Tuesday, August 10
Free College
Many of us who did not have financially well off parents or who felt financially responsible for themselves, worked while we were attending college, especially to avoid receiving government grants that had to paid off.
Personally, I spent a couple of years in the military during the Vietnam War and used the GI Bill to supplement the cost of tuition as it increased from year-to-year.
There is also the feeling that if you have to pay for your own college education, not only will you learn more, but your grades will reflect that you have learned more... whereas, if someone else is paying, you do not have the same incentive to do well.
HOWEVER,
there is a more menacing issue here with free college education that has nothing to do with money... it revolves around the retention of knowledge and the difficulty of acquiring that knowledge.
For Example,
In 1980, I was awarded my MBA after passing with at least a "B" 60 hours of college credit.
In 2020, a student can receive their MBA after passing with a "C" only 30 hours of college credit.
Instead of education becoming more rigorous, it has become less rigorous and my concern is that if education is now free for ALL regardless of their intellectual capabilities then, in order to received Government monies, eductors will DUMB DOWN education even more and make sure EVERYONE PASSES...
This is EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE and our society is going to pay the price for it when we try to complete in a global marketplace with international graduates who have pass rigorous academic standards at their schools...
WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO OURSELVES???
Stonehenge Reveals Its Age
A long-lost piece of Stonehenge that was taken by a man performing restoration work on the monument has been returned after 60 years, giving scientists a chance to peer inside a pillar of the iconic monument for the first time.
In 1958, Robert Phillips, a representative of the drilling company helping to restore Stonehenge, took the cylindrical core after it was drilled from one of Stonehenge's pillars — Stone 58.
In 1958, Robert Phillips, a representative of the drilling company helping to restore Stonehenge, took the cylindrical core after it was drilled from one of Stonehenge's pillars — Stone 58.
Later, when he emigrated to the United States, Phillips took the core with him. Because of Stonehenge's protected status, it's no longer possible to extract samples from the stones.
But with the core's return in 2018, researchers had the opportunity to perform unprecedented geochemical analyses of a Stonehenge pillar, which they described in a new study.
They found that Stonehenge's towering standing stones, or sarsens, were made of rock containing sediments that formed when dinosaurs walked the Earth.
They found that Stonehenge's towering standing stones, or sarsens, were made of rock containing sediments that formed when dinosaurs walked the Earth.
Other grains in the rock date as far back as 1.6 billion years. READ MORE
Babylonian Tablet
TUCKED AWAY in a seemingly forgotten corner of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, Daniel Mansfield found what may solve one of ancient math’s biggest questions.
First exhumed in 1894 from what is now Baghdad, the circular tablet — broken at the center with small perpendicular indentations across it — was feared lost to antiquity.
But in 2018, a photo of the tablet showed up in Mansfield’s inbox.
Mansfield, a senior lecturer of mathematics at the University of New South Wales Sydney, had suspected the tablet was real. He came across records of its excavation and began the hunt.
Mansfield, a senior lecturer of mathematics at the University of New South Wales Sydney, had suspected the tablet was real. He came across records of its excavation and began the hunt.
Word got around about what he was looking for, and then the email came. He knew what he had to do: travel to Turkey and examine it at the museum.
Hidden within this tablet is not only the oldest known display of applied geometry but a new ancient understanding of triangles. It could rewrite what we know about the history of mathematics, Mansfield argues.
These findings were published Wednesday in the journal Foundations of Science.
It’s generally thought that trigonometry — a subset of geometry and what’s displayed on the tablet in a crude sense — was developed by ancient Greeks like the philosopher Pythagoras.
Hidden within this tablet is not only the oldest known display of applied geometry but a new ancient understanding of triangles. It could rewrite what we know about the history of mathematics, Mansfield argues.
These findings were published Wednesday in the journal Foundations of Science.
It’s generally thought that trigonometry — a subset of geometry and what’s displayed on the tablet in a crude sense — was developed by ancient Greeks like the philosopher Pythagoras.
However, analysis of the tablet suggests it was created 1,000 years before Pythagoras was born. READ MORE
Enemy of the State
Burns joined The New York Times’ "Sway" podcast to promote a new film about Muhammad Ali and was asked if a particular tech figure could be as culturally significant in a few decades as the boxing legend is now.
"I mean, I hope Zuckerberg is in jail by then," Burns said.
"This is an enemy of the state, and I mean the United States of America. He doesn’t give a sh-t about us, the United States," Burns continued. "He knows he can transcend it. He can get away to any place. And so it’s just about filthy lucre, that’s it."
Burns then turned his attention to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
"Because these people — and Sheryl is a complicit — the Nuremberg of this, is if it ever happens, which it won’t, will be pretty interesting," Burns said. "The way that we’ve been able to temporize and say, ‘Oh, it’s okay, we’ll just go a little bit further,’ right?"
Host Kara Swisher answered, "Yeah," and moved on to the next topic.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. READ MORE
Monday, August 9
My CT Scan
Today was my quarterly CT scan to see if there was any metabolic activity in either one of my cancers: Lymphoma and Melanoma.
Unlike PET scans, patients can eat or drink anything they want right up to the point that they start the machine. Actually, a few minutes before because you have to lay down on this movable rack and they have to position your head and knees and arms.
Prior to any of this, a nurse must insert an IV line into your arm but in my case, I have a port for them to access so they have to call upon a more skilled nurse. Wait time is usually 30 minutes or more depending upon how busy they are.
However, I was there at 7:30 am this morning and those nurses start at 8:00 am so I was the first person on his list.
Once the line is hooked up, they start they insert some kind of dye into your body that makes you feel like you have to go to the bathroom or for some that you peed in your pants.
The actually test is 3 passes in the machine and patients are usually in and out in less than 5 minutes.
The machine is like a huge doughnut hole so only a fraction of your body is inside the machine and the rack that you lay on can slide so that from your head down to your feet can be scanned.
A PET scan, you are a lot more enclosed... almost your entire body... and, it moves much slower so a PET scan will take about 15-20 minutes and for a while there is the feeling that you are in a coffin. I usually tilt my head back so I can see outside the machine and that helps.
An MRI is different and you are totally enclosed and I have to be knocked out for that scan to happen. I have only had one so far... knock on wood as they say...
Water Into Metal
Yes, water found in nature conducts electricity - but that's because of the impurities therein, which dissolve into free ions that allow an electric current to flow.
Pure water only becomes "metallic" - electronically conductive - at extremely high pressures, beyond our current abilities to produce in a lab.
But, as researchers have now demonstrated for the first time, it's not only high pressures that can induce this metallicity in pure water.
By bringing pure water into contact with an electron-sharing alkali metal - in this case an alloy of sodium and potassium - free-moving charged particles can be added, turning water metallic.
The resulting conductivity only lasts a few seconds, but it's a significant step towards being able to understand this phase of water by studying it directly.
"You can see the phase transition to metallic water with the naked eye!" said physicist Robert Seidel of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie in Germany.
But, as researchers have now demonstrated for the first time, it's not only high pressures that can induce this metallicity in pure water.
By bringing pure water into contact with an electron-sharing alkali metal - in this case an alloy of sodium and potassium - free-moving charged particles can be added, turning water metallic.
The resulting conductivity only lasts a few seconds, but it's a significant step towards being able to understand this phase of water by studying it directly.
"You can see the phase transition to metallic water with the naked eye!" said physicist Robert Seidel of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie in Germany.
"The silvery sodium-potassium droplet covers itself with a golden glow, which is very impressive." READ MORE
Electric Aircraft
American Airlines soon followed with a $1 billion preorder with Vertical Aerospace for up to 250 eVTOLs.
Behind these high-profile orders is an industry of startups dedicated to making the dream of true air taxis a reality, even though countless hurdles stand in the way.
Behind these high-profile orders is an industry of startups dedicated to making the dream of true air taxis a reality, even though countless hurdles stand in the way.
Helping them along, however, are aerospace giants like Honeywell Aerospace that are developing the systems to power the aircraft.
The reality of eVTOLs flying paying customers, according to companies like Joby Aviation and Volocopter, will arrive as soon as 2024.
The reality of eVTOLs flying paying customers, according to companies like Joby Aviation and Volocopter, will arrive as soon as 2024.
It's a timeline that Stéphane Fymat, vice president and general manager, urban air mobility and unmanned aerial systems, at Honeywell Aerospace, told Insider is "realistic" and that if not by 2024, at least by the end of the current decade.
But the questions remain, who will fly them and who will fly on them?
But the questions remain, who will fly them and who will fly on them?
The compact flying machines are a brand-new technology that are often smaller than helicopters, powered solely on battery power, and intended to be flown autonomously with no pilot. READ MORE
CHINA Leads the World by 2030
In 2017, the Communist Party of China set 2030 as the deadline for this ambitious AI goal, and, to get there, it laid out a bevy of milestones to reach by 2020. These include making significant contributions to fundamental research, being a favoured destination for the world’s brightest talents and having an AI industry that rivals global leaders in the field.
As this first deadline approaches, researchers note impressive leaps in the quality of China’s AI research. They also predict a shift in the nation’s ability to retain homegrown talent. That is partly because the government has implemented some successful retainment programmes and partly because worsening diplomatic and trade relations mean that the United States — its main rival when it comes to most things, including AI — has become a less-attractive destination.
“If America loses its openness edge, then the country risks pushing AI talents right back into the arms of its competitors, including China,” says AI analyst Joy Dantong Ma at the Paulson Institute, a think tank in Chicago, Illinois, aimed at fostering US–China relations.
But observers warn that there are several factors that could stymie the nation’s plans, including a lack of contribution to the theories used to develop the tools underpinning the field, and a reticence by Chinese companies to invest in the research needed to make fundamental breakthroughs.
The country’s pursuit of AI domination is more than a symbolic race with the United States, say scientists. AI technologies promise advances in health care, transport and communications, and the nations that make fundamental breakthroughs in the field are likely to shape its future directions and reap the most benefits.
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