Cool but clear after some misty drizzle and locally spotty rain.
As I drove around yesterday I did hit some pockets of very light drizzle and I could see that some areas were getting heavier rain. But it was mostly dry for most of Houston.
Got my errands run, did a bit of work at my secondary, but weather and exertion took their toll, and my back was killing me. When it sends various jabs and pokes, and generally feels like a bundle of glass rods with some cracks and breaks, it’s time to take it a bit easier before I really hurt myself. Getting old and decrepit is a b!tch.
As a note about how my life works, one of my pickups was three spools of filament for my uPrint 3D printer. Gnu only knows why, but the proprietary support material, and the ABS filament in the original (chipped) cassettes showed up in an auction. ~$15 each, when they sell for over $100 on ebay. Since it’s an old machine, it requires the cassettes and the proprietary filament, which hasn’t been made or sold new in years. It was really great to get some so cheap.
Plan for today is more stuff around the house, to include prep of the garden beds, but likely NOT planting. Seems we’re going to get a bit more winter before we really get spring, so I’ll keep the little plants where they won’t freeze until the danger passes. I guess my laziness busy-ness worked in my favor this time.
Played the Harry Potter version of Clue for family game night. Really liked it. It solves some of the problems inherent in the game play of the original, and has a couple of neat additions. If you like Clue, and are at all fond of Harry Potter, you’ll probably like it.
My ‘rip all the DVDs’ project is continuing apace. 27 discs so far. Maybe it won’t be next year before I’m done after all. Next choice is whether to use Plex or something built into windows to serve the streams to appropriate devices… No hurry on that though.
Listening to the scanner while I’m in my office doing other things and it continues to reveal the techniques, tools, and limitations that the police and other agencies are working with. It also gives me a lot more information about what is going on around my area. By no means is it telling me all that is happening, but it reveals stuff you won’t hear from your neighbors. Listening regularly gives me a baseline too- a sense of operational pace. Definitely recommended.
Information, skills, people, and stuff. You need them all. Get to stacking.
nick
Finished grouting the tub surround, finally. 10 weeks since we started renovating and so very nearly done. I hope to bust my rear the next three days and finish, then start packing. I have -got- to get us moved.
Spoke with a friend I hadn’t heard from for months. Conservative, going through a divorce over political differences exacerbated by Trump. Friend is twenty years older than me and distraught over the turn this country has taken. They are more aware and intelligent than most folks I know, have made a hobby over the decades of following Supreme Court cases. A person of many varied and practical skills. They’re at an utter loss of what to do for this country.
I’ve got a nice bout of insomnia going, made extra special by hot flashes. Have some empathy if you’ve got a mate going thru ‘the change’, it’s blasted uncomfortable.
Gardening. It’ll be mid end of May before we can harden off seedlings and plant. I’ve got an assortment of seeds waiting. It’s been 5-10 Fahrenheit most of the week. The clouds rolled in and snow just started so it must have warmed up. I also ordered two varieties of apples as scion wood and am going to make my first attempt at grafting them to the pair of ancient crabapples at the end of March. There are a few techniques that look novice friendly and accommodate disparate diameters.
Scanners – Anchorage went encrypted years ago. A Facebook group tries to fill the gap. It’s well moderated and has less than the usual nonsense.
Northern lights were dancing earlier tonight before the clouds rolled in. Hard to see from anchorage due to light pollution. Nice to know they’re there just the same.
Finished grouting the tub surround, finally. 10 weeks since we started renovating and so very nearly done. I hope to bust my rear the next three days and finish, then start packing. I have -got- to get us moved.
Grout. Do you offer reasonable rates?
We had a pro in to do grout in our kids bath. Twenty years of neglect from previous owners and six from us resulted in quite a mess. I know my limits. It was money well spent.
The shower in our Master bath needs … something.
Whatever happened with your laptop?
I still have the OFD project laptop sitting idle if you need something in a pinch. T420 — kinda old, purchased surplus, but with 8 GB Crucial gaming RAM, it runs Windows 10 Pro (license attached to CPU) well enough that it was my grad school machine.
My ‘rip all the DVDs’ project is continuing apace. 27 discs so far. Maybe it won’t be next year before I’m done after all. Next choice is whether to use Plex or something built into windows to serve the streams to appropriate devices… No hurry on that though.
I have a long simmering project to create a private Roku channel for my media.
During my recent unemployment period, I took a fresh look at what was involved, but Roku deemphasizes building the server from a text editor in favor of using a site to generate a prepackaged channel ready for uploading to “The Cloud”.
I’m sure that the lower level approach still works, but Roku made the learning curve with that approach harder.
For now, I put movie files we want to watch on a thumb drive, drag and drop from the SMB share on my home server. Even the low-end BluRay in our Master will play a surprising number of MP4 and MKV files via a USB memory device without a problem, even torrents without conversion, and that player is four years old.
I may try Kodi/XBMC … whatever they call it these days … again now that I have a relatively current Raspberry Pi in the house. That would be a quick hit effort.
Weather guy this morning tells us that Indian country won’t be above freezing for another week. I really don’t have a wardrobe for single digit temperatures.
A quick cross-post: Remember the 93 year old veteran, Ernie Andrus, who ran across the USA left to right, and was running back east to west? Now 96, he became too ill to finish the return trip but John Martin, the younger friend who accompanied him, has continued the run (they both ran on thru the COVID thing without pause), and is now in my area.
I plan to go run/walk with him on Monday, and maybe a few other days this week while he is close by. The story of the run is on the website: https://www.coast2coastruns.com/
You Tube page Coast2CoastRun2019 is here, and Facebook page is linked from the website, in case his route brings him near you.
I heard that after seeing the way transportation shut down at the first of the covid lockdown in the spring, that the Biden administration is floating the idea of a “climate change lockdown” to reduce evil fossil fuel use. Given that every single climate change alarmist prediction has failed to materialize in the last 40 years, such a stupid plan would be just another push towards violent blowback. But when have progressive tyrants ever considered that the little people might not happily do as told?
there is chaos.
–not everywhere. TX is doing ok, OK and the indian nations sound fine… haven’t heard anything from FL.
We will be in FL for a week next month. July 4th was uneventful for us.
Ron DeSantis reelection chances hinge on getting the numbers under control and having the state fully reopened by the end of Summer. Unfortunately, the state attracts a lot of Gilligans, both as tourists and transplants, all seemingly wanting to live “Margaritaville”.
South Florida has always been a basket case. Rules are an interesting suggestion but the tradeoff is that the economy is very dynamic.
I heard that after seeing the way transportation shut down at the first of the covid lockdown in the spring, that the Biden administration is floating the idea of a “climate change lockdown” to reduce evil fossil fuel use.
They could shut down the airlines and Amtrak, maybe Greyhound, but anything beyond that would require the cooperation of the states to enforce. Not happening, even in CA or NY.
The Feds are making progress on MaaS (Mobility As A Service) eliminating gas vehicles and most private ownership of cars only because people want to believe about EVs and autonomous systems which do the driving while they stream Baby Yoda, all courtesy of The Real Life Tony Stark.
The Dems are already panicking about the VA Governor’s race. I get daily emails from the McAuliffe campaign soliciting donations. Just wait until the DC suburbs get locked down for “climate change” reasons, parking the German grocery getters amidst rolling CA-style blackouts.
The dominant memes in the suburbs work both ways.
Here’s the thing. Trump. I’m just sayin’.
*We* worked *hard* for this. Joe and Kamala understand, right?
(No, I have no idea as to how I ended up on the McAuliffe campaign beg list.)
Whilst MaaS may make perfect sense for big cities and the northeast coastal corridor, where our “leaders” live, it won’t work here in flyover country with low population density and long distances. However, that doesn’t matter to the one-size-fits-all policy wonks in DC. The division between the urban and the rural is growing and the urbanites have no clue.
We lived in Fauquier County Virginia for a few years in the 2004-2008 period after Fannie Mae gave me a great package to leave New Zealand. Whilst most people worked in the DC area, it was still a very rural and sensible place. They held great, patriotic 4th of July parades with National guard units bringing Strykers and Bradleys. We went skeet shooting on a friend’s goat farm. Hard to understand how they went so crazy so fast.
A perfect choice since teacher’s unions think teachers are essential. One “teacher” could literally record all classes for a school and just stream them for distance learning. But then union coffers would not be full of those dues from *let go* teachers.
We lived in Fauquier County Virginia for a few years in the 2004-2008 period after Fannie Mae gave me a great package to leave New Zealand. Whilst most people worked in the DC area, it was still a very rural and sensible place. They held great, patriotic 4th of July parades with National guard units bringing Strykers and Bradleys. We went skeet shooting on a friend’s goat farm. Hard to understand how they went so crazy so fast.
You weren’t the only person to receive an attractive offer to work for a government entity in DC post-911, either directly or through a contractor. Lots of money, particularly for tech work, turned the DC suburbs in Northern Virginia blue. $1 Trillion a year of money printing for the last decade goes somewhere.
I’m not familiar with I-66 and Fauquier, but I know about the toll conversions of the HOV lanes on 395 and I95. Before I was fired from the last job, my management already had me committed to the “Fredericksbug Express” project to push the DC suburbs 40-50 miles south, completion slated for the end of 2022. Growth follows the roads as well as the money. The customer’s next target is tolling the currently less-affluent MD-side suburbs the same way.
It was inevitable, and well predicted. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes…
Stupid should hurt, and sometimes it’s deadly. I feel for the young man’s family, but nothing for the kid himself.
n
53F, sunny and clear. Definitely a head fake to get me gardening before the freeze.
n
@MrAtoz
I suspect that a savvy parent could put together a curriculum from existing YouTube videos that would be an outstanding alternative to anything the local school is doing.
If parents started to do so in small groups, and fill in as tutors using their collective expertise, it would put a lot of pressure on the school districts as they saw their funding shrink.
A few successful class action lawsuits in carefully chosen districts from parents clawing back the funds that they paid in taxes for that “universal and free” edumacation that their kids ain’t getting would start the avalanche.
I was thinking the other day about reworking the calculus curriculum and the prerequisites. There is a lot of dead wood in there that is used to teach concepts. Some was never relevant from a STEM standpoint, and more is outdated.
One example. My experience is pretty broad but it’s not universal, so I’ll ask: Has anyone ever used trigonometric identities in the solution of integral equations? I remember spending more than a week messing about with it, and more time later teaching it, but I never had occasion to use it. Electrical engineering, maybe?
@Chad
Agree on the Record vises. Can’t trust many brands. I use DeWalt power tools, which are made by Black and Decker. Batteries are generally good, although they’ve balkanized the 20v ecosystem. B&D batteries, OTOH, are poor. It’s a puzzle.
I see a lot of tv ads for marvelous devices made by Bell & Howell. Black flashlights, etc. Those over 60 or so remember B&H as a manufacturer of high-quality projection equipment that was ubiquitous in schools. But there is nothing left but the name after divestitures, mergers, bankruptcies, etc over the last thirty years.
Of course there is chaos. It makes sense to push down delivery of vaccines to local authorities. But that means you get 50 (or many more) different approaches/responses/prioritizations for delivery. That is better than “one big plan” (recall the USSR), where it is either brilliant (rarely) or various degrees of awful (mostly). Canada is no different. Some states or provinces will be brilliant, some will be awful, most will muddle around in the middle. The critics will insist that everyone should be brilliant, which is an aspiration, but not reality. (I recall Garrison Keillor – “…where every child was above average…”. Every parent thinks so, but no.) I will note that even with “chaos”, the US is doing better than Canada at vaccination measured by a percentage of the population.
I was thinking the other day about reworking the calculus curriculum and the prerequisites. There is a lot of dead wood in there that is used to teach concepts. Some was never relevant from a STEM standpoint, and more is outdated.
The point of the three semesters of Calc with Analytic Geometry is to teach undergrads how to read a math text book or paper with understanding. Also, the classes serve as a “weeder” for undergrads who will never be able to hack the upper division classwork because they lack the discipline to master topics that seem irrelevant in context.
Where most Calc cirriculums fail is selection of the text book and assignment of teaching duties to underqualified TAs who are learning to teach on the fly and for whom English may be a second language.
One example. My experience is pretty broad but it’s not universal, so I’ll ask: Has anyone ever used trigonometric identities in the solution of integral equations? I remember spending more than a week messing about with it, and more time later teaching it, but I never had occasion to use it. Electrical engineering, maybe?
EE is all about the properties of the square root of negative one, but MechE has dynamic systems and control systems too. CS should also study Fourier transforms and be conversant in time domain vs. frequency domain. The algorithm in CLRS for multiplying large polynomials uses FFT IIRC.
High school trig should include the trigonometric identities even if it is rote memorization with a manipulation or two of the algebra for quiz purposes.
I’ve had a pretty varied, and mostly technical career, and I never needed or used calculus. There were always alternatives. I did end up using a bunch of trig in my last go round. I spent a lot of time laying out display systems in 3D space. Trig made that easier, and even possible with basic tools. It wasn’t anything esoteric either. Think surveying but all in one room.
Used some algebra throughout, and cross multiplication and canceling is a very powerful tool in a number of fields.
In the US, calculus, (and then diff eq), thermodynamics (steam), and statics are used as ‘weed out’ classes in engineering education. I’m sure there are similar sorting systems used in the other rigorous fields.
n
n
Basically those classes are sorting and trying to find the 1 in 100 who have the chops to go further.
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9232943/Hospitalizations-COVID-dropped-25-days-row.html
That’s good news.
n
Bell and Howell, Packard Bell, Sunbeam, Rockwell, Polaroid – just some of the hollow shells exploited by their chinese owners.
n
and FFox spell checker wants chinese to be capitalized. F THAT.
@Greg
reasonable
The older I get the more I suspect there is nothing reasonable about me -laughter-
Regrouting sounds horrible and definitely a pro job. And water always wins.
I haven’t enjoyed the physical aspects of tiling though I’m glad I’m doing it. I told my husband I’m willing to tackle the second bathroom to save the 10 – 15 grand, after move in. If he can help me it’ll be a lot easier.
Laptop – I’m forcing myself to wait until Monday to reassemble it. I want to ensure ALL of the water has dried. Anchorage is a very dry climate so that’s working in my favor.
Thank you for the kind offer of the T420. If I’ve killed my laptop that would be a stress reducing bridge to a good deal on a long term laptop. Crossing my fingers I haven’t killed mine.
Giving up on sleep. Insomnia sucks. Up and at ‘em.
@nick:
Does it demand you type shifted Latin characters, and transliterate on-the-fly? Never tried it, myself.
G.
Wow. My knees can’t take jogging any more, and I’m a full generation younger. The joints just don’t appreciate the pounding – anything else is ok, including things like tennis, but not running…
This is true, and it is going to utterly change university education. Probably lower level education as well (high school, junior high), but I have less insight there.
I’m now in my third semester of teaching, and I do it by recording videos, and then helping students individually, by request only. This works well – in fact, it causes a stronger separation between the poor students and the good ones – this is a feature. Incapable, motivated students get help as they need it, and do really well. Incapable, unmotivated students fail with a thump – which is a lot better than having them barely hang in their, only to fail out later.
There’s every reason to improve the quality of the videos, have them made by a few highly qualified professors, use them for multiple classes even over multiple semesters. Then have a pool of less-qualified assistants to help the students who have questions. Heck, go a step farther: have the videos produced by the textbook authors. Teaching at colleges and universities barely needs to exist: they will be there to provide a central pool of assistants, supervised by a few profs, and to provide a testing center.
The biggest problems I see, is the craving by colleges and universities to keep their student numbers up. This is in direct conflict with maintaining the qualities of their degrees. The administration will want to rescue those failing students – and they absolutely shouldn’t. This is already a continuous battle, and it’s not clear what the solution is…
I’ve just discovered that a parcel of stuff I ordered from a US vendor ($160-odd, plus $70-odd shipping) on the 20th of last month, has finally reached UK shores this morning.
I now await a demand from HM Customs for Duty and import VAT, since the total value (INCLUDING shipping) exceeds the £135 allowance where duty is waived. Note that: they charge duty and VAT on shipping.
And then there’ll be a demand from UK Postie for an £8 charge to collect the duty and VAT.
Still, it’s better than last year – then, the threshold was a measly £35.
G.
I haven’t enjoyed the physical aspects of tiling though I’m glad I’m doing it. I told my husband I’m willing to tackle the second bathroom to save the 10 – 15 grand, after move in. If he can help me it’ll be a lot easier.
Yikes! I didn’t pay nearly that much for regrouting, more than an order of magnitude less. Plus we had a soap dish reinstalled as part of the job and the tile on the floor resealed. Alaska is expensive.
When the soap dish fell off the wall in that bathroom, I covered the hole with FlexPaste. I did a decent enough job that we didn’t have to find a pro in a panic, but I ended up with more FlexPaste on my hands than on the wall.
“I’ll continue buying old tools and ignoring the shiny new stuff. ”
–an appropriate sentiment for SO MANY things.
n
@Greg
@Nick
I’m well versed in the concept of calculus as an intellectual fitness test for science and engineering. Most of those disciplines require at least a first course in differential equations in order to understand the third and fourth year concepts. The point is that the material in a traditional calculus sequence contains a lot of what I consider useless material that could be substituted.
Many other disciplines require a one semester calculus course as sufficient for future needs. I vividly recall sitting in a low-level economics graduate class where the instructor came to a dead halt when he realized that I was the only one of a dozen students that was following his math. The rest of the class had it as a first year undergrad requirement and had never used it, so it was review time.
Some non-STEM degrees use calculus strictly as a proxy for an IQ test–fitness to study non-technical material that nonetheless requires some analytical thinking. I taught one such and much of the emphasis was on somewhat different material, but also pretty unlikely to have future applicability.
In a larger sense my concern really starts back in high school, where most students bail after algebra, which they never again use. Even students aspiring to a STEM education seldom stray from the linear progression of algebra, trig, analytic geometry, and calculus. They’d all benefit from probability and statistics, and formal logic, leavened with an exposure to useful mathematical tools and economics so they would have a fighting chance to interface with a world that is largely designed to skin them.
The biggest problems I see, is the craving by colleges and universities to keep their student numbers up. This is in direct conflict with maintaining the qualities of their degrees. The administration will want to rescue those failing students – and they absolutely shouldn’t.
The horse is out of the proverbial barn in the US with regard to CS Masters programs not requiring a thesis. Even at the “good” school here in town with the mascot featuring long-ish horns, the admin could not resist the monetary rewards of turning at least part of their program into an OPT visa diploma mill. At least, unlike my grad program, they try to mix in a little Chinese with the Subcontinent dominance of the classes.
@Harold; Competition amongst the drug companies continues as is. This is collaboration through the use of shared ‘big data’ in the clinical trial phase amongst the researchers and their cancer institutions. Instead of testing just ‘new drug A’ against ‘control drug B’ they test say new drugs A, C and D against control drug B and by monitoring the overall results are able to determine sooner if one of the new drugs is ineffective and if so, remove it from the trial in-flight and replace it with ‘new drug E’. It’s called an “adaptive-platform” trial.
@drwilliams,
there is a lot of cruft in most subjects. There is even a debate in martial arts teaching, particularly the japanese forms, about why to use the traditional forms. They were designed to teach military draftees not willing suburban kids, or willing adults with some appropriate experience.
It’s good to do a ground up review from time to time.
n
arggg. I’m looking for the text of an email I sent, where I laid out what would make a pretty good article, but I can’t find it. I don’t know if I saved the text as some other format (which I do as a backup) and there is nothing in my sent folder. I know I sent and received email about it.
Very frustrating, but I am cleaning some of the cruft out of my Downloads folder as a byproduct…
n
and it just occurred to me that I have been looking in the wrong ‘sent’ folder, from the wrong email identity.
added– finally found it.
@TV; Directly responsible, no. Did he enthuse some of his ardent supporters that already had definitive plans in place to enter the Capitol, probably. From what I recall reading, the first breach of the building happened even before Trump finished speaking that day. So as you said, “Here of course, politics intrudes.” And I would emphasize that to say partisan politics. Which has made a circus of our government. So again I say “term limits”…while I go off to Costco for another case of popcorn.
Anyone seen anything recently regarding the magnitude of the public charging station network that would be needed to be in place by 2035? Is GM planning to pay for some part of it? Is there sufficient electrical infrastructure in place to support it?
Also consider that currently there are about 250M ICE cars and trucks currently on the road with an average age of 11 years. Maybe President Harris will have another ‘cash for clunkers’ program during her second term.
Ohh, so much fighting as to who gets to be first in line to pull on of the switches.
And some states, AZ for example, have left it up to the counties. And each county may have its own reservation system (or more than one depending on if there are multiple medical groups involved).
Global warming. Is there no end to the trouble it causes?
Auction off the privilege. Pay off half of the national debt right there.
Yes, have them return to their classrooms, but at least after being jabbed…
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/03/cdc-director-says-schools-can-safely-reopen-without-vaccinating-teachers.html
Of course the pushback from the teachers union had the Administration trying to walk this back by saying Dr. Walinsky (during an official Covid briefing) was only expressing her personal opinion. Ha!
Certainly Cuomo would want this addressed…
Eight states send far more to the federal government through taxes than they see in annual federal spending.
The biggest givers in our latest report, based on 2018 data, were New York, which paid in US$22 billion more than it received;
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-05-15/some-states-like-new-york-send-billions-more-to-federal-government-than-they-get-back
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I don’t think Trump “incited” the Capitol riots. (There is evidence that there were groups planning this in advance. The early placing of the pipe bombs, showing up with cable ties and cable tie handcuffs, etc. Planned by Trump – highly unlikely.)
He did try to have election officials, after the fact, manufacture votes for him. He responded ineffectually to the riot and only after being slapped around by his advisors. He continued to push theories that were repeatedly shown to be false. In short, he melted down after the election. That makes him unfit for office.
–in other words, in some states, the taxes paid by high income individuals exceed the .gov money received by low income individuals.
When I think of states getting fed dollars, I’m thinking of grants, loans, purchases and other support, NOT obligatory payments to individuals.
There’s a lot of apples and oranges in any discussion on the issue.
n
@Jenny, if you need a new notebook computer, at least consider a good refurb unit. I will admit I have never bought a refurb notebook, but have bought cell phones and desktop computers. All were in amazingly good condition, indistinguishable from new to the untrained eye. For computers, I did stick to the top tier brands, and only bought through the MS certified refurbisher sources. Disclaimer, I have not done this for about five years, an eternity in the computing world. Also, I bought through Newegg, and spent hours looking at user reviews, a luxury you might not have.
The three notebooks I have bought over the years were all new, and two were bought on black Friday type sales for about half the normal prices. I should note that I hate notebooks, and only bought one of these for myself about ten years ago. All my portable computing is now done on a phone, which I find much more convenient.
I notice that Tiger Direct advertises a lot of notebook computers, both new and refurb. I have bought small things from them, and have never looked at their computers. Also, take a look at photo sites, such as B&H and Adorama. Again, I am out of date, but these two companies sometimes have terrific sales. Do consider calling and talking to those companies: their people are often very helpful. I sometimes enjoy chasing a deal.
Others here will certainly have much more to say about this.
@Greg
Bathroom remodel. The upstairs bath leaked into the downstairs bath for some time. Downstairs bath needs tub, toilet, sink, vanity pulled and replaced. Ditto ceiling fan. 1” tiles on floor need to come up. Concrete floor so don’t know what’s needed there. Drywall around bath, on ceiling, and I don’t know how close to entry door, all needs to be replaced. 5’ wide 10’ deep room. Basically a full gut job. 1964 original I think.
Upstairs bath was a similar story though the only drywall that was ruined was the tub surround. And I had to redo the subfloor because rot.
It’s an admittedly big job. The demo alone is about $700 labor. I’m slow but inexpensive. I know more now and while the mechanical skills and strength are still lacking I’m a clever monkey and learned a lot on the first bathroom about how to use my energy more effectively.
Calculus – I struggled hard with math. I brute forced my way they it until Senior year when I took AP Calculus. Finally something logical I could wrap my head around. Now I love math. I had a hard time getting thru the statistical classes at UoPeople but attribute that to recovering from a brain injury rather than any inherent lack in my core intelligence. I enjoyed them, I was taking them at a time when my brain injury impacted my abstract thinking.
Why would a communist like Cuomo object to that? From each according to his means…
Of course, Cuomo isn’t a good communist. He’s still breathing.
I was to guess, I’d guess you didn’t listen to the entire conversation. The carefully-edited excerpts do sound damning, but that’s why they were carefully edited.
Some people don’t and never will understand any math beyond addition and subtraction. I’m convinced, though, that most people who “don’t get math” had crappy teachers. I’ve lost count of the number of kids or young adults that I’ve helped get past some roadblock, until suddenly they understand algebra or geometric proofs or simple statistics or whatever.
Now, what I do is not scalable, I don’t think: tutoring for hours, sometimes dozens of hours, explaining things in a bunch of different ways until one clicks. And then drilling and drilling to make sure it sticks. On the other hand, I’m an amateur with no pedagogical training at all. Surely the experts in the schools of education and Departments of Education should be able to come up with a multifaceted instructional plan to teach challenging subjects to the large majority of students.
Actually, that’s one aspect of Common Core that I don’t object to, at least not what I’ve seen of it. Presenting four different approaches to multi-digit multiplication has been derided as wasteful of time and as a dumbing-down of the topic, but maybe a student who doesn’t get the traditional approach will get one of the alternatives. I’ve seen only elementary-school CC math books and don’t know if they do the same with high school math courses, or any non-math courses.
@JimB
My last couple of laptops have been Lenovo outlet purchases. Good systems. If you are patient and have defined your criteria clearly you can get a good deal.
@Nick
Mathematics is a toolbox with a lot of tools that most people are unaware of. One of the interesting themes of Feynman’s first biography was his lifelong joy at acquiring new mathematical tools. His meeting with Fermi shows the joy of two schoolboys–it reminded me (even though not a good match) of the classic “Techno Bill” Dilbert strip.
Exactly. If I were attending college now my coursework would look a lot different. From my perspective I wanted tools to use, so Mathematica has obviated a year of undergrad and a year of grad numerical analysis.
@brad
Better to let anyone produce videos and let the students pick the winners, lest those videos cost more than textbooks. University textbooks are a freaking quagmire. Have been for decades and are getting worse.
Long time ago I took a chemistry course as a freshman. First time textbook, no used copies, had to buy new. Expensive. Sucked dead bunnies through a straw. Had a conversation with the professor–he pointed out that they didn’t get paid for time spent selecting textbooks (I let that pass). I told him I had an old textbook that I’d purchased while in high school that was a much better source of problem-solving examples. He asked me to bring it in. I did, and his criticism was that it was not up-to-date in terms of theory, presentation, etc. I said I didn’t believe that excused the lack of application, which hadn’t changed at all.
End of term the book was dead–not going to be used again. You could sell it back to the bookstore for a couple bucks, so they could resell it to a broker, who would ship it somewhere to provide used textbooks (at 75% of new) to the next poor schmucks. Rinse and repeat.
Years later eBay and Amazon gave savvy students some relief until publishers started licensing electronic books and “supplemental” material to get around copyright law (see First Use Doctrine).
@Alan
Hard cheese. New York (and LA and others) benefit from coastal geography and being ports of entry for all transoceanic shipping. NY also has the advantage of being settled 150-200 years before most of the country, concentrating wealth. I’m sure we could figure out a tax structure that would directly address these inequities.
@SteveF
The basis for the mathematical toolbox that everyone needs is memorization. If you don’t have the times tables memorized through the 10’s in early grade school, it just doesn’t matter how many ways you know to multiply.
My last couple of laptops have been Lenovo outlet purchases. Good systems. If you are patient and have defined your criteria clearly you can get a good deal.
G4U, and thanks for the tip. I hope you dried-out notebook works. You don’t need any more worries.
Basically those classes are sorting and trying to find the 1 in 100 who have the chops to go further.
n
I always thought of myself as one in a million.
Oh fear not… it is actually “walking”. Ernie always called it “running”, but it was a slow walk. I’m pretty sure that John also maintains a slow pace when he has company to walk with him. He covers about 5 mles with each walk. All on nice paved roadway, and always with a LEO escort for safety! The stretch of road he is on right now is very hilly, and I am not up to 5 miles, so I plan to park and join for the final 2 miles. They carry everyone back to their car.
I’ve got a nice bout of insomnia going, made extra special by hot flashes. Have some empathy if you’ve got a mate going thru ‘the change’, it’s blasted uncomfortable.
Sorry to hear that. My wife calls it her own personal sauna.
My wife (age 62) has been going through the change since age 45. It actually made her treatment of stage 2b breast different at age 47.
I always slept with just a sheet back when we got married 39 years ago. She used a thick blanket. We are now totally switched. I use two blankets now and she makes me set the bedroom thermostat at 63 F.
Anyone seen anything recently regarding the magnitude of the public charging station network that would be needed to be in place by 2035? Is GM planning to pay for some part of it? Is there sufficient electrical infrastructure in place to support it?
Also consider that currently there are about 250M ICE cars and trucks currently on the road with an average age of 11 years. Maybe President Harris will have another ‘cash for clunkers’ program during her second term.
We will need about 25X to 50X more electric car charging stations in the USA.
We will need 2X to 3X more electrical power grid in the USA.
We will need 2X to 3X more electrical power generation of some sort in the USA. Plus replacing about 20% of the current electrical power generation (coal is dying rapidly, the new CO2 carbon tax will push it off the edge).
We will need 2X to 3X more electrical power generation of some sort in the USA.
New ClearTM energy!
I can wish, can’t I?
Also consider that currently there are about 250M ICE cars and trucks currently on the road with an average age of 11 years. Maybe President Harris will have another ‘cash for clunkers’ program during her second term.
Cash For Clunkers 2.0 is definitely headed our way. The early 2000s F150 and the small “beater” pickups from Ford, Toyota, and Nissan of the same era will have a bullseye on them.
Toss in any cars which have virtually unlimited life with lots of third party parts available like my Solara or Civics.
Hmm, and who does Kamala expect will pay for all this?
+1…have bought two Thinkpads and two desktops from the Lenovo outlet, all four as ‘refurbs’, bu all indistinguishable from new.
A few tips if shopping there – know the details of the specific product line you’re interested in (eg T4xx) as the listings can be brief and if you do find something you like, don’t hesitate too long to buy it, the refurb stock many times is low and will disappear if you wait too long. Also, if you don’t see what you’re looking for check back the next day and the next as the stock changes. Also watch out for the occasional PC configured with a non-English language version of Windows (usually French).
Cash For Clunkers 2.0 is definitely headed our way.
We don’t have to participate! It is estimated there are more than 10k Model Ts still on the road. Imagine how many other antiques are still being driven.
well, i am writing this on a T420, broken line on display, thanks for your hints to where to buy
cheers
This looks very interesting. One lens instead of many starting on phones. Well, at least one at this stage.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/a-new-lens-technology-is-primed-to-jumpstart-phone-cameras/
So where is all this electrical power going to come from to supply the Great Electrification?
Don’t give me the solar and wind blather. Both are a bunch of bunk—the batteries and panels for solar use a tremendous amount of limited and very toxic materials. The wind is not dependable, and neither is solar, for that matter. And the NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) don’t want that stuff in eye-sight, so now you’ve got to have a whole new distribution system which, again, the NIMBYs don’t want to see.
The Save the Wild Salmon Weenies are again calling on the blowing up of all the dams here in WA State. These dams have actually led to the abundant recovery of Wild Salmon, but overfishing by the Pacific Rim Asian Countries has destroyed all the gains. California gets almost half its electrical power from our WA State Hydroelectric dams. An amount of power that cannot be made up with solar and wind.
We will be worse off than the dark ages before we know it.
And while you sit in the cold and dark, enjoy your fabricated plant-based protein that is grown in a petri dish.
Heresy! Burn the heretic!
No, wait. Burning him would release dread carbon into the air. And we can’t have that.
So where is all this electrical power going to come from to supply the Great Electrification?
I have an idea. Take small sealed maintenance free power generators and bury them in neighborhoods close to the homes that need the energy. They could be manufactured in factories under careful quality control with good economy of scale. Even if they don’t last forever, the vaults that contain them could be opened for economical replacement.
Oh wait… that sounds familiar. Maybe we should take a new look at cost, safety, emissions, recycling/disposal, reliability, availability, and anything else of importance. Consider having the private sector do this, under some oversight of course.
I know someone recently available who could spearhead this. He would probably be finished before his first day is over.
As long as I am dreaming, and if that guy I am thinking of is not available, maybe we could resurrect Rickover. He seemed to be pretty effective.
“Cash For Clunkers 2.0 is definitely headed our way.”
We don’t have to participate! It is estimated there are more than 10k Model Ts still on the road. Imagine how many other antiques are still being driven.
This time around, they will offer a huge amount of printed money towards a base model Tesla or other EV.
Not that it would take that much. According to legend, someone turned in an inherited Buick Regal GNX in the last Cash For Clunkers. Only 547 were made. A lot of Boomer toys like that are going to be traded for “the future”.
Starting with my generation, a lot of the population really hate cars and would prefer MaaS. I think it has a lot to do with bitterness over the 70s and early 80s sh*tboxes a lot of us drove in high school and college, but a huge chunk of people around my age have chips on their shoulders about not being as well off as we were promised.
So true. I failed algebra in 8th grade, failed it in summer school. Just couldn’t “get” the idea of treating letters as numbers. In 9th grade I was badly failing remedial math. My teacher, a retired Admiral and a real hard ass, told me he would tutor me for 6 weeks after school if I would put in the effort. Outside of school he was completely different, worked to understand my problem then to fix it. By Christmas I was passing math and actually excited to get to class each day. A good teacher makes all the difference.
Note: In high school I had an English teacher who constantly berated me in front of the class for my struggles in spelling. One day, while giving me back an essay full of red marks, she said spelling was easy but I was just to lazy to do it. I asked what she meant, she said that when she says a word she literally sees the word in her mind and all I had to do is copy it down correctly but I was too lazy. She just assumed that everyone “saw” the words like she did. Not a good teacher.
Wind and solar energy have many problems. One of the big ones is availability, which the USEIA calls “capacity factor”, and cites as 40% for onshore wind power and 30% for solar. Several consequences:
1) Much more capital investment per megawatt capacity to start with, then more than double it because they don’t produce like a combined cycle plant (83%).
2) Availability is intermittent, so the higher the percentage of unpredictable on/off wind and solar, the more unstable the electric grid becomes and the more likely you are to have brownouts/blackouts (Note that Germany is there already and their grid is not only unreliable, but their cost of electricity is huge.)
But the worst consequence is that wind and solar do not reduce the investment needed in reliable sources. They only save the cost of natural gas to fuel swing generation, so the effective value is a couple cents per kilowatt.
Hence the war on coal, natural gas, and oil, to lard them up with regulations and make them more expensive.
And actually, it’s even worse: It is not certain at all that the energy invested up front to manufacture solar panels and wind turbines will even get to the point of break even, much less produce net energy. Pile on the cost of disposing of high-tech carbon fiber and piles of amorphous silicon/glass composites. Start talking about load leveling with storage batteries of any kind and you don’t even need to mark the back of the envelope.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/protecting-your-capital-during-war
–very interesting
n
@Alan
I did mean partisan politics. I am not clear on the timeline. It is clear that Trump did spend weeks encouraging and arousing his supporters, invited them to an event on the 6th (thereby getting a self-selection of the most ardent), then spent the better part of an hour further arousing them and then walked away. Why do that? Innocent ego gratification? Sour grapes? Something more sinister? A lot of how people view the reason/motivation will be partisan. That there appears to be no evidence of a planned follow-up by Trump makes me settle on sour grapes, but again that’s just my opinion as an observer. Lots of popcorn required for the next 3-6 months.
Watched the Super Bowl with a bunch of friends tonight. We had a great time. The wife made white cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese icing !
I nominated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Defense for the MVP of the game. They kept Mahomes, the $500 million man over 10 years, running for his life constantly. And the TB defense scored a pick 6 as all good defenses do.
I think that if every car was replaced by an electric vehicle and everyone plugged them in after work, it would bring the entire grid down in Ontario and it would stay down until they at least doubled the size of the Pickering power station.
@drwilliams
Which is what I have happening in Ontario, with a mandate to buy renewable power when available at a high fixed price whether there is demand at the time or not. Coal is gone from power generation here. 60% of power is nuclear, about 24% is hydro, the rest natural gas or renewables (4%?) with NG backup. We can’t grow hydro (all major sources already exploited) and we still want to shrink NG to reduce CO2 emissions. I want them to build more nuclear for base load. Not a popular solution. Ontario could buy excess hydro generated power from Quebec, but POLITICS. There is no “national grid”. Ontario is tied into the nearby US states. The Quebec grid has few and small links into the Ontario one. Most Quebec lines go south to the US. They don’t want to sell to the rest of Canada (I think) due to continuing “nationalist ambitions”. I am not sure Ontario should buy Quebec power so as to avoid giving them leverage. I am minded of the situation with Russia selling gas to Europe which may be a very good reason for Germany to go with renewables besides CO2 reduction – remove or reduce the leverage Russia has. (Of course the idiot Germans are ditching nuclear too.)
I nominated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Defense for the MVP of the game. They kept Mahomes, the $500 million man over 10 years, running for his life constantly. And the TB defense scored a pick 6 as all good defenses do.
Going back 20 years, Andy Reid killed the Bucs Super Bowl pushes two seasons in a row in Philadelphia and arguably cost Tony Dungy his job. It is always good to see Tampa Bay beat Reid.
The local Faux News reported that Antonio Brown lived at Brady’s rental house in Tampa this season. Now we know who kept a lid on that situation — Giselle!
@Rolf G
They would need a lot more generating, and even more transmission capacity, to make that work. Worse still, Pickering is the oldest nuclear station so they are starting to decommission the reactors. Best solution would be more clean generation near the consumers, and for that I like the small, self-contained reactors that are in development. Of course that will never fly: “A nuclear reactor in my neighborhood!! We’re all going to die….”. There was a $500 million dollar fiasco that stopped the build of a NG generating facility near an affluent suburb due to fears of explosions, so imagine the uproar over nuclear.
Of course, a transition from gas/diesel to electric will take a decade or two, so there is time to build out. Expect power rates to skyrocket to pay for all the additional transmission capacity and some sort of centralized generation. I can dream of new reactors at Pickering to take advantage of the already existing transmission lines, but I am probably delusional. Watching this mess is depressing at times.
I can dream of new reactors at Pickering to take advantage of the already existing transmission lines, but I am probably delusional. Watching this mess is depressing at times.
Sure is. We are sitting on the solution, but we are ignoring it. New design large reactors to replace the ones you mention are big improvements over those older designs. Unfortunately they are not cheap. The forces against them have seen to that.
I tried a few years ago to remove all the subsidies and penalties from the major generation methods to better compare them on their own merit. After some time looking up various data, I gave up. There is so much government meddling in electric generation that I found it impractical to do an analysis. Oh sure, there are published analyses, but I am suspicious of them and wanted to do my own. They don’t show all their work and input data, at least not that I could find.
There was a $500 million dollar fiasco that stopped the build of a NG generating facility near an affluent suburb due to fears of explosions, so imagine the uproar over nuclear.
There it is. I would bet that no one could cite any hard data that led to that outcome. No energy generation is 100% safe, but there are differences in the probability of failures and their threats to the community. I have read that France did a good job selling nuclear safety to their citizens. Apparently the leaders got the upper hand with convincing statistics. Of course, they also chose a very good plant design, and had a smart program to train operators and inspect those plants. They have never had an incident that exposed their population to radiation. Neither have we.
I think that’s why RBT would always just forego the title and use the date.
We will need about 25X to 50X more electric car charging stations in the USA.
We will need 2X to 3X more electrical power grid in the USA.
We will need 2X to 3X more electrical power generation of some sort in the USA. Plus replacing about 20% of the current electrical power generation (coal is dying rapidly, the new CO2 carbon tax will push it off the edge).
Hmm, and who does Kamala expect will pay for all this?
You.
“”There Is No Modern Precedent”: American Murder Rate Soars 30% In 2020″
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/there-no-modern-precedent-american-murder-rate-soars-30-2020
Shameful for the USA.
And will it get worse ? Or is this just a temporary settling of feuds ?
“I think that’s why RBT would always just forego the title and use the date. ”
–I like the occasional attempts at cleverness or just obscurity…. and this place has never been about titled daily essays. Using the early taxonomy of blogs, this place has always been neither fish nor fowl, neither a “linker” nor a “thinker” blog. It’s always been both in smaller doses.
As an organizing tool, I’ve been much better about using the tags, maybe even overusing them. I will add them to old posts too, where the discussion went in a different direction that is worth keeping a pointer to. This is especially true when I find the old post by searching for something specific that the tags didn’t reveal.
Today’s title, in it’s plain statement of fact, kinda struck me as an imagined complaint that I might get, and I just felt compelled to put it there… I rarely change the title after writing the post, and mostly don’t even refer to the title in the post, preferring to let it stand there on it’s own.
A bit silly really.
n
“And will it get worse ? Or is this just a temporary settling of feuds ”
–since it seems to be people primarily of african descent, at least in the big cities, look to africa for your answer. Embrace the power of ‘and’.
It will get worse, and it is the settling of feuds.
n