Paul Brandwein said it decades ago, and it's still true.
Sadly, if we don't have a supply of menial labor (i.e., those who won't go past high school and/or learn a trade / turn pro), society as we know it now will not work as we know it. Somebody has to haul the garbage and clean the toilets. Gandhi aside, that's not typically an everyone-pitches-in thing.
Bill's run up against a basic dilemma of American education - we modeled our expectations on the successes of the pre-US western education - where only the fittest (wealthy or landed) got educated, then applied the model to every last person. As a teacher, I want every kid to get from point A to point B, whatever that may mean to them, the further the better, and I imagine applying everything you can find in successful education to the betterment of any student who walks through the door, molded to their particular needs. But we didn't build that system - yet. Reducing class size is one important part - but hardly a solution.
An additional evil is that a lot of people in schools label the kids they're sure will fail and pretty much turn them into self-fulfilling prophecies when they do. I've worked in prized suburban high schools where the lowest (phase / track / etc.) is still openly referred to as the "Sweathogs". They pretty much assume their role and set up for a life of minimum wage jobs.
Maybe that's the problem the Pars-dint is trying to solve with those workaday visas he's pushing. Cause he's sure not fixing it with NCLB...
Thanks for adding that they're remarkable. I'm sure they'd be flattered by your kind words. Remember, *you* asked what I've done in education so I'll indulge you, but it's not my contribution that finally matters, but theirs.
For starters, there's a couple of instruments on Mars as we speak responsible for some pretty decent discoveries - that engineer thanked me personally for my guidance, so I can safely assume there was some influence, but of course as you wisely pointed out, no guarantees. A couple dozen engineers who discovered mechanical and electrical engineering in part due of the breaks I helped give them, a pioneer in quantum computing, one in a top robotics lab... it's the thanks I get from them from time to time, the notes, the visits, the 200-mile side trips to stop by the office that let me make a little leap that I may have helped. But again, as you so eloquently pointed out, no guarantees.
Remember, education is how you got where you are too - unless you sprang fully formed and educated in fiber transmission from the womb, someone helped you get there.
Good points all, and well stated. But also consider:
Of course the girls were bankrolled and had real engineers helping. Give them the tools and let them take on the role of professionals. Have some professionals to model the things they need to know and do. It seems to work well.
I'm not a programmer - I'm an educator. I hang out here to see what's new and cool and use the assembled wisdom to learn new things and see how innovation can make a difference.
Slashdot is useful for getting ideas out and finding the range of opinions and insights. You've certainly pushed that envelope here. Buzzwords, profanity, to each his own. By the way, what "something useful" have you had the "sack" to do?
Solar challenges aren't about getting everyone to drive solar cars. The design constraints force the engineers to develop other innovations - more efficient motors, better chargers & inverters, etc. These get used in other things like hybrid cars, electric cars, fuel cell cars. Those are valued.
Or that would be the difference in the 1987 World Solar Challenge and the Sunraycer performance compared to the rest of the world.
In 1990 the Tour De Sol here in the NE US - a local girls' private school finished the race when a certain Boston area geek haven failed to complete. I'd pay a lot for what you just saw happen to the potential of a few dozen women in technology. The ubergeeks got over it and did better too.
It's R&D and sometimes someone figures out how to blow the roof off the place.
Since you're on Slashdot, I'm going to go out on a limb and figure that you have something to do with pushing the envelope on silicon and electrons. So do the new car folks. New as in never been built before by people who weren't sure they could. Like race car driving. Your Honda Accord would suck wind if there were no Honda Racing. Race car driving is incrementalism at it's grandest - but it pushes the envelope and makes people scream and pushes reliability moreso than sheer speed.
There would be no (insert your favorite box / processor / speed here) if it weren't for (to use your quaint term) "dicksizing" among processor labs / R&D / U labs / plain old people / uberheeks.
I take care of a Twike for our tech school - it's an odd duck, but the kids go gaga over it and IT GETS THEM THINKING. That's pure gold. Too many kids today think they're high tech if they got the latest Halo before anyone else and if they've memorized every StrongBad line.
I want the thinkers and pushers of envelopes. I want the race engineers, and I'll take them jazzed on petrol or photons or perl.
Know what's fun? Holding your cool the umpteenth time someone on campus with a legacy Mac spots an old parallel printer lying around and thinks "Ooh! Free Printer!" and plugs it into the SCSI port...
I thought the idea of burning out image detectors went out with orthicon tubes. Is hubble really that sensitive that the light of the earth is to much? Are we talking oversaturation or physical damage from heat? I'd always wondered if the real reason was that the resolution was too good - 1 dime over 300 miles or something like that...
Thsi sounds like they have to get thihngs done at that time under those conditions and they hafta do it RFN... this makes pressure to launch which hasn't been a friend to getting things done right/safe.
This is the basic mode for opening new stores for these two chains - find out where a reasonably well run drug store or bake shop is with plenty of traffic, then open up a block away. Usually buries the competitor in a matter of months. Perfectly legal.
.. about Condi Rice. Seriously. She's far more intelligent than bright, and all that academic acumen isn't worth much when you have to go toe to toe with some battle-hardened scrappy leader of some troublesome faction in the heat of negotiation.
In the late 80's in Connecticut the DOT highway signs (the giant lightbulb-based info screens on the overpasses) were run by a PC at the DOT headquarters, which had a modem line for remote control. A couple of kids did in fact find the modem's number, dial in, and found out there was no password protection on running the things. They used the signs to say some very unflattering things about then-governor Lowell Weicker. IIRC a motorist called the DOT and clued them in. No mad h@x0r skills needed, just a not-obscure-enough phone number.
That crack is only half-kidding - a large part of the problem is that the public doesn't get riled up about this stuff because they think the really good stuff is on videos or games anyway. Too many people would rather watch the latest movie than the latest expedition to inner or outer space (how much money did Cameron make on Titanic? How much is he making on Aliens of the Deep 3D IMAX? How many hits on Star Wars sites, how many the Hubble sites?) More people would rather be entertained than educated.
It's like the HDTV demo discs you see in video stores - people gasping at HD video of a flower, when they could walk out the door and see the real thing, no digitizing or interpolation or artifact.
Slashdot Mirror
Disney's had this for a year or so...a ur.html
http://www.time.com/time/2003/inventions/invdinos
Paul Brandwein said it decades ago, and it's still true.
/or learn a trade / turn pro), society as we know it now will not work as we know it. Somebody has to haul the garbage and clean the toilets. Gandhi aside, that's not typically an everyone-pitches-in thing.
Sadly, if we don't have a supply of menial labor (i.e., those who won't go past high school and
Bill's run up against a basic dilemma of American education - we modeled our expectations on the successes of the pre-US western education - where only the fittest (wealthy or landed) got educated, then applied the model to every last person. As a teacher, I want every kid to get from point A to point B, whatever that may mean to them, the further the better, and I imagine applying everything you can find in successful education to the betterment of any student who walks through the door, molded to their particular needs. But we didn't build that system - yet. Reducing class size is one important part - but hardly a solution.
An additional evil is that a lot of people in schools label the kids they're sure will fail and pretty much turn them into self-fulfilling prophecies when they do. I've worked in prized suburban high schools where the lowest (phase / track / etc.) is still openly referred to as the "Sweathogs". They pretty much assume their role and set up for a life of minimum wage jobs.
Maybe that's the problem the Pars-dint is trying to solve with those workaday visas he's pushing.
Cause he's sure not fixing it with NCLB...
Dear Anonymous Coward,
Thanks for adding that they're remarkable. I'm sure they'd be flattered by your kind words. Remember, *you* asked what I've done in education so I'll indulge you, but it's not my contribution that finally matters, but theirs.
For starters, there's a couple of instruments on Mars as we speak responsible for some pretty decent discoveries - that engineer thanked me personally for my guidance, so I can safely assume there was some influence, but of course as you wisely pointed out, no guarantees. A couple dozen engineers who discovered mechanical and electrical engineering in part due of the breaks I helped give them, a pioneer in quantum computing, one in a top robotics lab... it's the thanks I get from them from time to time, the notes, the visits, the 200-mile side trips to stop by the office that let me make a little leap that I may have helped. But again, as you so eloquently pointed out, no guarantees.
Remember, education is how you got where you are too - unless you sprang fully formed and educated in fiber transmission from the womb, someone helped you get there.
Thanks for the feedback.
Ah. you make fiber optics.
I'd be glad to send you a list of my students' accomplishments.
All the best,
Dear Anonymous Coward,
e rgeek
Good points all, and well stated. But also consider:
Of course the girls were bankrolled and had real engineers helping. Give them the tools and let them take on the role of professionals. Have some professionals to model the things they need to know and do. It seems to work well.
I'm not a programmer - I'm an educator. I hang out here to see what's new and cool and use the assembled wisdom to learn new things and see how innovation can make a difference.
Slashdot is useful for getting ideas out and finding the range of opinions and insights. You've certainly pushed that envelope here. Buzzwords, profanity, to each his own. By the way, what "something useful" have you had the "sack" to do?
Solar challenges aren't about getting everyone to drive solar cars. The design constraints force the engineers to develop other innovations - more efficient motors, better chargers & inverters, etc. These get used in other things like hybrid cars, electric cars, fuel cell cars. Those are valued.
Honda does indeed spend money on solar challenges: http://www.speedace.info/honda.htm
Language evolves. English doubly so. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ub
Thanks for the enlightenment.
Or that would be the difference in the 1987 World Solar Challenge and the Sunraycer performance compared to the rest of the world.
In 1990 the Tour De Sol here in the NE US - a local girls' private school finished the race when a certain Boston area geek haven failed to complete. I'd pay a lot for what you just saw happen to the potential of a few dozen women in technology. The ubergeeks got over it and did better too.
It's R&D and sometimes someone figures out how to blow the roof off the place.
Since you're on Slashdot, I'm going to go out on a limb and figure that you have something to do with pushing the envelope on silicon and electrons. So do the new car folks. New as in never been built before by people who weren't sure they could. Like race car driving. Your Honda Accord would suck wind if there were no Honda Racing. Race car driving is incrementalism at it's grandest - but it pushes the envelope and makes people scream and pushes reliability moreso than sheer speed.
There would be no (insert your favorite box / processor / speed here) if it weren't for (to use your quaint term) "dicksizing" among processor labs / R&D / U labs / plain old people / uberheeks.
I take care of a Twike for our tech school - it's an odd duck, but the kids go gaga over it and IT GETS THEM THINKING. That's pure gold. Too many kids today think they're high tech if they got the latest Halo before anyone else and if they've memorized every StrongBad line.
I want the thinkers and pushers of envelopes. I want the race engineers, and I'll take them jazzed on petrol or photons or perl.
Know what's fun? Holding your cool the umpteenth time someone on campus with a legacy Mac spots an old parallel printer lying around and thinks "Ooh! Free Printer!" and plugs it into the SCSI port...
I thought the idea of burning out image detectors went out with orthicon tubes. Is hubble really that sensitive that the light of the earth is to much? Are we talking oversaturation or physical damage from heat? I'd always wondered if the real reason was that the resolution was too good - 1 dime over 300 miles or something like that...
Isn't that the standard unit for large pieces of water ice on this planet?
Thsi sounds like they have to get thihngs done at that time under those conditions and they hafta do it RFN... this makes pressure to launch which hasn't been a friend to getting things done right/safe.
the post office apparently has had their lobby stamp machines connected to the brains of insane monkeys for years now...
... to dope slap the next person I hear making a crack about DeVry.
oh. sorry. parsing error.
I read that as "Next Gen-X Window Rendering for Linux"
Let me see if I got this straight - we've managed to slashdot a bloody great pile of concrete and chicken wire.
Or was it merely trod on by a dwarf?
this also means the world will have to go on without the next patent in this series, the four-assed monkey...
... thinking of Tim holding Gareth's stapler out the window when they heard this?
This is the basic mode for opening new stores for these two chains - find out where a reasonably well run drug store or bake shop is with plenty of traffic, then open up a block away. Usually buries the competitor in a matter of months. Perfectly legal.
.. about Condi Rice. Seriously. She's far more intelligent than bright, and all that academic acumen isn't worth much when you have to go toe to toe with some battle-hardened scrappy leader of some troublesome faction in the heat of negotiation.
... for being the last one on the galactic ice-skating chain of kids^H^H^H^H stars.
as a boater, you should
first learn to use a chart and compass, and recognize the lighthouse signals.
then get a marine radio.
then get a gps.
the first is a must
the second is a good backup
the third is for verification
that's one honkin' big piece of glass... 1 ton, melts at about 1500F...
In the late 80's in Connecticut the DOT highway signs (the giant lightbulb-based info screens on the overpasses) were run by a PC at the DOT headquarters, which had a modem line for remote control. A couple of kids did in fact find the modem's number, dial in, and found out there was no password protection on running the things. They used the signs to say some very unflattering things about then-governor Lowell Weicker. IIRC a motorist called the DOT and clued them in. No mad h@x0r skills needed, just a not-obscure-enough phone number.
used to include a study of glove compartment temperature cycles for their high end discs...
"People often prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not." -- author forgotten by me
That's basic behavior, and it's hard to break.
It's true for lousy relationships.
It explains some of Nick At Nite and why there was even a single repeat buyer of the Ford Escort.
Now that I have your attention...
That crack is only half-kidding - a large part of the problem is that the public doesn't get riled up about this stuff because they think the really good stuff is on videos or games anyway. Too many people would rather watch the latest movie than the latest expedition to inner or outer space (how much money did Cameron make on Titanic? How much is he making on Aliens of the Deep 3D IMAX? How many hits on Star Wars sites, how many the Hubble sites?) More people would rather be entertained than educated.
It's like the HDTV demo discs you see in video stores - people gasping at HD video of a flower, when they could walk out the door and see the real thing, no digitizing or interpolation or artifact.