and this highlights some the big differences.

Big storm pounds Pacific Northwest - Weather - MSNBC.com

Big storm pounds Pacific Northwest - Weather - MSNBC.com

This stupidity happens every year. Let's be clear on this:

Generator safety:

Generators belong outside.

A garage is not outside.

Either build a protective structure before hand or just wait until the storm is over. It would be a great idea to have a small battery bank charged up before the storm to run off of during the storm and using the generator after it is over to recharge.

Candle safety:

Tall skinny candles need to be well anchored in a solid base. If you don't have a good candelabra It is simplest to put a candle in a tall drinking glass partially filled with sand, gravel, marbles or even water.


After storm safety:

There will be a lot of people out with chainsaws, make sure they are in good condition and follow the manufactures safety instructions, and I hope you got some training and practice before hand.

There will be lots of damaged trees and homes watch for falling debris.

Use your eyes and brains before doing something. It may just save your life.

Big storm pounds Pacific Northwest - Weather - MSNBC.com

Big storm pounds Pacific Northwest - Weather - MSNBC.com

This stupidity happens every year. Let's be clear on this:

Generator safety:

Generators belong outside.

A garage is not outside.

Either build a protective structure before hand or just wait until the storm is over. It would be a great idea to have a small battery bank charged up before the storm to run off of during the storm and using the generator after it is over to recharge.

Candle safety:

Tall skinny candles need to be well anchored in a solid base. If you don't have a good candelabra It is simplest to put a candle in a tall drinking glass partially filled with sand, gravel, marbles or even water.


After storm safety:

There will be a lot of people out with chainsaws, make sure they are in good condition and follow the manufactures safety instructions, and I hope you got some training and practice before hand.

There will be lots of damaged trees and homes watch for falling debris.

Use your eyes and brains before doing something. It may just save your life.

He put down his gun to pick up a baby | The San Diego Union-Tribune

He put down his gun to pick up a baby | The San Diego Union-Tribune: "When Walsh and the Marines came to one doorway, M-4 rifles up and ready, a woman emerged from a room, holding an infant and saying, over and over again, %u201CBaby. Baby sick.%u201D
Walsh put his gun down and the woman put the baby down.
Walsh had seen bad things %u2013 as an EMT back home in St. Louis, and at war. But he told his comrades he had never seen anything like this: The child, just a few months old, looked as though her insides had been turned inside out."

The most remarkable thing about this story is not the Marines or the efforts they went through to save this baby. But that the mother knew that the American can and would help her child.

What do people really think of the Americans? This tells us more then all the thorax thumping that has been going on in the media for some time.

Did Noah's Flood occur on...

Did an Asteroid Impact Cause an Ancient Tsunami? - New York Times: "...the morning of May 10, 2807 B.C. Dr. Masse analyzed 175 flood myths from around the world, and tried to relate them to known and accurately dated natural events like solar eclipses and volcanic eruptions. Among other evidence, he said, 14 flood myths specifically mention a full solar eclipse, which could have been the one that occurred in May 2807 B.C. Half the myths talk of a torrential downpour, Dr. Masse said. A third talk of a tsunami. Worldwide they describe hurricane force winds and darkness during the storm. All of these could come from a mega-tsunami."

Whether it did or not is not the issue. The amazing thing about this is that we are seeing a multidisciplinary approach to solving a puzzle. The astronomers are looking at the sky and seeing a few worrisome asteroids but none that are all that close so they assume that asteroids only impact once or twice every million years. Geologists are looking at the ground and see odd things they can't explain readily and who knew there were even specialists in something called environmental archaeology.

But look at the power of synergy as they come together to puzzle out why shellfish fossils have metal fuzed to them and are a long way from the ocean.



I remember as a child I watched a pair of PBS shows back to back, one about food handling and the problems of moving and storing wheat and rice and how they had to solve problems about how they flow in and out of a storage facility. The very next show was about earthquakes and how they were having a tough time with soil liquefaction. Had those two groups come together they may have solved their problems a bit faster.

Relating it to ourselves. Being well read is not about having read Shakespeare in college but in reading all kinds of things and that gives you the ability to put puzzles like this together.

Wired News: Making Water From Thin Air

Wired News: Making Water From Thin Air: "The water-harvesting technology was originally the brainchild of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which sought ways to ensure sustainable water supplies for U.S. combat troops deployed in arid regions like Iraq."

Now you too can fulfill your dream of becoming a moisture farmer like those on Tatooine.

This is a great breakthrough. Good clean water is relatively rare on this planet. There have even been people saying the next big war will be over water.

I like this story a lot because they weren't funded by DARPA like a couple of other companies were. They came out of left field and blew them away.

Never give up if you have a good idea, start working on it, there is no perfect time, only time that is slipping away.

I just read in a few places that blogs are pretty much saturated. That tells me that it is the prefect time to start something new. So I will be posting a bit more often.

Neil Gaiman - Neil Gaiman's Journal: Important. And pass it on...

Neil Gaiman - Neil Gaiman's Journal: Important. And pass it on...: "There are writers who blithely explain to the world that they didn't make a will because they don't mind who gets their jeans and old guitar when they die but who would have conniptions if they realised how much aggravation their books or articles or poems or songs would cause their loved ones (or editors, anthologists or fans) after their death..."

Lots of people don't have wills, this might not be the greatest will in the whole world but something is often better then nothing at all.

Teaching kids to fight back against classroom invaders - CNN.com

Teaching kids to fight back against classroom invaders - CNN.com: "Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth, Texas, school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they've got -- books, pencils, legs and arms.'Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success,' said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed."

Is it just me are are they totally missing the point? The Bad Guy is coming into the school to KILL people. The Bad Guy is there to kill children, he might have a target list, he may not, but let us be clear on one point:

The Bad Guy is there to kill people already.

At that point the only thing you can do is do everything in your power to minimize the number of people we let him kill. It takes too long for police to show up, one of the school shooters came to school with nearly 1000 rounds of ammunition, plenty to kill everyone in the whole school.

Have they forgotten the lessons of 9/11 so soon. The Bad Guys are trying to kill us, and we are the only ones who can stop them.

Stuffed Foods

I have been thinking about lunch foods lately things that are easy to transport and eat under less then ideal conditions. While a typical corporate break-room will have a frig and microwave frozen dinners for lunch are not all that great and sandwiches are not all that exciting after a while and fast-food is often just pathetic.

Lunch foods have been a problem that has been solved many different ways for some time. The ancient Greeks invented Toast as a way to preserve bread for a journey. What other road foods have existed?

Pasties and runzas have a history of being lunch foods for miners and factory workers. Ravioli is also an obvious one, so are egg-rolls and pot stickers. also things like fried pies or their baked sisters turnovers. Calzones are a folded over pizza and hot pockets are just mini versions of calzones. And don't forget things like tamales.

These are all a kind of an-croute food. The best part about this food is that can be transported and eaten easily without too much extra to carry along. Though a Beef Wellington would not generally be called easily transportable I would put it in the same basic family of stuffed bread foods. You can also use phylo or puff pastry doughs for similar things though much more delicate.

Stuffed foods are a simple preservation technique. Okay it won't last as long as canned but for a day to get to work it is just fine. All you're really trying to do is keep out the airborne germs from the gooey nutrient rich filling. They have a hard time getting through the hard crust of a bread.

Now I've been thinking about other things you can put in them.

Stuffed pies are already common. Hostess Fruit Pies come in flavors like apple, cherry and blueberry, but why stop there, pumpkin, rhubarb and peaches make good pies. But you don't have to stop at just sweet; savory pies, like quiches, would work just fine too, so it is obvious that most any pie filling will do fine as a turnover or fried pie as long as it isn't too watery so the dough doesn't soak through and fall apart before you eat it.

The same idea would apply to a stuffed breads. A calzone is fundamentally a pizza that has been folded over. A pasty is a beef stew stuffed into a loaf of bread and a runza is a hamburger and cabbage casserole in a bread wrapper.

So what else could we stuff into some bread. Again the key is that the filling not be too watery. The first thing that comes to mind is some pulled pork BBQ. Not very wet and has some very big flavor, a very good choice. Obviously any kind of boneless or deboned BBQ will work for this application.

Casseroles also have the kind of features we want in a stuffed bread filling so why not try it. Turkey tetrazinni, tuna noodle casserole, chicken cachatore, and beef stroganoff are just a few ideas. Meatloaf is also an excellent choice.

Stews, chowders and thick soups can work as well.

And it doesn't have to be all entrees, but why not side dishes as well like green bean casserole, Spanish rice, sweet potato casserole or glazed carrots. Okay, maybe a whole pasty of glazed carrots might be a bit much but a spoonful in one corner and spoonful of jam as a dessert in the other would be wonderful.

You can also go fusion, why not put a bit of cherry pie filling in a wonton skin and deep fry that. Or put some stir fry in a pasty. Or a tuna casserole in a tamale. Or some chili in a potsticker.

One of the main techniques to be aware of is to make sure there is as little air as possible the stuffed bread so as it heats it doesn't blow out all over the place. It doesn't really matter if you are baking, boiling or deep frying them, air expands a lot faster then the dough can handle.

The problem of what to take for lunch has been solved by smart women around the world. Their solutions are a reflection of their available resources but they are remarkably similar. We can now almost mix and match to come up with what strikes our fancy.

Back

Things have been busy but now I think it is time to post again.

%u201CLet the Good Times Roll%u201D by Guy Kawasaki: The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

%u201CLet the Good Times Roll%u201D by Guy Kawasaki: The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

This is very important to remember to not overload anyone with what you're doing.

%u201CLet the Good Times Roll%u201D by Guy Kawasaki: Guy%u2019s Golden Touch

%u201CLet the Good Times Roll%u201D by Guy Kawasaki: Guy%u2019s Golden Touch

Guy has a blog. This is good.

Engineering: Is the U.S. Really Falling?

Engineering: Is the U.S. Really Falling?: "Is America losing its competitive edge in engineering? Top Silicon Valley executives, U.S. think-tanks, industry associations, and university deans have all pointed out dropping enrollment in American science and tech programs and warn of a brewing problem. And in a November survey of 4,000 U.S. engineers, 64% said outsourcing makes them worry about the profession's future, while less than 10% feel sure America will maintain its leadership in technology."

Scary stuff.

Tim & Jeni's - Seattle Civil Defense Manual

Tim & Jeni's - Seattle Civil Defense Manual

This is fascinating look at emergency preparedness.

Best Online Classic Children's Books: By Title

Best Online Classic Children's Books: By Title

This is an excellent resource for you and your children.

Read on!

paper works

paper works

Some amazing paper creations.

Dealing with comment spam

Got a whole bunch of comments, but when I looked they were just link farm type sites so off they go. I've changed the comments so you have to word verify now, a pain but that is all I can do now.
I wonder if there is a way to kill more then one at a time.

Slacker or sick?

Slacker or sick?

Very interesting. Best to take a break from the keyboard.

Bookmarklets - Tool Categories

Bookmarklets - Tool Categories


Bunches of bookmarklets.

Jon's Radio

Jon's Radio

A Library bookmarklet. Very useful

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?

A useful tool.

From the Hall: GmailThis!

From the Hall: GmailThis!

A useful bookmarklet.

Grand Opening of the Ziggurat Math Store and Blog

It has come time to stop talking and start doing.
Our public school system is failing us in the United States. High Schools now have dozens of valedictorians but universities are replacing college math and English courses with remedial courses. And our students are falling behind in international math and science and programming competitions.

Something must be done and I am going to do something about it. I can't do everything but I can do one thing and that is to help parents teach their children mathematics.

I have launched a new blog called ZigguratMath.

I have written a book the first in a new series of books to help mothers teach their children the language of mathematics. Book one is all about teaching your children how to count. It is available as a downloadable ebook (.pdf) at the ZigguratMath Store.

A free report on why mathematics is important plus lesson 1 from the book is available there too.

For the grand opening the book is on sale at the ZigguratMath Store. Hurry, This sale ends next Thursday.

Why math is important to the country

U.S. HAS FEWER ENGINEERING GRADS

The United States lags behind other nations in the number of engineers graduated each year, says Norm Augustine, a retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp., A look at the numbers:
• United States : 50,000
• India: 100,000
• China: 100,000
• Japan: 200,000

The significant figure in there is not the US but Japan.
Japan is minting more engineers every year then India and China COMBINED!
India and China have half the population of the planet and Japan is stomping them in the creation of engineers, and completely wiping the floor when it comes to the US.

It is understandable that we are not graduating many new engineers, business keeps asking for more students, asking for more H1-B visas and the like. But when you look at the job postings of these companies it is not surprising that there is a backlash.

Companies are complaining but not putting their money where their mouths are. When you look at their jobs postings you see them asking for 5 years experience in over a dozen technologies, most of which are highly specialized and if you are experienced in one you wouldn't have had any time to have experience in the others. Though admittedly some of the problem is not with the hiring manager, he understands that, he really wants a set of engineers with all those skills combined not one engineer with all those skills, but HR doesn't understand, they get the checklist and eliminate everyone without all those skills. You can imagine what happens next.

In the very late 1990's it was obvious that tech was in a boom state, when secretaries and landscapers were trying to learn to program that was a warning sign I failed to heed. Just like when JP Morgan knew that it was time to get out of the stock market in 1930, because the shoe-shine boy was giving him stock tips.

Outsourcing isn't working all that well yet but they are learning, in 10 years they will have figured it out. Just like Japan did to the US car manufacturers and what Korea did to Taiwan in chip manufacturing.

What should your children know by the time they are 8 years old?

In most news reports they report test scores going up except for a few poor districts. But when you look closer they are only reporting the percent change, sure a 19% increase in test scores is pretty good, but when I looked at the actual scores a 19% increase of an F- is still only an F+, better yes, but still a long way from actually being good.

It isn't that there aren't good dedicated teachers, there are many of them. It just that the public school system on the whole doesn't produce students that can read, write, do math or have many other life skills. And that is just not acceptable.

That is why I am homeschooling my daughter and why I am going to share our adventures with you.

What do I want her to know? There is quite a bit but I'm going to limit it to the time she is 8 years old.
By age 8 I want her to be able to:
Read on her own.
Do arithmetic.
Write in her journal on her own.
Read the scriptures on her own.
Learn a musical instrument.
Take part in a sports activity, like dance, gymnastics or martial arts.
Speak to a small group.
Be gracious.

There are so many I am going to have to stop short.

Something I need to do is to keep an eye out for her talents. God has given everyone talents and usually more then one. By watching her interests I hope I can identify them and then help her nurture them and hone them.

Grab hold of reality and give it a 90 degree twist

Something that has really helped me out of some tight spots has been to "Grab hold of reality and give it a 90 degree twist"

If I found myself thinking in circles I would do something to shake things up, to think outside of the box and all that.

I would ask myself silly questions like:
If I had 'Star Trek' level technology how would I solve this problem?
If I had $1billion dollars how would that help?
If I was a geologist how would I make this box work best for Brazilian Pythons?
If it was the size of a bread box how would that help? Sometimes thinking about the box worked wonders.

Basically change the nature of the game so winning isn't what everyone might think it was.
That leads into Creative Think, which has put a fun little app on their site based on Oblique Strategies, a product I am unfamiliar with but not the concept, as I have shown.

These are great little short sketches that help you break out of your rut. Reload Creative think or press the button to get a new one.

For example, and I like this one,

"What concerns me," remarked the philosopher Epictetus, "is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are." If you think you're creative, you'll act that way -- and vice versa. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. As you think, so you are. In what ways are you creative?  What strengths do you have that you can apply to your issue?

Now, if your children are driving you crazy or you are frustrated because you want to do some special little thing for yourself and you just can't get to it because of a thousand little interruptions, this can help change how you think about the situation. It won't change the situation but it can change how you see the situation and then the inspiration can come.

Thanks to 43Folders for the links.

3 Keys To Teaching Math

When you boil it down there are really only three keys to teaching math or anything really.
1. Concept: The idea behind what is being taught. For example: Numbers are a shortcut we use instead of quantities.
2. Problem: A common problem that requires understanding of this concept. For example: How do we keep trade of all the toys we have? A great way to use this is to add in history, when Isaac Newton was working out gravity he invented Calculus to explain what he was trying to say more easily then anything that was available at the time.
3. Practice: Using several related problems to see how the concept is applied. Algebra becomes a lot easier once I realized that a curve is nothing more then all possible solutions to a particular equation. I have to graph dozens of equations before that piece of inspiration came to me.

In most schools lectures generally start with the concept followed by lots of practice but ignore how the problem relates to real life. So students start asking, "what is this good for?" and too often the answer from the teacher is, "I don't know. " with a subtext of "I'm not going to find out what it's good for, I just got to get through this material for the test, if you pass the test I don't care any more." Which is why students start asking, "Will this be on the test?"

Some schools use just practice, hoping your children with somehow figure out the concept on their own, this is called discovery learning. Admittedly this happens all the time in real life but the people who do this are generally and rightly called geniuses. Discovering something for the first time is hard, really hard, amazingly hard, That is why the Nobel Prize is such a big deal, but once it is solved it can be really easy to do once you know all the things that went into the problem in the first place.

The combined lifetime efforts of Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and a hundred other has brought us to our current understanding of the universe, which is taught to kids in a few hours of Astronomy class. Trying to have all children do that from scratch is a silly waste of time.

How to use them

How you use these depends on how your children learn. Some children prefer to be given a problem to solve, other like the concept first and a few like to work things out for themselves from practicing. It will also depend on which subject that you are teaching as well. Obviously it is best to use all of them together.

"What would you do if..." is a great way to start. People like to solve problem, especially those that interest them, that is understandable since if a problem is related to something they have interest in they will retain thirty times the material then just a lecture, then you can bring in the concept to help them solve the problem and then the can practice solving other related problems.

Another great way is the historical approach. For example, If you were studying Ancient Greece or introducing circles or finding out more about the Earth you could use this story: Eratosthenes of Cyrene figured that the Earth was round, but how big was it? Well, he had a friend in a distant city with a well that was directly under the sun one particular day a year. He found out how far the cities were apart and measured the shadow in a local well on the same day. He was able to calculate the Earth's circumference to be about 25,000 miles, modern measurements put the Earth's circumference at 24,902 miles. He was off by only 98 miles or about 2%.

This is a great introduction for circles, pi, angles, measuring, averages and history.

Then do some practice to make sure that the concept sticks and to show how it applies to different but related problems.

This should make you a much better teacher.

School Arts isn't quite dead yet.

With all the auto shops, fast-food joints and boarded-up houses in the vicinity, it is somewhat disorienting to find Mr. Longest operating out of a $17 million performing arts annex, part of a recently completed $50 million renovation of New Albany High School that was financed by property taxes. With its airy glass lobbies and soaring curved roofs, its 24-hour radio station, television broadcast center, huge indoor pool and student bank, the building could be mistaken for the centerpiece of a college campus. But it's a public school. Despite local poverty (one-third of New Albany's 2,000 students are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches), residents rejected a tax cut - by a ratio of eight to one - in order to pay for the improvements. Steve Sipes, the principal, said they had done so because the arts at New Albany had over the years brought a measure of pride, comparable only to that generated by the sports teams, to a city that's seen better days.

Mr. Sipes's superintendent, Dennis Brooks, who has occasionally borrowed costumes from the theater department for Halloween, concurred. "Arts programs nationwide are suffering because of the pressure No Child Left Behind has put on schools to move more resources into math and English," he said, referring to the federal law mandating testing standards. "If we were forced to do that here, you'd have quite a fight on your hands, because we agree with the research that says the arts help kids do better in school." Indeed, when Mr. Longest, who himself attended New Albany, was interviewed for the job of drama teacher in 1984, the crucial question everyone asked him was "Can you do the big musicals?"

It is so good to see a school sticking with the arts. and bringing it to the level of a sports team is even better. This is a great thing.

The story, not unsurprisingly, doesn't talk about the rest of the school, but I hope they are linking the play and all the work that goes into it into the rest of the curriculum. Learning by doing is far more powerful then sitting in a lecture. Doing it "for real" is even more powerful. Imagine studying waves and interference in physics class while trying to tame the audio board. History class comes alive while discussing the time when the play was first produced. The entire school could be studying the play while it is in production. Making it real is not so hard when you have everyone on the same page.

Homeschool is 30 TIMES more effective then public school

Homeschool is 30 TIMES more effective then public school.

That is a pretty outrageous statement.

Here I why I say so. In the book "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn. On page 145 he finds that how interested the students were in the passage was thirty times more important that how "readable" the passage was.

How can we test this? Well, how long was it before you or your children started public school before the answer to the question, "What did you do today in school?" was "Nothing." Months, weeks, days?
Did you ever ask the question, "Is this going to be on the test?" You ask that question to know if you can go off somewhere else in your imagination for a while.
Is school boring? Of course it is. Few teachers can find the common interests of 20-30 children and link it to the lesson. It is easier in classes like band or art because the students in those classes are interested in those subjects, oh wait they've been cancelled for more "teaching" time.

Is "Punished by Rewards" the only place that says this? No, another place is "Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience." He is not interested in education as such. The author was just looking for why some people excel and others don't doing the same task. Flow is found in a balance between challenge and skill otherwise known as being "in the zone". An example of flow, have you ever read a good book, a real page-turner, you start after dinner and the next thing you know you are closing the back cover and its 2 in the morning. Or playing basketball and you are hitting most every shot. That's flow.
It comes down to this, if you are interested in doing something it is much easier to do then not.

One more place, "The Design of Everyday Things" this is a book on how the way things are designed effects how we use them. He talks about taught helplessness, You are in a situation like math class where it keeps moving forward at a relentless pace and if you miss a simple point you are completely lost because it is expected that you have mastered everything that has come before. So you end up with arithmaphobia.

Even if Alfie is off by a factor of 10, I will still do a 3 times better job of teaching my children then any teacher will.

Is there any school district that doesn't say that students do better with parental involvement? Mainly because parents are interested in their child's success like no one else. Again if you are interested you will retain 30 times more information then otherwise.

If I am already interested with what my child is doing at school then why can't I just take over the whole thing and do it at home where I can make sure my child is learning things that are linked to her interests?

Online Homeschool Convention is open

There are a lot of great posts in this convention, including my own.

Get out there and learn something.

Teach the whole child.

Math has a long history and it is tied into business and government and science. No one can teach effectively to just one part, it has to be a whole, it makes more sense when you know what it is good for and how it is used in real life. Teach the whole child.

The most powerful way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. At first have your child teach you, you need to make sure he has completely understood the foundational material. Find someone to be a study buddy, they can teach each other how to do the material. If you cannot find a real study buddy use a teddy bear or rubber ducky or cardboard cutout or a plant to talk to, the talking to is important. I know that sounds weird but it does work and is very effective I have used it to work through problems that were stumping me.

Keep a learning journal. Write down what you have taught and learned today and what you think about it. This also comes in very handy if someone challenges what you teach your children. A record written in your and their own hand is powerful evidence and further supports the memory the lessons.

Part of teaching the whole child is to teach them how to work. Math is mainly Knowledge Work, work of the brain. But they also need to know the physical side as well. Chores are the simplest way of doing it. Provide them with a choice of chores to do, if your children are anything like mine they will gravitate toward certain chores rather then others. Suit the chores to the abilities of your children their innate talents and physical and mental maturity, you know them far better then any stranger ever will.
At first the chores will get done slower then if you would have done them but speed is not the issue the issue is are the children learning the benefits of work and asking the question "Is this the fastest, cheapest, easiest way of doing this?" "There must be a better way!" is the engineers rallying cry.

Don't be fooled by numerical legerdemain

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."
Benjamin Disraeli

"Math is hard." as Barbie used to say. Math isn't hard. English is much harder then math and teaching english to your children is easy. You do it without even thinking about it.

Too often in public schools the way they teach math ends up with students knowing less math at the end of class then when they came in. It is called Taught Helplessness.

It was brought home to me when I was reading a book quite unrelated to mathematics, "The Design of Everyday Things" It is a book on User Interface Design or the study of how people and machines interact. He talks about something he ran into quite be accident and only as an aside.

There are two places he noticed that people have big problems: Computers and mathematics. computers used to be really cryptic and hard to use, so hard many people taught themselves how to not use the computer, because it always told them they were wrong and if you do that enough times they believe it.

Public schools teach math so badly that student taught to be helpless when it comes to that subject. Math becomes magic to them. Tutoring a student that has a textbook that has problems that make no sense, makes it very hard for them to understand the concept. All they really know is, "I did it wrong therefore I am stupid."

If you mention numbers or equations then their minds go blank and static fills their ears. It is like they become allergic to numbers. Arithmophobia is what is it called. They are afraid of numbers. Balancing a checkbook is impossible for them.

Then the media comes on with their polls. Have you ever noticed that all their polls have an error of +/-3%. You cannot specify the error rate beforehand, no matter how hard you try, reality gets in the way. A 3% error is basically a perfect score, that just doesn't happen in the real world, I would expect the error to jump around a lot, closer to 10% with 3% only being seen occasionally. My wife worked at a place doing telephone surveys, let me tell you they were in no way getting 3% error rates.

How easy is it influence someone when they hear something along the lines of : "Americans approve of whatever because 49 per_pshshshauairere_ (static fills their minds as the anchor starts talking about numbers and numbers pop up on the screen)? Pretty easy don't you think.

Don't let yourself or your children be fooled by numerical legerdemain Math is a powerful, powerful tool that lets you break through junk science.

Math is one of the success skills.

There are only a few skills that appear necessary for success. They appear to be: reading, writing, mathematics, fitness, problem solving, interpersonal, and face & name memory.

I am going to focus on mathematics.

Mathematics is a very badly taught skill in schools, that was really brought home to me when I was reading "The Design of Everyday Things" where Norman talks about Learned Helplessness. Students actually end up knowing less math coming out of school then when they went in. They learn to become dependent on the teacher for explanations. This is very bad in my eyes.

I have tutored many people in math and other subjects plenty of times, starting in high school. If you count other students cheating off my tests, it goes all the way back to the 1970's when I was in elementary school:)

Math is simply a language. And there is an important thing you have to learn first. Numbers are stand-ins for actual quantities. 1 is the same as *, ** is the same as 2, and so on.

Numbers are just an abstraction to make writing numbers a lot faster and easier. We could make our numbers be anything at all. Many early number systems, such as Greek and Hebrew just used letters to represent numbers, but unlike how we use letters to represent unknown quantities in algebra, they were constants. It would be similar to us saying a=1, b=2, c=3, and so on.

Just by counting things I've been able to teach my 2 year-old daughter to count.

Addition is straightforward enough. a group of ** and a group of **** put together are ******. but that would be a real pain to do the national budget with. so we use numbers instead of tally marks. The Roman numerals are little more then tally marks and doing calculations in that system is very hard.

So ** added to *** are *****, or 2 and 3 are 5, or 2+3=5. It is easy to see that the last is very easy to write. If you are starting to teach a young child to do math then start with physical quantities: blocks, pennies, pens or other small easy to move things. I would save candy for subtraction.

Subtraction is much the same. Though you have to make sure that at first you only subtract smaller quantities from larger quantities. Once they are familiar with that concept you'll see something interesting happen. They'll ask you, "What happens if we subtract a larger number from a smaller number?" Then you know they are ready for introducing negative numbers. You don't need to introduce number lines or anything like that. Number lines are important later, but so much later so learning them now doesn't really help. Negative numbers are just that negative. They'll deal with them just fine.

Math is a language. 1+1=2 because we defined it that way. Children learn to speak because we use words around them, they imitate us and we correct them. We don't even have to think about doing it. Math is a little more difficult for us to teach because we tend not to use it explicitly. We have to change, but it is worth it to help our children be successful.

Online Homeschool convention

This is a totally cool idea an online
homeschool convention.
This could be fun.

What we study so our children have the right to study good things

In 1780 Massachusetts patriot John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, outlining his vision of how American culture might evolve. ''I must study politics and war," he prophesied, so ''that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." They will add to their studies geography, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, he continued, so that their children may enjoy the ''right to study painting, poetry, music . . . "

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/10/why_literature_matters?pg=full

That is a great quote but, why is it worth sending my child to school if all the teachers quit.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46379-2005Apr12.html

An article in my local paper from the local school administration was encouraging parents and students to create a self-actualized education, "... to be the loudest chick in the nest" to get the best education you can.

If you are going to "self-actualize" your education you might as well homeschool, where you actually can.

Our children can be so much more, it is time to take them back from the schools and get to teaching them.

I am studying education and learning and history so I can teach my children so they can study language, music and art.

What Do You Want Your Children to Know and What Skills Do You Want Them to Have When They are 18-years-old?

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert Heinlein

That is the fundamental question you are facing in the education of your children, and it doesn't matter if your child is in public school, private school or home school.
No matter the answers to that question you will have to take action to make sure your children have that knowledge and those skill, because no one loves or cares more about your children then you do.

You have two things to do:
Find and nourish your children's innate talents.
Impart the life skills necessary so your children can life a happy life and support their talents.

Everyone has been gifted with at least one talent that they can use to enrich everyones life with. As a parent your job is to find those talents and help your children develop them to the highest level they can.

What talents do your children have? I have no idea but just be observant, provide a wide range of activities, take note of your children's favorite activities in your learning journal and you will start seeing patterns emerge. The things your children are good at will be related to their talents.

Many talented people become complacent about their talent, since it comes so easy to them they don't work to improve. Help them to strive for perfection.

You May Only Be One Or Two Skills Away From Success.

Having a talent is not enough, they also have to a good balance of life-skills. There are many stories in the news of highly paid professional athletes who have no money management skills and end up in debt because they don't understand that their careers will end sooner rather then later.

I have met many young adults lately that are missing basic life skills, Sure, they can read—slowly, and write—with the help of a spelling and grammar checker. Their cooking skills top out at scrambled eggs and toast, and getting common stains out of clothes is a stumper. But cleaning the bathroom, and changing the oil in the car is something completely new to them. Balancing the checkbook is a process they don't understand at all. Maybe they have all lead sheltered lives, but I want my children to be able to function in day to day life.

Learning most skills is not all that hard: to pick up a new skill and get pretty good at it takes about 100 hours, to become expert in a skill all it takes is practice about 1000 hours of practice. To master a skill takes about 5000 hours.

My short list of skills for my children:
Literate: She should be able to read and write and get her point across.
Numerate: She should be able to balance her checkbook, and see how physics plays a major role in everyday life.
Articulate: She should be able to talk to people: alone or in front of a group and be understood.
Fitness: She should be able to take care of her body.
Homemaking skills: She should be able to take care of her clothes, house, car and cook meals.
Goal-setting skills: She should be able to set and achieve goals.
Time-management skills: She should be able to manage her time and energy effectively.
Memory skills: She should be able to remember names and faces.

In 1780 Massachusetts patriot John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, outlining his vision of how American culture might evolve. ''I must study politics and war," he prophesied, so ''that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." They will add to their studies geography, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, he continued, so that their children may enjoy the ''right to study painting, poetry, music . . . "

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/10/why_literature_matters?pg=full

That is a great quote but, why is it worth sending my child to school if all the teachers quit.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46379-2005Apr12.html

An article in my local paper from the local school administration was encouraging parents and students to create a self-actualized education, "... to be the loudest chick in the nest" to get the best education you can.

If you are going to "self-actualize" your education you might as well homeschool, where you actually can.

Our children can be so much more, it is time to take them back from the schools and get to teaching them.

I am studying education and learning and history so I can teach my children so they can study language, music and art.