#like could they not test if the life science module or whatever would work in drydock?

[traxanaxanos]

Samantha Wildman is honestly sooo funny as a background character because she’s like...such a normie against the rest of the Voyager crew, who just pops up occasionally to have normal conversations and experience horrors.

Janeway has a martyr complex and is constantly battling the narrative for dominance

Harry Kim has his whole complex where he’s trapped as both the golden boy and the ensign while also dying and being killed and being brought back just a little different every episode

Seven of Nine has her everything going on

Kes and Neelix are weirdos with species-wide trauma and Neelix died

B’Elanna also died and went to hell

Lon Suder

And Samantha is just like, working in the science lab while untold horrors stalk the halls of the Voyager, looking forward to whatever Neelix has whipped up in the kitchen

The few appearances/mentions she has that aren’t Life Threatening Crisis are

really sweet if it wasn’t in the context of a horrifying episode reveal that Samantha devotedly watches Neelix’s little news show every day (neelix superfan). Average woman turning on France 24/BBC every morning and the forecast is never not unspeakable monsters

bumbles into stopping a guy’s suicide attempt by requesting a bedtime story for her child

stereotypical conversation about having to provide new clothes for fast growing child (derailed)

one person on the ship enthusiastic about Neelix’s cooking (#1 Neelix fan)

xenobiologist inexplicably sent on a ship whose mission is to go hunt down terrorists, as if she’s going to get a spare moment to study the effects of long-term space habitation on hagfish or whatever

Like if Voyager had the tone of Lower Decks (animated), the recurring gag would be Samantha just doing her little nematode observations in the background while there’s a five-way borg/hirogen/alien anomaly/kazon/Q incursion going on, and talking to her coworkers about how Naomi’s drawings are like, really really good. Have you seen how good she’s gotten at shading? She’s just an average woman trapped on the most ridiculous and protagonist-laden ship in the known universe. The inherent humor and horror of being a background character in the genre of Epics

[nasa]

NASA Spotlight: Astronaut Mike Hopkins

Michael S. Hopkins was selected by NASA as an astronaut in 2009. The Missouri native is currently the Crew-1 mission commander for NASA’s next SpaceX launch to the International Space Station on Nov. 14, 2020. Hopkin’s Crew-1 mission will mark the first-ever crew rotation flight of a U.S. commercial spacecraft with astronauts on board, and it secures the U.S.’s ability to launch humans into space from American soil once again.  Previously, Hopkins was member of the Expedition 37/38 crew and has logged 166 days in space. During his stay aboard the station, he conducted two spacewalks totaling 12 hours and 58 minutes to change out a degraded pump module. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering. 

He took some time from being a NASA astronaut to answer questions about his life and career! Enjoy:

What do you hope people think about when you launch?

I hope people are thinking about the fact that we’re starting a new era in human spaceflight. We’re re-opening human launch capability to U.S. soil again, but it’s not just that. We’re opening low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station with commercial companies. It’s a lot different than what we’ve done in the past. I hope people realize this isn’t just another launch – this is something a lot bigger. Hopefully it’s setting the stage, one of those first steps to getting us to the Moon and on to Mars.

You served in the U.S. Air Force as a flight test engineer. What does that entail?

First off, just like being an astronaut, it involves a lot of training when you first get started. I went to the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and spent a year in training and just learning how to be a flight test engineer. It was one of the most challenging years I’ve ever had, but also one of the more rewarding years. What it means afterwards is, you are basically testing new vehicles or new systems that are going on aircraft. You are testing them before they get handed over to the operational fleet and squadrons. You want to make sure that these capabilities are safe, and that they meet requirements. As a flight test engineer, I would help design the test. I would then get the opportunity to go and fly and execute the test and collect the data, then do the analysis, then write the final reports and give those conclusions on whether this particular vehicle or system was ready to go.

What is one piece of life advice you wish somebody had told you when you were younger? 

A common theme for me is to just have patience. Enjoy the ride along the way. I think I tend to be pretty high intensity on things and looking back, I think things happen when they’re supposed to happen, and sometimes that doesn’t necessarily agree with when you think it should happen. So for me, someone saying, “Just be patient Mike, it’s all going to happen when it’s supposed to,” would be really good advice.

Is there a particular science experiment you enjoyed working on the most while aboard the space station?

There’s a lot of experiments I had the opportunity to participate in, but the ones in particular I liked were ones where I got to interact directly with the folks that designed the experiment. One thing I enjoyed was a fluid experiment called Capillary Flow Experiment, or CFE. I got to work directly with the principal investigators on the ground as I executed that experiment. What made it nice was getting to hear their excitement as you were letting them know what was happening in real time and getting to hear their voices as they got excited about the results. It’s just a lot of fun.

Space is a risky business. Why do it?

I think most of us when we think about whatever it is we do, we don’t think of it in those terms. Space is risky, yes, but there’s a lot of other risky jobs out there. Whether it’s in the military, farming, jobs that involve heavy machinery or dangerous equipment… there’s all kinds of jobs that entail risk. Why do it? You do it because it appeals to you. You do it because it’s what gets you excited. It just feels right. We all have to go through a point in our lives where we figure out what we want to do and what we want to be. Sometimes we have to make decisions based on factors that maybe wouldn’t lead you down that choice if you had everything that you wanted, but in this particular case for me, it’s exactly where I want to be. From a risk standpoint, I don’t think of it in those terms.

Can you describe your crew mate Soichi Noguchi in one sentence?

There are many facets to Soichi Noguchi. I’m thinking about the movie Shrek. He has many layers! He’s very talented. He’s very well-thought. He’s very funny. He’s very caring. He’s very sensitive to other people’s needs and desires. He’s a dedicated family man. I could go on and on and on… so maybe like an onion – full of layers!

Star Trek or Star Wars?

I love them both. But can I say Firefly? There’s a TV series out there called Firefly. It lasted one season – kind of a space cowboy-type show. They did have a movie, Serenity, that was made as well. But anyway, I love both Star Wars and Star Trek. We’ve really enjoyed The Mandalorian. I mean who doesn’t love Baby Yoda right? It’s all fun.

How many times did you apply to be an astronaut? Did you learn anything on your last attempt? 

I tried four times over the course of 13 years. My first three attempts, I didn’t even have references checked or interviews or anything. Remember what we talked about earlier, about patience? For my fourth attempt, the fact is, it happened when it was supposed to happen. I didn’t realize it at the time. I would have loved to have been picked on my first attempt like anybody would think, but at the same time, because I didn’t get picked right away, my family had some amazing experiences throughout my Air Force career. That includes living in Canada, living overseas in Italy, and having an opportunity to work at the Pentagon. All of those helped shape me and grow my experience in ways that I think helped me be a better astronaut.

Can you share your favorite photo or video that you took in space?

One of my favorite pictures was a picture inside the station at night when all of the lights were out. You can see the glow of all of the little LEDs and computers and things that stay on even when you turn off the overhead lights. You see this glow on station. It’s really one of my favorite times because the picture doesn’t capture it all. I wish you could hear it as well. I like to think of the station in some sense as being alive. It’s at that time of night when everybody else is in their crew quarters in bed and the lights are out that you feel it. You feel the rhythm, you feel the heartbeat of the station, you see it in the glow of those lights – that heartbeat is what’s keeping you alive while you’re up there. That picture goes a small way of trying to capture that, but I think it’s a special time from up there.

What personal items did you decide to pack for launch and why? 

My wedding bands. I’m also taking up pilot wings for my son. He wants to be a pilot so if he succeeds with that, I’ll be able to give him his pilot wings. Last time, I took one of the Purple Hearts of a very close friend. He was a Marine in World War II who earned it after his service in the Pacific.

Thank you for your time, Mike, and good luck on your historic mission! Get to know a bit more about Mike and his Crew-1 crew mates Victor Glover, Soichi Noguchi, and Shannon Walker in the video above.

Watch LIVE launch coverage beginning at 3:30 p.m. EST on Nov. 14 HERE. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com 

[jiracheer]

[ MOONDUST ]

✨ a/n :: sorry for this self-indulgent piece!! tonight was kinda poopy and I needed a pick me up

✨ warnings :: angst with a happy ending tho

✨ word count :: 1k

The moon felt so far away. 

You brought your hand up to the sky in a pathetic attempt to try to grab it, you watched with teary eyes and trembling bottom lip as you tried to grasp onto its round glowing figure. A sob ripped through your throat with a disgusting roll of tears to tumble down your cheeks and hit your sock clad feet. Loneliness felt so bitter and it weighed heavily in your chest. You wanted nothing more than a moment, just a mere second, of some sort of break from the heaviness of life. 

Recently it seemed as if everything could go wrong with how life has been treating you. School felt so confusing with all the new material being thrown your way, and you were doing horribly on tests as you seemed to have your head in the clouds. Your friends weren’t really picking up on the signs either that you weren’t okay and they easily waved you off/ When you expressed your feelings to them it felt as if they didn’t hear a single word you uttered. Pure anguish consumed you and you felt another sob wrack your body, shaking you to the very core, and you simply wanted to be eaten up by the world. 

You felt as if there was no way things could get better. Arguments rose from you and your parents daily, you felt such conflict with your friends, and with yourself. It was almost as if you were stuck, trapped in whatever hell you had placed yourself in. 

Digging the heel of your palm into your eyes, you took in a deep breath to center yourself. There you go again, being overdramatic, but the thought of you even thinking you were being overdramatic sent you into another frenzy. You sat there in your room for what felt like forever before your phone began to ring. It was a dull noise, and you searched all over for the device which was neatly tucked into bed, seemingly ready to end the day so it could wake to a new one. 

Taking in another deep breath you flipped it over to see what it was and saw a phone call. Crap. You tried to swallow the lump that had formed in your throat to ease up your voice, to make it sound like you hadn’t been crying for the past few minutes, and when you felt like it was good enough… You answered.

“Uh, hey… Tsukki.” Your voice cracked a bit near the end and you closed your eyes, counting the seconds until he replied and you bit your lip. “What’s up?”

“Hey. I was calling to see if you did today's module for science, because I wanted to compare answers.” Tsukishima was, who you considered to be, a close friend of yours. It had taken time to really form a tight bond with him, and slowly, Tsukki had started to let down his walls a bit after much needed growth. They weren’t completely down, but they were down enough to where you could climb over them and join him on the other side.

And he liked to think the same. 

“O-Oh… Uhm. No. No I didn’t, uhm. I didn’t complete it, no, sorry.” You ran a hand through your hair, grabbing the roots. You felt bad. “I can get started on it though and-”

“You okay? You sound really weird. Are you sick or some shit?”

Oh God. The question alone made the lump return to its rightful place in your throat and your eyes began to water. Why was it that when that simple question was spoken, you always fell into some sort of spiral? Your bottom lip quivered and you took in a deep breath that was like a stream disturbed by its rocky bottom. All and all, you were back where you were that evening; a mess. 

A small noise left your throat and your hand went flying to your mouth, lips puckered and on fire from just how hard you had cried, and were, crying. The line went quiet and you felt so bad.

“I-I’m sorry, I gotta go-” You were close to hitting the red icon before you were stopped, Tsukki’s voice barely being picked up as he shouted for you to not hang up. You stood there in silence and you heard shuffling on the other side, and the phone came back to be pressed against your flush face. “T… Tsukki?” You gently croaked out, “I’m… I’m gonna hang up now.”

“No don’t, stay on the line with me.”

“W-Why?” “I’m walking to your house. So just, stay with me.”

His words made your chest tighten and a fresh set of tears form, and all you could muster with a pathetic noise and a simple nod of your head. 

“Can you wait for me in your yard?” His request was simple enough so you went through with it, silently slipping out of your house. Small talk was made between the two of you as you waited patiently for him and when he finally arrived, he was the first to hang up.

Tsukishima stood near your gate with his hands tucked into his hoodies pockets, glasses hanging on his nose before he’d adjust them. His hair looked silver under the moonlight, almost as if he was living up to his names meaning. He didn’t look real. He looked like some sort of spirit visiting you to offer you some guidance, but you knew he was real when he took in a deep breath and opened his arms for you. 

You dropped your phone onto the grassy ground below and let out a mix of what seemed to be a whimper and a cry. Running towards him at full speed you practically threw yourself onto the thin boy. Your face was pressed against his chest and the collision made you bite the inside of your cheek, but you didn’t care. 

Tsukishima engulfed you. His scent, his warmth, the sweet baritone of his voice, and so much more, had provided you such a large amount of comfort. It didn’t take much for him to simply sweep you off your feet. His long arms came around your torso and he moved to rest his chin on the top of your head, rubbing your back as you let it all out. He knew not to speak, and not to let you get too into it, as it would only cause more damage for you. 

The two of you stood there for what seemed to be a long moment, and finally, you came down from whatever sad high you were on. You pulled back to rub at your eyes and to wipe his hoodie free of your tears and snot, apologizing quietly, but he simply silenced you with another back rub. 

“... I don’t like seeing you cry, y/n.” The blond finally broke the silence. You two locked eyes and he felt his heart ache upon seeing your eyes so wide and full of tears. He brought a hand up to gently take your cheek, thumb brushing underneath your eye to wipe away a tear. “It sucks seeing you sad, and it sucks even more when there’s not much that I can do to help you.” He was now cupping your face to take the time to rid you of any impurities, and in the wake of his touch, he pressed butterfly kisses onto your skin. 

Your face blossomed into a pink shade at his ministrations, but you didn’t stop him. You held tightly onto the front of his hoodie as he grew to be closer to you. He smelled like home, a soft vanilla with a hint of mint. It made your nose wrinkle and you saw him smile. It was a pretty small one, but it was there nonetheless, and you couldn’t help but smile back. He was intoxicating.

“There you are… There’s my sunshine.” His eyes closed as he kissed your nose. “I don’t want to sound cheesy, or like a simp, but…” He bit his lip when he pulled back. 

“Whenever I find out that you’re not doing well, it makes me wonder why the universe is so against you at times. You are such a radiant person y/n. You hold so much light, so much joy, and positivity. You are such a strong person for going through so much shit, and still being able to put on a smile and make others laugh. I can’t help but admire you sometimes even if you are a dumbass.” He grins when you let out a laugh, slapping his chest, but nevertheless leaning more into his touch as you stare up at him with doe like eyes. 

“What I’m trying to say is. You’re a good person, an excellent example of how people should be. You have so much to offer this world and you never let anything get in your way- God. I could go on and on about you, y/n. I’m crazy about you.” 

Your breath hitched at the last part. Your much smaller hands came to meet his wrists, gently caressing the soft skin there that was exposed. “Tsukki-”

“Kei. Please, for the love of God, call me Kei.” He seemed to almost beg you.

You nodded, “O-Okay… Kei.” His name rolled off your tongue with ease, and you felt him shiver. “Why are you, telling me all of this?” You nervously ask the beanpole. You watched as the gears in his head turned, clearly thinking what to say next, before he’d just smile so softly at you.

“I think I’m in love with you, y/n.”

Eyes widening, you felt so many emotions wash over you. Tsukishima? Liking you? It wasn’t like you hadn’t thought of the possibilities of him liking you before, but it was still odd to even consider it, yet here he was telling you he might be in love with you. A toothy smile came onto your face, and your eyes squinted with joy, and you were back with throwing yourself at him. Nuzzling his chest you let his hand rest on your head, stroking it.

“Yeah… yeah, I think.” Your voice sounded muffled against his chest and the poor boy had to lean down a bit to hear you, “I think I.. I think I like you too, Ts- Kei. I-I’m not ready to say… I’m. That, but, I can say that. I like you.” You  peek up at him with a red face, but your smile never falters. 

“Okay… I can live with that.”

With your head now tilted upwards, chin resting on his chest, he leaned down to gently peck your lips. Electricity ran through you, making you feel so alive. “I know I’m not the best at showing how much I care for you, but I promise you, y/n. I’m gonna try working on it just so you know how much I adore you.” His knuckles felt soft against your flushed skin, and you took it, kissing his palm. 

“Okay.”

The remainder of the night was spent lying in the dewey grass simply gazing at the stars with you tucked neatly in his arms, and every so often he would point out a star and tell you about it. As you slowly began to doze off you realize that perhaps the moon wasn’t as far away as you thought it was. 

[365dayswithkarina]

Maybe opening up a the Notes app wasn’t the best idea at 2:56 am. But here’s a jumble of thoughts that were on my mind last night.

Balance

I’m having this enteral conflict and being indecisive is not helping one bit. You see, I’m in the point in my life when my everyday actions are going to shape my future more than ever.

High school senior year means college which basically shapes my life for the next four years. Four years doesn’t seem like thattt long but the actions I take or don’t take during these years are going to affect my future job and so on. I know it’s important to live in the present, but at this critical time in my life it’s so so so hard not to think about the future. Once I discovered ux design I felt some peace. I know what I’m going to be when I “grow up”. Yes, I know that that things can change and I shouldn’t plan out every step -that’s definitely not what I’m trying to do- but an end goal keeps me motivated. Maybe too motivated at times.

What would an aspiring ux designer be doing right now? What skills should I learn? What books should I read? I don’t want to miss out on opportunities that I could be taking now. I don’t want to ruin my chances.

My career focused mindset only really hit during the college application period when I realized my stats were below average compared to others applying to my top schools. At least I have some valuable experiences. Actually, that’s the ONLY thing I have.

So I made a mental to do list of steps I had to take to benefit my future:

* C++ programming Class (BC)

* Engineering Physics

* Intro to Computer Science (Online Harvard class)

* Python Basics for Data Science (EdX online course)

* Read more Modules from/about UX designers and tech leaders

* Read like 13 design/tech chapter books

So I’m doing all of these things and pretty soon I realize that all of these activities require me to be alone, and most of the time, on my laptop. Usually, I’m unbelievable bored too. Why am I learning how to program? UX don’t even code. But these skills are good to know. Yes, sometimes it’s actually pretty interesting, but after a couple of hours of starring at my screen in Cafe Ladro, I always get distracted by the same thought: I could be meeting new people, sharing tender moments, or laughing with friends right now. And I feel this inner shadow creep up within me: loneliness. Why? Why am I here right now? Why do I feel so bleh when I’m being productive and doing something that’s going to help me out in the future?

I know I know, balance is key. As cliché and Buddha like it sounds, it’s definitely true. But it’s so difficult to find. For example, hanging out on school nights. I love love love it, but homework or my upcoming tests tend to be in the back of my mind. Would it be wrong to spend another hour chit chatting with a friend instead of going home and studying? I don’t know. It’s definitely something I would do, but also something that might haunt me when I receive a lower grade than I’d expected.

I used to be “chill”, “go with the flow”, just a care free spirit. I really was. I would never use my planner... usually put little, if any, effort in my work... if I got a C on a test, I didn’t even worry the slightest bit. I was just totally fine with everything. But now, I can’t even imagine being like this now. If I don’t try on my assignments, I start to think about how my final grade might result in an A- instead of an A. I have this ongoing thought that every point counts because assignments affect grades, which affect gpa, which affects admissions to college, which will affect my career, which affect my entire future. I should be proud for being so academically focused. I should, but sometimes I’m only disappointed in myself. Do I really want to look back on my teenage self being a complete nerd? Yes, I hang out with friends here and there. But my Monday - Friday life is just school, work, and studying on repeat.

This negativity is honestly quite rare. I know my “boring” everyday life is packed with little, but beautiful moments. It’s so important to acknowledge them. While drinking tea the the other day, my mom being the old soul that she is shared how she tries to truly live every moment; whatever she sees she really sees, whatever she hears she really hears, whatever she feels she really feels. I know her words were genuine, it’s evident in her radiating presence. She always finds the joy in the most simple things. Waking up extra early to make us breakfast, working as a day long nanny, cleaning, whatever it is. I don’t know how she does it, but she does it so well.

[marketingatlightspeedreadin-blog]

Module One – Lecture 01 – What is Reading Comprehension?

Good morning friends so we have been talking about ah various components of ah this course english language for competitive purposes or competitive exams whatever we want to see it or use it so ah one of the components that is very important in all competitive exams is reading comprehension now ah if you look at higher order competitive exams it could be um related to even ah international kinds of competitive exams now what happens here is this particular module or this particular section ah it usually has a long passage generally derive from academic texts now academic text could be anything ah they could be based on literature or aspects of science any aspects of science or ah even politics generally they dont ask politics ah worker interface but yeah literature and science related ah passages or even social science related passages they are extremely common so ah what we get a long passage which is academically ah derived and ah it is followed by a set of questions multiple choice most of the time in this cause we will be focusing on mcq type questions ah just for you are information i have just wanted to know that ah as you go through this particular course and this all these lectures ah you please solve as many questions as possible on your own you can sit with your friends of course but ah do this individually as a beginner keep a dictionary with you i cannot stress enough on the use of dictionary if you look at the syllabus provided for this particular course i have ah given the titles of two very popular and well known dictionaries ah advanced ah oxford language dictionary english dictionary and also cambridge dictionary all ah advance levels so you will find both these ah volumes both these works extremely useful ah so coming back to what we were doing reading passages they can be from a novel or a work of nonfiction academic articles dealing with biology solar system ah marine life anything even astronomy m so the language and tone is serious and is scholarly as the word goes academic and the vocabulary used is of medium to higher order level of difficulty its a good idea to improve once vocabulary by using ah flash cards there are online applications for this as well and practicing reading tough passages from text books and journal articles you have to improve the level and quality of you are reading here remember we are not looking at general english course here we are looking at ah competitive exams kind of language where the level is quite difficult and complex now ah for competitive exams there are usually three kinds of questions in reading comprehension you have to select one choice there will be for a raven five choices or options you have to select one or more choices there will be three options ah out of which ah sometimes ah one or two can also be the right answer so you have to look at it very carefully and select within passages where one line in the passage corresponds to the line in the question this is important sometime they do give the line number and ask you to identify word or ah question which is given in line number lets say sentence number thirteen or fourteen or line number eighteen or twenty you have to be careful about that now ah some of the instructions would be like you have to read the entire passage carefully and then read the questions that follow the options and yes this is important to know they are all very similar sounding they look alike the sound similar they are there to confuse you you will be tempted to pick one fast but spend time on re reading the question dont just quickly tick or mark an option read with context in mind and ask yourself what is it about if the question is about a specific line go back to the line and read two sentences before and after to make sure you understand the line well do not bring in your own previous knowledge of the subject when answering competitive type of answers many a time and many a student makes this mistake they start giving their own interpretation of the situation which is not what is expected its not a test of your general knowledge or your world view but it is more a text of your language so be specific remember the point of the question is not to test your knowledge but your ability to read an analyze the question carefully usually extreme answers are the wrong answers you know questions which say always completely etcetera so they are not ah but this is just a tip so they are not the right answers but then there could be exceptions now i like you to look at this sample question please look at the text here i will give you a minute or two to go through it it was by this term that he qualified her conversation which had much of the point observable in that of the young ladies of her country to whom the ear of the world is more directly presented than to their sisters in other lands like the mass of american girls she had been encouraged to express herself her remarks had been attended to she had been expected to have emotions and opinions many of her opinions had doubtless but a slender value many of her emotions passed away in the utterance but they had left a trace in giving her the habit of seeming at least to feel and think and in imparting moreover to her words when she was really moved that prompt vividness which so many people had regarded as a sign of superiority all right now ah look at these questions the word slender look at your dictionaries if you have your dictionaries with you and what does it mean so which word do you thing goes best what is the meaning of lissome lean negligible and thin ok so lets now discuss let me first give you why the other answers are not that correct or appropriate here the literal meaning of the slender is lissome or lean or thin ok slender girl in the context of the passage negligible is the right answer so the third or the c option c is the right choice the author is discussing the meager value of the girls opinions and while lean and thin can be used negligible is the most apt word apt choice in this contrast in this circumstance slenderness of opinion i will take you back to this passage look at this again many of her opinions had doubtless but a slender value now you cant if you replace lissome value thin value no it had to have negligible in consequential rather hm thats the context here thats the idea here so please be careful now ah look at the slide again and here is your question what is the aim of the passage above what is the passages trying to tell you option a to illustrate why she is generally thought to be clever option b to discuss how american cleverness is different from british cleverness next to show how her opinions had some value and the last to demonstrate that american girls are encouraged to express themselves what do you think is the right choice see all these options are very very close to the answer but what is the aim what is the aim here the correct choice is answer a or option a while the passages does discuss how american girls are taught to express themselves and how therefore they can be seen as clever or as clever ah more than other girls so compare to other girls more clever the aim of the passages is to illustrate why this girl in particular is taught to be superior intellect so while b c d are partially correct only a corresponds to the question lets look at the second passage now look at the slide here under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea there are circumstances in which whether you partake of the tea or not some people of course never do the situation is in itself delightful those that i have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime the implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old english country house in which in what i should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon part of the afternoon had waned but much of it was left and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality real dusk would not arrive for many hours but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb the air had grown mellow the shadows were long upon the smooth dense turf they lengthened slowly however and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of ones enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour this passages is taken from the portrait of a lady by henry james you can expect some higher order passages to come your way now look at the question here the author of the passage is primarily concerned with what option a describing the beauty of the afternoon locating the best source of enjoyment during afternoon tea begin narrating a simple story describing why under certain favourable circumstances afternoon tea is a delightful event what do you think is the right answer all options look very close yeah so however the prefect or the most appropriate answer would be option d why the passages is concerned with describing why the experience of the afternoon tea in particular is wonderful so while the author is using this as an introduction to a larger narrative this particular passages is only about the afternoon tea experience remember that so it may be the way henry james begins his novel or a story but thats not the right answer he is indeed describing the pleasures of the afternoon tea so therefore d is the best response look at the second question now why does the author bring up those who do not drink tea option a to show that some people dislike tea option b to show that afternoon tea is about more than just the experience of drinking tea option c to demonstrate that not everyone in england drinks tea option d to show that there are certain certain circumstances in which people do not drink tea or take tea what do you think would be the right answer the best answer is option b the author brings up people who do not drink tea to show that a afternoon tea ritual is about more than just the tea itself its an experience of pleasure made lovely by the summer weather and the particular aspect of early evening is the experience that matters so lets look at the slide again option b is to show that afternoon tea is more about is more ah is about more than just the experience of drinking tea all right look at the third passage again from portrait of a lady by henry james she was a young person of many theories her imagination was remarkably active it had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast to have a larger perception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar it may be affirmed without delay that she was probably very liable to the sin of self esteem she often surveyed with complacency the field of her own nature she was in the habit of taking for granted on scanty evidence that she was right impulsively she often admired herself every now and then she found out she was wrong and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility after this she held her head higher than ever again for it was of no use she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself she had a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth living that one should be one of the best should be conscious of a fine organization should move in the realm of light of natural wisdom of happy impulse of inspiration gracefully chronic please go through the passage carefully i would give you tips underline or ah note down write down a couple of important per interesting looking words and ideas lets move on to the questions now so in the passage the word liable corresponds most closely to culpable likely pliable and capable of what do you think is the best response culpable likely pliable and capable of the best response is choice a liable in the passage means guilty or of culpable of the sin of self extreme no other option comes close to the meaning of liable hence the right choice is option a look at this slide now set of questions the authors aim in this passage is to show that she was ah she has a really active imagination b to show that the girl was often volatile c to illustrate how her intelligence while remarkable was also prone to error d to describe the girls conceit and whats the answer answer is option c the author while acknowledging the girls intelligence and noting that she was a fine ah cast of mind she as a fine mind he also shows how often she is prone to thinking that she is right she may not be right even when the evidence provided in a particular cases scanty so option c to illustrate how her intelligence while remarkable was also prone to error look at the next passage the lady was certainly a person of many oddities of which her behaviour on returning to her husbands house after many months was a noticeable specimen she had her own way of doing all that she did and this is the simplest description of a character which although by no means without liberal motions rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity she might do a great deal of good but she never pleased this way of her own of which she was so fond was not intrinsically offensive it was just unmistakably distinguished from the ways of others the edges of her conduct or conduct were so very clear cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife like effect that hard fineness came out in her deportment during the first hours of her return from america under circumstances in which it might have seemed that her first act would have been to exchange greetings with her husband and son she for reasons which she deemed excellent always retired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion postponi[ng]- postponing the more sentimental ceremony until she had repaired the disorder of dress with the completeness which had the less reason to be of high importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it now what is the authors lets look at the question what is the authors intention in this passage a to introduce the lady and justify her many oddities of character b to show how she always offended people without meaning to c to justify why she wanted to change her clothes first before meeting her family after many months of travel d in the last one to show how the lady was different from other people in the book the correct answer is of course a the focus is on here oddities the author you should know while explaining that the lady in the passage has several art quirks you know she is quieten extrinsic she isnt really without sentiment or good feeling as could be understood he shows how a rather or behaviour when back home after many months might be construed or constructed as unfeeling but this is an due to ah or either ah due to consideration of due to the vanity option b can be inferred but isnt explicitly mentioned ok and c and d are the aims of the authors at all the aim is to establish the eccentricity of this lady now ah i would give you another exercise where i want to do pick out the line from the passage which shows how while retaining independence of character the lady never convinced any one of any flare ok so ah um retaining independence of character i want you to go back to the previous slide independence of character which do you think suits here most do you think lines two onwards line two onwards is best suited here she had her own way of doing all that she did you know independence of character and this is the simplest description of a character which although by no means without liberal motions rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity so this is the answer we are looking at now lets look at the next passage england was a revelation to her and she found herself as diverted as a child at a pantomime in her infantine excursions to europe she had seen only the continent and seen it from the nursery window paris not london was her fathers mecca and into many of his interests there his children had naturally not entered the images of that time moreover had grown faint and remote and the old world quality in everything that she now saw had all the charm of strangeness her uncles house seemed a picture made real no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon isabel the rich perfection of gardencourt at once revealed a world and gratified a need the large low rooms with brown ceilings and dusky corners the deep embrasures and curious casements the quiet light on dark polished panels the deep greenness outside that seemed always peeping in the sense of well ordered privacy in the centre of a proper property a place where sounds were felicitously accidental where the tread was muffled by the earth itself and in the thick mild air all friction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk these things were much to the taste of our young lady whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions lets look at the questions now look at the slide here the word felicitously in the passage most closely corresponds to a suitably b fortunately c wonderfully and for fittingly which do you think is the right answer answer is option b while a and b are synonyms in the context of the passage fortunately and luckily fit in better lets look at the second ha questions slide what is the passage about it is the girls love of gardencourt b the beauty of the house and surroundings c the girls fascination for the english quality of her surroundings and d the girls impeccable taste in all things refined what is the answer what is that author trying to get it ok so answer is best answer is option c where the author begins by writing about the girls childhood trips to europe you know her father would take her to paris mostly and how the passages is also about how she seems or she is england with the new eyes and loves the old world charm of the place especially gardencourt so option c is the best answer so this is the way we read passages dont just tick a mark the question mark the asnwer which seems to be ah you know most popular view in your mind it could be the best answer but also through process of elimination c ah decide for yourself which answer not just the answer which is right but also the answer which cannot be right so try out each and every option this is most important tip to understand in a reading comprehension we look at more passages in the next few classes all the best and thank you very much

For More Info : Visit Here : http://lightspeedreading.com/

[mozgoderina]

Established education providers v new contenders

THE HYPE OVER MOOCs peaked in 2012. Salman Khan, an investment analyst who had begun teaching bite-sized lessons to his cousin in New Orleans over the internet and turned that activity into a wildly popular educational resource called the Khan Academy, was splashed on the cover of Forbes. Sebastian Thrun, the founder of another MOOC called Udacity, predicted in an interview in Wired magazine that within 50 years the number of universities would collapse to just ten worldwide. The New York Times declared it the year of the MOOC.

The sheer numbers of people flocking to some of the initial courses seemed to suggest that an entirely new model of open-access, free university education was within reach. Now MOOC sceptics are more numerous than believers. Although lots of people still sign up, drop-out rates are sky-high.

Nonetheless, the MOOCs are on to something. Education, like health care, is a complex and fragmented industry, which makes it hard to gain scale. Despite those drop-out rates, the MOOCs have shown it can be done quickly and comparatively cheaply. The Khan Academy has 14m-15m users who conduct at least one learning activity with it each month; Coursera has 22m registered learners. Those numbers are only going to grow. FutureLearn, a MOOC owned by Britain’s Open University, has big plans. Oxford University announced in November that it would be producing its first MOOC on the edX platform.

In their search for a business model, some platforms are now focusing much more squarely on employment (though others, like the Khan Academy, are not for profit). Udacity has launched a series of nanodegrees in tech-focused courses that range from the basic to the cutting-edge. It has done so, moreover, in partnership with employers. A course on Android was developed with Google; a nanodegree in self-driving cars uses instructors from Mercedes-Benz, Nvidia and others. Students pay $199-299 a month for as long as it takes them to finish the course (typically six to nine months) and get a 50% rebate if they complete it within a year. Udacity also offers a souped-up version of its nanodegree for an extra $100 a month, along with a money-back guarantee if graduates do not find a job within six months.

Coursera’s content comes largely from universities, not specialist instructors; its range is much broader; and it is offering full degrees (one in computer science, the other an MBA) as well as shorter courses. But it, too, has shifted its emphasis to employability. Its boss, Rick Levin, a former president of Yale University, cites research showing that half of its learners took courses in order to advance their careers. Although its materials are available without charge, learners pay for assessment and accreditation at the end of the course ($300-400 for a four-course sequence that Coursera calls a “specialisation”). It has found that when money is changing hands, completion rates rise from 10% to 60% . It is increasingly working with companies, too. Firms can now integrate Coursera into their own learning portals, track employees’ participation and provide their desired menu of courses.

These are still early days. Coursera does not give out figures on its paying learners; Udacity says it has 13,000 people doing its nanodegrees. Whatever the arithmetic, the reinvented MOOCs matter because they are solving two problems they share with every provider of later-life education.

The first of these is the cost of learning, not just in money but also in time. Formal education rests on the idea of qualifications that take a set period to complete. In America the entrenched notion of “seat time”, the amount of time that students spend with school teachers or university professors, dates back to Andrew Carnegie. It was originally intended as an eligibility requirement for teachers to draw a pension from the industrialist’s nascent pension scheme for college faculty. Students in their early 20s can more easily afford a lengthy time commitment because they are less likely to have other responsibilities. Although millions of people do manage part-time or distance learning in later life—one-third of all working students currently enrolled in America are 30-54 years old, according to the Georgetown University Centre on Education and the Workforce—balancing learning, working and family life can cause enormous pressures.

Moreover, the world of work increasingly demands a quick response from the education system to provide people with the desired qualifications. To take one example from Burning Glass, in 2014 just under 50,000 American job-vacancy ads asked for a CISSP cyber-security certificate. Since only 65,000 people in America hold such a certificate and it takes five years of experience to earn one, that requirement will be hard to meet. Less demanding professions also put up huge barriers to entry. If you want to become a licensed cosmetologist in New Hampshire, you will need to have racked up 1,500 hours of training.

In response, the MOOCs have tried to make their content as digestible and flexible as possible. Degrees are broken into modules; modules into courses; courses into short segments. The MOOCs test for optimal length to ensure people complete the course; six minutes is thought to be the sweet spot for online video and four weeks for a course.

Scott DeRue, the dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, says the unbundling of educational content into smaller components reminds him of another industry: music. Songs used to be bundled into albums before being disaggregated by iTunes and streaming services such as Spotify. In Mr DeRue’s analogy, the degree is the album, the course content that is freely available on MOOCs is the free streaming radio service, and a “microcredential” like the nanodegree or the specialisation is paid-for iTunes.

How should universities respond to that kind of disruption? For his answer, Mr DeRue again draws on the lessons of the music industry. Faced with the disruption caused by the internet, it turned to live concerts, which provided a premium experience that cannot be replicated online. The on-campus degree also needs to mark itself out as a premium experience, he says.

Another answer is for universities to make their own products more accessible by doing more teaching online. This is beginning to happen. When Georgia Tech decided to offer an online version of its masters in computer science at low cost, many were shocked: it seemed to risk cannibalising its campus degree. But according to Joshua Goodman of Harvard University, who has studied the programme, the decision was proved right. The campus degree continued to recruit students in their early 20s whereas the online degree attracted people with a median age of 34 who did not want to leave their jobs. Mr Goodman reckons this one programme could boost the numbers of computer-science masters produced in America each year by 7-8%. Chip Paucek, the boss of 2U, a firm that creates online degree programmes for conventional universities, reports that additional marketing efforts to lure online students also boost on-campus enrolments.

Educational Lego

Universities can become more modular, too. EdX has a micromasters in supply-chain management that can either be taken on its own or count towards a full masters at MIT. The University of Wisconsin-Extension has set up a site called the University Learning Store, which offers slivers of online content on practical subjects such as project management and business writing. Enthusiasts talk of a world of “stackable credentials” in which qualifications can be fitted together like bits of Lego.

Just how far and fast universities will go in this direction is unclear, however. Degrees are still highly regarded, and increased emphasis on critical thinking and social skills raises their value in many ways. “The model of campuses, tenured faculty and so on does not work that well for short courses,” adds Jake Schwartz, General Assembly’s boss. “The economics of covering fixed costs forces them to go longer.”

Academic institutions also struggle to deliver really fast-moving content. Pluralsight uses a model similar to that of book publishing by employing a network of 1,000 experts to produce and refresh its library of videos on IT and creative skills. These experts get royalties based on how often their content is viewed; its highest earner pulled in $2m last year, according to Aaron Skonnard, the firm’s boss. Such rewards provide an incentive for authors to keep updating their content. University faculty have other priorities.

People are more likely to invest in training if it confers a qualification that others will recognise. But they also need to know which skills are useful in the first place

Beside costs, the second problem for MOOCs to solve is credentials. Close colleagues know each other’s abilities, but modern labour markets do not work on the basis of such relationships. They need widely understood signals of experience and expertise, like a university degree or a baccalaureate, however imperfect they may be. In their own fields, vocational qualifications do the same job. The MOOCs’ answer is to offer microcredentials like nanodegrees and specialisations.

But employers still need to be confident that the skills these credentials vouchsafe are for real. LinkedIn’s “endorsements” feature, for example, was routinely used by members to hand out compliments to people they did not know for skills they did not possess, in the hope of a reciprocal recommendation. In 2016 the firm tightened things up, but getting the balance right is hard. Credentials require just the right amount of friction: enough to be trusted, not so much as to block career transitions.

Universities have no trouble winning trust: many of them can call on centuries of experience and name recognition. Coursera relies on universities and business schools for most of its content; their names sit proudly on the certificates that the firm issues. Some employers, too, may have enough kudos to play a role in authenticating credentials. The involvement of Google in the Android nanodegree has helped persuade Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce platform, to hire Udacity graduates sight unseen.

Wherever the content comes from, students’ work usually needs to be validated properly for a credential to be trusted. When student numbers are limited, the marking can be done by the teacher. But in the world of MOOCs those numbers can spiral, making it impractical for the instructors to do all the assessments. Automation can help, but does not work for complex assignments and subjects. Udacity gets its students to submit their coding projects via GitHub, a hosting site, to a network of machine-learning graduates who give feedback within hours.

Even if these problems can be overcome, however, there is something faintly regressive about the world of microcredentials. Like a university degree, it still involves a stamp of approval from a recognised provider after a proprietary process. Yet lots of learning happens in informal and experiential settings, and lots of workplace skills cannot be acquired in a course.

Gold stars for good behaviour

One way of dealing with that is to divide the currency of knowledge into smaller denominations by issuing “digital badges” to recognise less formal achievements. RMIT University, Australia’s largest tertiary-education institution, is working with Credly, a credentialling platform, to issue badges for the skills that are not tested in exams but that firms nevertheless value. Belinda Tynan, RMIT’s vice-president, cites a project carried out by engineering students to build an electric car, enter it into races and win sponsors as an example.

The trouble with digital badges is that they tend to proliferate. Illinois State University alone created 110 badges when it launched a programme with Credly in 2016. Add in MOOC certificates, LinkedIn Learning courses, competency-based education, General Assembly and the like, and the idea of creating new currencies of knowledge starts to look more like a recipe for hyperinflation.

David Blake, the founder of Degreed, a startup, aspires to resolve that problem by acting as the central bank of credentials. He wants to issue a standardised assessment of skill levels, irrespective of how people got there. The plan is to create a network of subject-matter experts to assess employees’ skills (copy-editing, say, or credit analysis), and a standardised grading language that means the same thing to everyone, everywhere.

Pluralsight is heading in a similar direction in its field. A diagnostic tool uses a technique called item response theory to work out users’ skill levels in areas such as coding, giving them a rating. The system helps determine what individuals should learn next, but also gives companies a standardised way to evaluate people’s skills.

A system of standardised skills measures has its own problems, however. Using experts to grade ability raises recursive questions about the credentials of those experts. And it is hard for item response theory to assess subjective skills, such as an ability to construct an argument. Specific, measurable skills in areas such as IT are more amenable to this approach.

So amenable, indeed, that they can be tested directly. As an adolescent in Armenia, Tigran Sloyan used to compete in mathematical Olympiads. That experience helped him win a place at MIT and also inspired him to found a startup called CodeFights in San Francisco. The site offers free gamified challenges to 500,000 users as a way of helping programmers learn. When they know enough, they are funnelled towards employers, which pay the firm 15% of a successful candidate’s starting salary. Sqore, a startup in Stockholm, also uses competitions to screen job applicants on behalf of its clients.

However it is done, the credentialling problem has to be solved. People are much more likely to invest in training if it confers a qualification that others will recognise. But they also need to know which skills are useful in the first place.

  Source: The Economist / Special report. Link: Established education providers v new contenders Illustration: Brad Holland. Moderator: ART HuNTER.

[silvormoon]

Beppu headcanons: culture shock

Ever thought about how weird adjusting to Earth must have been for the twins? Like, not only did they live most of their lives in places other than Earth, they've been trained to be idols since the time they were like six years old. That means that the time that most kids would have spent playing in the sandbox, watching cartoons, and generally learning how to socialize with their peers, they were being taught how to sing, dance, act, and compete with other would-be stars for dominance of the airwaves. Trying to settle back into Binan and be "normal" ... well, it's probably not happening. It's going to be more like:

- Having weird inside jokes that nobody else gets. Aki randomly holds up two carrots in the grocery store and yells "Hey, Haru, look, I'm a lunar module!" and they both start cracking up, and nobody else knows what's so funny, because they're referencing a running gag from an old sitcom they used to tune in to every time they passed through the Crab Nebula.

- On the other hand, they get approximately zero cultural references on Earth. If they didn't see/hear it by the time they were six, it doesn't exist for them. The various regular and charter members of the Earth Defense Club have to start holding regular movie nights to get the twins caught up on everything they've missed, and the guys still have a habit of turning up going, "Listen to this cool new song I found!" and everyone goes, "Oh, yeah, I remember when that was all over the radio seven years ago..."

- And then there's schoolwork. They're obviously very bright, but boy have they missed out on a lot when it comes to history and social studies. They're really having to sweat to catch up on that point, and you still have these odd moments where someone will be like, "Yeah, my mom was a huge fan of Princess Diana..." "Who is she? Someone from a manga?" "No, the Princess of Wales." "So... like a mermaid, then?"

- Science, though, is an opposite problem. They've lived much of their lives on worlds where the science has advanced to the point of looking like magic from our perspective (obviously). Things that are common knowledge to them are things that our scientists are only just beginning to theorize. They eventually start handing their papers over to their friends to check before they turn them in, to make sure they haven't written something that is going to either make their teacher think they're making stuff up, or make the teacher try to nominate them for a Nobel Prize for scientific innovation. Like, seriously, what do you mean, humanity hasn't managed to build a stable wormhole yet? Come on, get with the program.

- Randomly lapsing into extremely foreign languages. There was that time Haru stayed up half the night working on a new set of song lyrics the night before a test, and filled out most of the answers in alien script out of sheer sleep deprivation and had to do it all over again. Talking to each other in space languages when they want to have a private discussion. "Is that some kind of, like, secret twin language?" "Er... yeah, let's go with that." Having those brain-fart moments when you just can't think of the word for something and going, "You know, the, um... those fluffy things you put around your neck to keep it warm that aren't a scarf. A gazarpnik!" "You mean a cowl?" "Well, that's what they call them on Planet Aknorth!"

- Those nights when one of them just can't sleep because they have a craving for those things, they used to get them every time they were traveling through the XJR7 system, they had a texture like chocolate but they were bright purple and smelled like gleeka flowers, and they had a sort of custard filling made from zebba fruits, and nobody on the planet has ever heard of them, much less sells them, and it’s driving them nuts.

- Having really skewed social mores, either because they grew up on a steadily rotating series of planets (wherever there were performances or acting work), or just because they were brought up to be idols instead of people. Sometimes they make the most absurd faux pas just because it was never a problem before. For example, their sense of privacy and personal space is warped, because they've always been taught that having people constantly watching them, trying to photograph or record them, asking them personal questions, is all just part of being an idol and a sign that they are successful and loved. They cannot believe that people as popular as, for example, Ryuu and Akoya are so lax about their personal space, and are surprised that more people don't take advantage of them. Like, how can they just leave their windows with the curtains open and not have people staring through trying to get a look at them?

- It also kind of shocks them that Ryuu is so casual in discussing his relationships, because they were brought up with the "Idols don't have significant others" rule. They were expected never to talk about any potential crushes, so as to encourage their fans to believe they were available. The fact that he not only talks about his flings constantly, but that people still want to go out with him after he has already publicly shown interest in other people, is kind of like suddenly learning that you've been living in a computer simulation this whole time. (They're still trying to figure out exactly how much is too much when it comes to discussing relationships. It is just so liberating to be able to finally admit they have a crush without worrying that the whole world will reject them for it that they want to talk about it all the time.)

- They also think Earth humans are kind of silly for making all these rules like "you aren't supposed to pair off with members of your own sex" or "you're only supposed to have one partner at a time". They have been on planets where there are multiple distinct sexes, where an entity of one sex reproduced with a whole hive full of members of another sex, where the locals change partners every mating season, and where everyone reproduces by way of a budding process, and everything worked about equally well, so why get hung up on details? The fact that you're having a relationship at all is more groundbreaking to them than what the specifics of the relationship are.

- Also, gender roles. Not really something they know or care much about. Makeup, jewelry, and elaborate stage costumes are part of their daily life, and the idea that men are not supposed to dress flamboyantly is just puzzling to them.

- They suffer from cultural mishmash. A large part of their star appeal is that they are from Earth, a planet most aliens aren't familiar with, so they're ~*exotic*~ and stuff. They were trained to capitalize on this, but they were trained by people who don't actually know much about Earth. So they got taught how to do things like calligraphy and bonsai because they came from Japan and that's a thing Japanese people do, right? But then there's a bunch of other odd stuff mixed into their upbringing because the aliens tend to think of Earth in rather the same way that some people think Asia or Africa are homogeneous, unified cultures where everyone speaks the same language and lives the same way. They have some little quirks that are basically internalized stereotypical Earth behavior, pieced together out of whatever bits and pieces of various cultures the aliens have glimpsed in passing and interpreted as best they could. They have no idea that this is not how most humans behave.

[mst3kproject]

320: The Unearthly

The first word that comes to mind to describe this movie is 'colourless', which gets an immediate reaction of well, duh, because the movie is of course in black and white.  But above and beyond that, The Unearthly is completely lacking in interest, tension, characters, and everything ese that makes a movie entertaining.  It could have had these things, but apparently it just didn't bother.

Mad Scientist Dr. Charles Conway believes he has discovered the secret to immortality – an artificial gland which, when implanted into the patient's brain, will modulate their hormones to keep them young and fit forever!  So far all his test subjects end up deformed, dead, or unresponsive, but he's determined that he'll get it right if he just keeps trying, and has a friend refer mental patients to him so he can continue to experiment on them.  Then fate throws a wrench in the works, in the form of escaped criminal Mark Houston.  Conway takes Houston in with the idea of blackmailing him, but Houston is actually an undercover police officer, here to expose the whole project.

The Unearthly is a difficult movie to write a summary of, actually, because the story is very unfocused and seems to spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly from scene to scene without actually getting anything done.  This is largely because of the way it handles its characters.  Mark Houston is technically our hero, but we don't meet him until we've already spent almost ten minutes getting to know a completely different character in a way that suggests she will be our protagonist.

The movie begins with Grace Thomas, a woman suffering from mental illness, whose psychologist Dr. Wright has brought her to Conway's quiet little halfway house.  Supposedly this is for treatment, but once Grace is out of the room the two doctors' conversation makes it clear that they intend to fake her death and experiment on her.  All this is dealt with in some detail, and in a way that seems to set Grace up as the audience identification character.  Somebody who watched only these first few minutes would probably guess that the rest of the movie is about Grace discovering that something is wrong and trying to get in touch with her father, whom Wright identifies as her only living family.

This is not the case, though.  Grace goes to bed, Wright heads out to throw her purse in the bay and claim she drowned herself, and then we meet Mark.  For the rest of the film, it will be Mark we follow, as he investigates Conway's nefarious experiments while Grace sits around doing and saying nothing much of interest.  In fact, Grace is a singularly bland character, partly because she's written that way and partly because the actress evinces no interest in her lines whatsoever.  Allison Hayes was in two other MST3K features, The Undead and Gunslinger, as well as a number of other classic b-movies like Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and Zombies of Mora Tau, and this is the worst performance I have ever seen her give.  She sounds like she's bored to tears.

In fact, Grace has less personality than any other member of the cast, including Tor Johnson's Lobo.  The other patients at Conway's retreat include Dan, a man prone to fits of anger, and Natalie, a chipper and trusting young woman looking forward to going home. Conway himself is egotistical and obsessive, and his assistant, Dr. Gilchrist, is professional and a little bit motherly.  Mark is nosy but cautious, as befits his investigative role.  I cannot pick out any personality traits like this for Grace.  She just says lines while staring blankly at the wall.

While Mark may be the hero, we are clearly supposed to feel something for Grace.  The last two people Dr. Conway experimented on came to bad ends, and we're supposed to worry that Grace will be next and Mark will not be in time to save her.  She is such a nonentity, though, that it's almost impossible to care.  We're supposed to want to see a romance blossom between her and Mark, but she's totally apathetic.  We're supposed to believe that she trusts Dr. Conway and comes to him with her problems, but the movie tells us this without bothering to establish it properly. Even when she's supposed to be angry with Mark and ordering him to leave her alone, it just doesn't work.  Nothing around Grace is interesting, and since she is the focal point for other characters throughout the narrative, the movie never has a proper center.  That, however, is merely annoying.  If you want to get angry at this movie, let's talk about portrayals of women and mental illness.

Dr. Conway's patients are explicitly mental patients, perhaps because he claims to need perfect physical specimens for his artificial gland to work.  Mental illness in movies is usually not researched very well, and I don't think The Unearthly was an exception to that, even though it tries to be a little more realistic.  At least it doesn't have anybody who talks to hand puppets or a guy who thinks he's Napoleon – what it's got is Dan, a man who is a bit paranoid and suffers from fits of ranting anger, sometimes needing medication to calm down.  He is presented as something of a joke, and the other characters treat him as if they consider him unreasonable rather than ill – but he is at least allowed to be ill and show symptoms.  The same cannot be said of the women.

Grace is described as having suffered a nervous breakdown and being prone to mood swings: she'll be suddenly afraid, or will break down in tears for no reason, but we never see her behave oddly.  In fact, Grace comes across as calm and collected at all times, and we see no difference in her between the scene where she arrives and the one where Dr. Conway tells her she's made excellent progress. Natalie is presented to us as nearly cured and ready to leave the retreat, so it's not surprising if she shows no symptoms, but she is unable to describe her previous illness as anything other than an inability to 'get herself together'.

So what we have here is two cases of acute Fictional Disease: women in movies are allowed to suffer from terrible illnesses, but only as long as these do not render them unattractive or antisocial.  A woman going into the same kind of rant as Dan would come across as bitchy rather than ill, and would be automatically unsympathetic to a male audience who would associate such behaviour with the stereotype of the nitpicking, nagging wife.  We're supposed to like Grace and Natalie, so their health problems can only manifest in ways that make us want to protect and help them, and actual symptoms are kept discreetly off-camera. At the end of the story, I think we're supposed to assume that Grace's problems will be solved not by a licensed practitioner with years of training, but by the power of Twu Wuv. Evidently people in the 50's still accepted the Victorian idea that all women's health issues can be solved by a generous application of dick.

Then there's the way Dr. Conway behaves towards Grace.  At their first appointment, he tells this sick woman who has been committed to his care that she looks lovely, and that “if I were Rembrandt I would paint a portrait of you”.  He claims that many women would envy her and that her looks and charm make her worthy of attention and protection.  Perhaps if Grace is suffering from low self-esteem these are things she needs to hear, but they come across as deeply creepy and unprofessional, and the worst part is that I can't actually tell if the movie wants us to find them so.

There was a similar dynamic, with a mad scientist hitting on his patient while the female assistant became jealous, in Atom Age Vampire, but in that movie it was explicitly manipulative and wrong.  The Unearthly, however, is much more neutral in its presentation of this material.  It just sits back and watches, without placing a value judgment, and Dr. Gilchrist's condemnation of the behaviour is much milder than that of her counterpart in Atom Age Vampire.  Later Dr. Conway laments the fact that Grace has 'turned on him', suggesting that he did in fact have feelings for her... in which case, perhaps we're meant to think he was expressing honest affection?  Whatever the case, it's gross.

The Unearthly's single greatest moment of misogyny, however, comes courtesy of Dr. Wright.  In order to facilitate Grace's disappearance, Dr. Wright throws some of her possessions into the sea in order to suggest she committed suicide in her depression.  Not long after, he finds himself in a similar pickle when another vanished patient's sister turns up on his doorstep – Wright calls Conway to ask what to do, and Conway tells him to simply make out a death certificate for the man, who has been in a coma since the experiment anyway.  Wright, who personally came up with the plan to fake Grace's suicide, is horrified.

There are only two possibilities I can come up with to explain this contradiction.  Either the screenwriter just couldn't keep track of which characters were willing to do what in the name of science – or Dr. Wright is just fine with faking the death of a woman, whose life doesn't matter, but repulsed by the thought of doing it for a man, whose does.  I think it's just shitty writing, but I can't be sure.

The Unearthly really could have been much better than it is, but it did just about everything wrong.  The idea of a mad scientist experimenting on mental patients because he knows anything they say will not be believed is one that could work, but is never explored.  Conway's basement full of possibly-immortal monsters could have been used to much better effect.  Mark's assumed persona of criminal on the run wondering what he's gotten into was far more interesting than his actual role turned out to be.  Grace would have been a way better character if she'd ever done something. Anything.  In the end, the movie simply misses every opportunity it had, and the result is as dull as a bowl of plain oatmeal.  Like I said, colourless.

[lineara]

In search of random music: The Ore-some Xylophone I made a synthesiser module recently that used a geiger counter to control musical parameters randomly. It worked out nicely, and so the idea was refined for the Sound Check exhibition at Dublin Science Gallery, this time using a mechanically operated xylophone. The counter was housed in an enclosure, underneath a lump of uranium ore. A handwheel could be used to move a sliding lead shield, which would cause the composition to speed up when the glass Geiger-Müller tube was exposed to the rock.

Getting the ore signed off by Health and Safety involved a fair amount of paperwork, but Derek at the Science Gallery was massively helpful and it all worked out in the end. There was a tense few minutes during the inspection by the radiological officer, who approached her work rather seriously, but eventually indicated her approval.

The xylophone notes are chosen by monitoring the timings of activity from the geiger counter. The green dots in the diagram below represent the detection of radiation emitted from spontaneously decaying nuclei. The control box takes note of three events, and then maps the time between 1 and 3 to the total range of 44 notes across the xylophone. Event 2 then determines the note to be played. When the next click from the geiger counter arrives, 2 and 4 (red lines) become the range, 3 (green arrow) becomes the note choice, and so on. The control box sends a stream of MIDI notes to the xylophone system, which activates 44 solenoids depending on which notes arrive. It's also possible to route the MIDI cable into Ableton or whatever, or to route an external MIDI source into the xylophone.

Tests had to be carried out to make sure the setup was totally safe for visitors, although in reality the ore only emits a low amount of radiation. The main danger would be inhaling / ingesting dust from the rock, and so the control box was made strong enough to thwart the destructive efforts of the public. I was given a target level of 1µSvh-1 maximum measured from 100mm, which is about the same as eating a few bananas (which are naturally slightly radioactive). Interestingly the measurements varied considerably depending on which face of the rock was presented.

The sculpture took about 4 weeks to build. To make the most of the available construction time, we drove to Dublin with a trailer at the last minute, on the overnight ferry. The other passengers were mostly morose truckers delivering tankers of corrosive chemicals. There was a storm on the way over, and the trailer was on the top deck, and so I was imagining a big wave of seawater and starfish falling out of the crate when opened, but actually it was fine. I met Brenda Hutchinson who had built a large reconfigurable microtonal music box. One issue I didn't fully resolve with the xylophone was the mallet hardness - the higher blocks sounded way better with harder mallets, whereas the lower notes sounded better with softer mallets. In the end I used 44 no. 25mm diameter plastic lever balls, which were a bit too hard for the lower notes, but Brenda's machine had three different mallet hardnesses over the range of notes. 

In search of randomness

When the lead shield is in position, the geiger counter clicks away happily at a fairly sedate pace. Sometimes there's a pause of a few seconds ("What's happening?! Has it stopped working?!"), or sometimes there's a run of clicks in a single second. It's counting background radiation plus whatever makes it through the lead. Moving the shield creates a dramatic increase in activity. I only used one piece of ore in the sculpture, but I did buy a few Kg so that I could choose the nicest shaped rock. Placing multiple rocks right on top of the Geiger-Müller tube creates clicks fast enough that they start to sound like a constant tone. This led me to realise that there are some limits to the true randomness of the sculpture. At very high speeds, the 16MHz clock speed of the Arduino Pro Mini microprocessor will limit the resolution of events that can be detected, particularly as there are a few lines of code to process in the loop. Imagine some particles are detected at the following times: 0.00000000 seconds 0.00000005 seconds 1.00000000 seconds 1.00000005 seconds 2.00000000 seconds Theoretically this should play the lowest F on the xylophone, followed by the highest C, then the lowest F again. Due to the clock speed issue, it would actually play a single central D, so there is some quantisation occurring that effects the true randomness of the sequence of notes being played. During the exhibition I chatted to Nic Collins about this, and he suggested using an analogue computer to remove the clock issue. Mechanical analogue computers use three dimensional cams and geared differentials etc. to provide a continuously variable output with a theoretically infinite resolution. This could potentially improve matters, although as the computer is made of atoms it will by necessity have some mass, and will therefore need a finite amount of time to move parts of it around, and so will still have a maximum resolution at some point. Another limit is the Geiger-Müller tube itself, which needs some time to recover after the gas in the tube has been ionised by incoming radiation. This limits the maximum resolution to between 10MHz to 100MHz. There may even be some weird phase / beating effects at high speeds between the GM tube resetting and the Arduino clock. Then there is of course the unavoidable reaction time of the rest of the system, including the solenoids and the time it takes the mallet mechanisms to reach the xylophone... That's considering high speeds, but there is also the other end of the scale to consider. I built the sculpture on planet Earth, which is due to be swallowed up by the expanding sun in a few billion years, which may effect proceedings if this happens while the ore is still being relied upon for the source of randomness. If the sculpture is safely moved to another planet, there is also the half life of the uranium to consider, and also the eventual heat death of the universe in around 10100(100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000) years. A couple of people mentioned that perhaps it is possible to predict when a nucleus will decay, but we just don't know how to do it yet. Another point that was raised was how can we prove that the sequence of notes is random. There are tests that can be applied to sequences of random numbers, but, as with someone claiming to be immortal, it seems only really possible to disprove.

(via Sound Check Dublin 2017 - The Ore-some Xylophone)

Previously.

[crunchyenglish]

Angry Lunatic's Scientific Journal of Shit I Made Up. Vol. This One

Feeling uncharacteristically productive today, and my new job is unusually slow. Time for another edition of my extremely occasional series, where I take the bold, dynamic declarations of the internet's lowest life forms and try to hold them up as an actual scientific hypothesis. I also try to learn something, which is usually the easy part given my limited knowledge base and tremendously narrow worldview. And since I'm making pretty liberal use of the word "scientific", here's the usual disclaimer:

I am not, and never have been a scientist. My education is paltry and laughable. Part of the point of this series is that this knowledge is freely available to anyone with an internet connection (which all my targets obviously have) and a desire to learn (which all my targets obviously lack). My only qualifications are a willingness to spend sometime Googling and a desire to showcase the stupidity of others.

Note: A lot of the dumbest discourse on the Internet these days is political in nature. Nothing seems to shut down people's ability to reason and function quite as much as cheering for or against a political party. And that landscape is currently filled bizarre conspiracy theories that are deeply tempting to rebuke or debunk. However, they aren't really in the spirit of this series, and unfortunately politics breeds that stuff because there's a lot of grey area and no source is considered very objective these days. Also, no one following politics has ever learned anything except "we are a fucked up species", and learning is my stated secondary goal.

So, with the housekeeping out of the way, let's get to this issue's hypothesis. This one comes to us from Mathew Shields. From his website, "He is a free- lance researcher and international speaker on the human energy field, paranormal phenomenon and healing techniques to name a few." That's right, it's time for this journal to up its game and beginning analyzing the claims of professional bullshitters. Mat Shields is a top-shelf dickhead with a bunch of suckers following in tow, and this claim in particular stands out as primo material for our little article:

"Negative Ions- the invisible healer.

Negative ions enhance our mood, stimulate our senses, improve appetite and sexual drive, provide relief from hay fever, sinusitis, bronchial asthma, allergies, migraines, even post operative pain and burns. Negative ions stimulate the reticuloendothelial system which is a group of defense cells in our bodies which marshal our resistance to disease. Negative ions promote alpha brain waves and increased brain wave amplitude which results in a higher awareness level. The body is better able to absorb oxygen into the blood cells, oxidize serotonin and filter airborne contaminants."

That's actually just the opening to a much larger article, in which Mat tells people to keep their shower running constantly in their house, since water in motion produces more "negative ions" than standing water. Before I get angry (ok, I admit it, too late) let's take a moment and appreciate this fine, thick slice of bullshit. This really is a master class. You can tell we've moved up to the big leagues here. You can't tweet this level of bullshit. It's got a bunch of impressive sounding words. It's claims are vague and opaque enough to confuse and desirable enough to tempt. Truly splendid bullshit. Now, let's figure out how we're going to take it down.

Negative Ions are a widespread health myth, propagated by all sorts of pseudo-doctor types. Typing "Negative Ions" into Google is going to get you a lot of positive results, and not all on homemade web pages with links to a Zionist World Order Theory in the sidebar. Sites like WebMD, Nutrition Review and other seemingly "reliable" sites have hosted blogs, articles and editorials by all stripes of quacks, most of whom are happy to push this narrative in order to sell you "negative ion generators" or "negative ion bracelets" or some other brand of this particular snake oil. And the health claims are exactly the kind of unspecific promises on which pseudo-science thrives: more energy, better sex drive, clearing up headaches, the works. Let's start with what a "negative ion" is even supposed to be.

An Ion, as you learned for a test and then promptly forgot in school, is an atom or molecule which is carrying a "charge". This charge is either positive or negative, dependent upon the number of electrons versus the number of protons. More electrons creates a net negative charge, fewer creates a net positive charge. The actual term for a negatively charged ion is an anion. This is a clever dodge by the quacks here. If you google "Negative Ions" you get all their bullshit, in no way hampered by any actual science, because people who know what the fuck they're talking about don't use that phrase. 

Supposedly, these electron discrepancies are the source of "Negative Ion"'s "healing" powers. The only thing Anions should attract are positively charged ions, called cations. This is simple electromagnetism. Negative attracts positive and repels other negatively charge particles. Arguably, you could say that Anions would also "repel" or push out other Anions, but if that's how they work you wouldn't feel any of their numerously claimed benefits. So, unless positively charged Ions, cations, are constantly draining you of energy, causing you pain, making your dick wilt, and are giving you hay fever, then there's no reason for fucking Anions to have any benefit to you.

And I can even prove cations aren't doing that. Coulomb's law bitches! I could try to stumble through a basic explanation, but for the sake of accuracy, let's just cut and paste this next part:

Coulomb's law states that: The magnitude of the electrostatic force of attraction between two point charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The force is along the straight line joining them.

Short answer, if for some reason, you had a bunch of positively charged cations clogged up in your body, you would be constantly discharging them anyway. You are constantly coming into contact with Anions, they are exceptionally common. You don't need "constantly splashing water", or a "negative ion generator" whatever the fuck that's supposed to do. Oxygen is a goddamn Anion. Fluoride is an Anion. Chloride is an Anion. Cyanide is a goddamn, fucking Anion.

Ions are everywhere.  I mean it, fucking EVERYWHERE. The forming of covalent bonds is the literal building blocks of the entire universe. To somehow suggest that nearly everything in the universe is divided into "neutral atoms", "the good thingys" and the "bad thingys" is fucking infantile nonsense. It's stupid on a level that I can barely comprehend and I once scrolled through Trump's twitter feed for nonsense for another article. If you're having trouble understanding the absolute incoherency of the bullshit here, let me try an example.

Imagine if I told you that all nutrition was categorized in three ways - Solid, Liquid and Jell-O. Now imagine that I also tried to convince you that Liquid was "The Bad One" and tried to sell you a device that turned all liquid food into Jell-O. That's the level of arbitrary crazy we're talking here. The only apparent thing you have to do to convince people to buy your shit is keep the benefits vague and use science-y sounding bullshit like "Negative Ions".

This one was less experimental than some other articles I've written. I didn't cite my sources properly, and I ranted a lot more. That's because I'm starting to think that writing rebuttals and thought experiments is the wrong tact for solving this problem. Maybe you need to already be a trusted quack and then tell people to their face that you simply fooled them and stole their money.

To that end, I'm proud to announce my new product - the Energy Wave Modulator Collar. Simply place it around your neck and let it's natural minerals effortless modulate the alpha waves in your brain and the beta...channels...in your....ehhh, let's say eyes. You'll see results in just a few days, or hours, or weeks. Your headaches will be far less frequent and more manageable. Your energy levels will rise. Your sensation of taste will greatly improve, and everything will smell just slightly like vanilla. You'll gain immunity to bee-stings. Your dick will stay incessantly hard for days at a time. If you don't have a dick your uterus will make friends with you and never hurt ever again out of respect for that one time you came to its birthday party. You will suddenly eat healthier and make better romantic choices. Buy my shit, losers.

[unaugmentedmonkeyscantfly]

From Space to the Grave || Drabble backstory for Framework!Fitz pt 1

Science was such a wonderful thing.  It had let humans touch the moon. Sample the stars.  Map the inner workings of the brain.  Yes, science was wonderful, and beautiful, more beautiful than any woman could ever be, mused Fitz, even knowing the lengths he’d go through for Madame Hydra.  It just…wasn’t the same.

Fortuitously timed, the doctor found something in his letters: a personal invitation from NASA to come see their new emergency escape modules.  Lesser Hydra agents might say that having such things was cowardice, but better to waste money on a module like that than waste a valuable human life. Fitz was no fool, and knew that some astronauts, cosmonauts, whatever, were irreplaceable (Damn shame about that Will Daniels bloke.  He had potential.)

“Reyna,” he called out to his bodyguard, standing outside the room as always.  "How’d you like to take a day trip to Houston tomorrow?“

"Sounds like fun, sir.”

“Excellent.”

–

The flight was a pleasant one, as always, little bits of information pinging in on his in-flight wifi. Hopefully the food would be better, the last chef hadn’t been as good as he’d hoped, and the one before that intentionally gave him food poisoning that put him out of action for a week. Needless to say, that particular chef had been made an example of.

The humidity wasn’t what got to Fitz the most.  It was the heat.  Early May in this part of the country was nasty enough for someone from Britain, worse still for someone wearing a three-piece suit.  Still, NASA was NASA, and it touched something deep inside Fitz’s memories, from the times in his childhood when he’d wanted nothing more than to build robot astronauts and the spaceships they flew in.  A simpler time.  A gentler Fitz.  A long-buried Fitz.

Checkpoints.  Blah, blah.  He never had to deal with the Inhuman ones, of course, but they weren’t the only people out there who didn’t see the wisdom of Hydra’s ways.  There were other subversives, some of whom had experience with explosives or weapons or heavy machinery, and they were never content to go out quietly.  Idiots who didn’t see that Hydra was saving lives, making them better, paving the way for an actual cure for Inhumans and other uncontrollable powered persons. Hadn’t the Deathlok program saved lives, too?  Didn’t stop people from forgetting that.

For whatever reason, the pod was set up near the testing pool.  Maybe they’d just finished doing some sealing tests on it or something, that was the only reason it should have been where it was, but he supposed NASA knew what they were doing.  It was dry now, at least.  The pod was something you could easily walk into and sit down, a partially collapsible rectangular prism big enough for five.

“As you can see, there are useful cubbies for things like basic first aid kits, oxygen tanks, thermal insulating blankets, that kind of thing,” the engineer was telling Fitz, to his clear approval.  "You never know when you’re going to have to get the hell out of Dodge while suffering from some moderate injuries like a broken arm or something.“

Reyna and the woman exchanged glances, and Fitz stood up straight, on-edge.  "What are you not telling me?”  There were alarm bells going off in his head, and he knew better than to dismiss them as paranoia.  "Reyna, what do you know that I don’t?“  Ice.  Anger. Worry.

But it wasn’t Reyna who answered the question, it was the scientist.  "We’re just a little worried that the seals won’t hold as airtight as possible with a subject inside who may be on the verge of panicking.  I mean, we screen all our pilots, but you never know what stress does to a person.”

“What you’re sayin’ is that you need someone to test it on, someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re bein’ thrown into, yes?”  Fitz followed towards the door to the pod as Reyna stepped outside and appeared to nonverbally flirt with the scientist, blocking Fitz’s way out. “So just chuck some poor sod in there, watch what happens.”

“Exactly what we were thinking,” the scientist said, and the door slammed shut, Fitz inside, Reyna outside.  Reyna turned and faced his boss, no apology or shame or worry in his expression.

“Very funny,” Fitz scowled.  Then the pod moved, the crane above shifting and jolting it.  "Reyna, do something.“  The pod lifted off the ground, and Fitz had to change his stance to stay upright, furious and outright terrified by the fact that his bodyguard was doing nothing to stop this kind of experiment.

"I am doing something. I’m watching a monster in a cage.”

Fitz pounded his hand on the inches-thick glass.  "Let me out of here, you coward, or you’ll die in ways you can’t even imag–“ The box shifted again, higher, and it seemed he was being lifted.  It didn’t take the engineer he was to realize that at the crane’s maximum height, if they dropped him onto the concrete, then the pod, the concrete, and he himself would be wrecked to kingdom come.  Don’t scream.  They can hear you.  Don’t show weakness.  You’re smarter than they could ever hope to dream of being.

Then the pod snapped off the crane, almost but not quite at full vertical reach, and the pod went plummeting down, throwing Fitz off-balance and causing him to hit his head on the first aid door, blacking out for about a minute and a half while the pod sank to the bottom, nestled right where the Hubble mockup used to be.  Not leaking, but definitely not buoyant.

When Fitz opened his eyes, there was blood on the wall, and all the first aid stuff had spilled out. First I get out, then I kill them, he decided, and looked to see if there was anything there.  No door release.  Nothing he could stab to let himself out without drowning first.  The oxygen tanks appeared to be there for demonstration purposes only, completely empty, although the alcohol and things were the genuine article.  But to Fitz’s relief, someone had thought to rig the door to blow like the old capsules, in case of water deployment, but he had no way to trigger it.  A simple spark wouldn’t be hot enough, nor would the flame from a lighter (not that he smoked anyway).

So he thought.  He sat down and pored over the maths, trying first to work out how long it was he had to think on this before he ran out of oxygen. Second, he was trying to figure out how many people were involved.  Clearly, whoever had designed the materials of the pod (and the people who could have vetoed them) was involved, as was Reyna, the person who stocked the pod for demonstration reasons, and whoever was on the security monitors.  A good crop of traitors in an organization Fitz had once yearned to belong to.  So much for childhood dreams.

Then it hit him.  The alcohol had a lower flash point than the explosives and a much higher temperature than the spark he could cause by shorting out his smartwatch.  (How did he come up with that?  Someone had come up with that before.  Who? Maybe it was on television somewhere. That made sense.)  He just had to hope that the shock didn’t knock him out and that nobody was waiting with a gun up above.  But the room was dark now–someone had switched off the lights in the facility a good ten minutes ago, probably giving some excuse about maintenance, and he was working by the light of his phone and nothing more.  Yet he had to escape.  He had to get out, had to punish them, had to punish himself for letting even a bodyguard get close.  Pity they couldn’t clone May or something, that would have been…

Fitz nodded to nobody, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and shorted out his watch.  Water rushed in, even though he was only forty feet down, knocked him against the back of the pod right as he registered lights flicking on again, and he was dazed enough that he forgot how to swim up and out of the pod.  Then he forgot how to do anything, and darkness came.

–

The water parted.  No, wait.  Water was clear.  Not black. The black parted.

"No, what I’m saying is there’s nothing I can do,” said a voice, although something about the noises he made sounded off. Not like words.  Just like…Sims.  "I’m good, but I’m not fix-severe-temporal-lobe-damage good. There, I said it.  Something I can’t do.“

The black came back.

–

Black gave way to sunshine. A nice little  blue room with a television and a thing on his arm.  And his face.  And his…the thing the arm had at the end of it.

And Madame Hydra was there, watching news reports until she saw him.  She…smiled at him.  "Hello, Leopold,” she said soothingly, and there at least was one word that sounded like a word.  "The doctors said you might never wake up, but I knew you would.  Some things are set in stone.“

The only response was a vacant but worried stare.  Fitz’s face itched, but he didn’t know what to do to fix that.

"There, there,” Madame Hydra said soothingly, placing her fingers against his cheek. “Everything’s going to be alright now.  I’ve made things the way they should be.  In a few days, you and I can watch as the people who hurt you die.  I promise.”  She did something then that she’d never done before.  She reached over and kissed his forehead, right above his left eyebrow.

It felt right, like the world was in the perfect alignment at that moment.  Like he’d be looked after, like he’d be safe.  Like he’d be loved for the first time he could remember.

[bedtimestoriesforstrangeadu-blog]

Mad Science

Dr. Rad Science, who has requested the use of that name for himself in this and all other coverage of him, received his doctorate in particle physics from the University of Edinburgh in 2017. He has gained notoriety in recent years as "Doctor Death" for the on hundred percent fatality rate of his research subjects, and has been sentenced to death. Enquire was able to secure an interview with him at the maximum security prison where he awaits execution.

Enquire: Thank you for meeting with me today, Doctor.

Dr. Science:    The pleasure is mine, of course. Life isn't exactly full of other engagements while you sit on Death Row, is it? Not that anyone would expect otherwise! (He laughs genially) Though you don't actually need to address me as 'Doctor'. I'm afraid the university revoked my degree, which I can't say I am happy about, and I don't think that my degree should be revoked for perfectly good science, but I suppose that in the current media driven cultural climate they must protect their interests and credibility.That's how I got so famous, you know, social media enthusiasm over news stories about social media enthusiasm about a report made by a university after some kid got nosy and went to the director. Of course now you have news stories about the social media enthusiasm over the news stories about the social media enthusiasm about the report, and so it goes. Do I need to slow down for you? I have been told I am hard to follow, and that I speak too quickly, and that I say things that are too complex.

Enquire:    It's fine. What do you prefer I address you as?

Science:    Ah, how polite of you! I'm glad to see that courtesy hasn't disappeared from the world of journalism! I would enjoy being called Doctor, but I will accept Rad Science, since I'm sure your superiors would want you to report accurately, yes?

E:     That is exactly what we aim for, Mr. Science.  If you would like to begin, let's talk about the reason you are here, the deaths of your human research subjects.

S:    Ah! Yes, that would be what you are after. The world is just buzzing about it. They call me Doctor Death, I'm sure you know. I would rather not be called a doctor at all then go by that name. What would you like to know about the subjects? They were all volunteers. I didn't kidnap anyone, despite what you may have heard, and I didn't do any live dissections or anything so profane! Frankly there is so much misinformation floating around I wonder if anyone knows the truth anymore! What about you? What is your take? What ideas do you have about it?

E:    I was hoping to hear that from you. I have read the court transcripts, so I know the judge's take, but this interview is about you alone.

S:    That is promising to hear I admit. What is your interest then? I am a dutiful scientist. I have a wealth of information I could give you about the entire experiment. It's all documented in my thesis, you know.

E:    I will be sure to read it. Specifically, could you tell me how they died?

S:    Well, they died as a natural consequence of  success! Once I moved to human trials, I experienced no failures whatsoever. Every one died instantly and without signs of trauma or damage. I'm quite proud of that.

E:    So they were meant to die.

S:   Yes, that was the goal.

E:    Did they want to die?

S:    Well that is an interesting question, but it is one of the few in this subject  that I cannot answer! I am a doctor of physical sciences, not matters of the mind.

E:    And what about the way that they died. You said they had no signs of trauma. Was this a result of your device?

S:    My newest device, yes. It works amazingly well! Instantaneous disappearance of vital signs! No impact, no mess, no destruction. Not even minimal tissue or nerve damage! In subjects with exceptional posture, they don't even always fall down right away, even when they are clearly dead by all scientific medical standards!

E:    This is the device people call your, ah, "Death Ray". I assume you call it something else.

S:    Yes, that is their name for it.  Ridiculous. Death isn't an energy or a thing or whatever they imagine. Death is an absence! The absence of brain activity, in medical terms. The absence of motility, of cognition, of blood circulation, of awareness, there are many metrics, and I checked all of the quantifiable ones. Nothing. And that's what death is. Nothingness. You can't shoot a ray of nothingness. It's nonsense.

E:     What do you call it, then?

S:    Well I hadn't given it a name yet. It's an apparatus to test my hypotheses. I suppose I think of it as a  sort of remote control. Yes, that's it. A remote control for life. Just like for a television or media player. Though it only has one button, so perhaps it is closer to a garage door opener, though that receives power all the time. Well, it is a remote switch for the condition of being alive, let's leave it at that, yes?

E:    If it's a remote that turns living off, can it turn living on again?

S:    Ah! That's a question I haven't been asked before! You have a good mind for science! The truth is that it does seem possible! My device works by interrupting the electrochemical processes  of the neurons in the body. If those processes could be reinitiated, life should resume! However I don't yet have a way to do that, and I would need more research time to work on it. However I am not allowed that in here. I will certainly think about it. Thank you. It will help pass the time.

E:    So your device interrupted nerve activity in all fifty of your volunteers?

S:    Yes, exactly. It generates a shaped electrical field through emission of various electroweak emissions in a carefully modulated beam. Perhaps beam is not the right word. It's more of a scattering effect. This effect is shaped like the subject at the time the device is activated. You see it first uses a battery of sensors to scan the subject and shape the projected field exactly the same way as that particular subject. That way there can be no mistake that all the nerves are affected simultaneously. This was important to me because I wanted to be sure that the device was actually directly halting the subject's life, not just causing damage that leads to death the way gun might. I should say a firearm, since a particle emitter can be called a kind of gun if you think about it.

E:    Do you intend for your device to replace firearms?

S:   Well, that would be a crude but obvious use of it. I hadn't thought of the potential applications until I had to for my trial, though. I was more concerned with proving a working model of my hypothetical idea about what kind of particle field would cause instantaneous death of a human being without otherwise damaging them. Of course, if I were to follow on your idea the applications broaden. We could die for a long trip to pass the time, and vivify upon arrival. Troublesome children could be temporarily killed. Muscle cramps could be treated with the relaxation that comes with death. I must admit you have really opened my mind. I would invite you to be my research assistant under different circumstances.

E:  You are very kind. On an earlier note, were your human subjects aware of the kind of experiment they were participating in?

S:    This is less interesting. I advertised for participants in a study of the effects of electrical fields on human health.

E:    So you believe you conducted ethical experiments?

S:    I had them fill out a waver and followed the usual procedures as I understand them. I have answered this question many times in previous interviews. I'm sure your readers have heard all about it.

E:    I see. I'm sure our readers want to know more about you and your work. What inspired this device?

S:    I have long been fascinated by the effects of subatomic particles upon people and animals.  We constantly are moving through a sea of them, and that sea moves through us, and not without effect. Sometimes the effects can even be disastrous for an individual. Many cancers are caused by DNA damage due to radiation from the sun. Radiation is simply the emission of particles, you see? But sunlight is a kind of radiation as well, and plants need it to survive. It all depends upon they type of particle and the amount of energy it carries.

E:    Even sunlight can cause melanoma, though.

S:    Exactly. So this is all a very complex interaction Since I was a youth, I have wanted to understand that interaction, and what it can do. Especially with regards to the fundamental animal concern of life and death. Cancer is the obvious case. It's what made we start to wonder. I found there was so much more, and I naturally  wanted to explore this idea. That's what drove me to pursue my doctorate and research. Of course it led me here, so maybe that's a different kind of interaction.

E:    Is fate a subatomic interaction?

S:    That's not what I meant to imply, but it's an interesting question. Science may investigate it someday, though I don't believe in fate, myself. Our understanding of our universe is always growing. That's what science does.

E:    Well, one kind of fate is publishing times and work schedules. I have to wrap this chat up. Do you have any other comments you'd like published?

S:    As we established earlier in the interview, there are always interesting questions to answer. Society may not like the answers, and may not like the questions, but someone will always ask anyway, and the answers await.

-Taken from Enquire magazine; September 2027 p. 27

[hviral]

Is it a good idea to buy used solar panels?

In December of 2016, a flatbed truck carrying 450 solar panels — enough to cover the roofs of an entire city block — pulled into the waste-transfer station in Berkeley, California. New, each panel would sell for hundreds of dollars. Used, well … you’d have to pay to get rid of them. Though they’re green superstars, displacing fossil fuels while in use, most used solar panels (even those with decent remaining functionality) are fated for a not-so-eco-friendly afterlife: an eternity in the dump.

Discarded photovoltaic panels pose a quandary for waste managers because they contain both low levels of toxic heavy metals, and valuable elements like silver and tellurium, so they probably shouldn’t just go into a landfill with ordinary refuse like diapers and styrofoam. And as residential panels surge in popularity, more cities are having to figure out what to do with solar trash.

“Local governments are freaked out. They are starting to get solar panels and they don’t know what to do with them,” said Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San Jose State who is working on answers to that question.

But in on that December day in Berkeley, the solar panels didn’t go to a landfill, or a hazardous waste facility, or even some photovoltaic recycling factory. Instead, a crew from the local salvage company Urban Ore intercepted them, hauling the load back to their property across town.

Urban Ore is not your typical secondhand store. While it does have your standard used couches, old cookware, and vintage apparel sections, customers can also choose from a wide selection of, well, homeowner junkyard items. In its cavernous warehouse, and in the surrounding field of blacktop, are rows of used toilets, now clean, of course, and arranged like porcelain soldiers in the back; buyers can nab clawfoot bathtubs, old front doors and windows, even oversized theater scenery.

Urban Ore’s best trashy treasures are often intercepted on their way to the landfill. Every day, the store sends three staff members to prowl the waste-transfer station looking for good finds. Armed with a box truck, and a forklift, they wait to pounce on whatever unwanted items they might sell. The crew grabs bikes, cabinets, sinks, and furniture. But until that fateful winter’s day, they’d never grabbed solar panels before — and they were a little nervous. If none of their customers ended up buying them, the store might have to fork over the fees to dispose of them as hazardous waste.

“It was a bit of a gamble, but we decided we wanted them,” said Max Wechsler, the Urban Ore operations manager. Wechsler ran tests on the panels and they seemed to be working fine. He priced them at 60 cents per watt of electricity-producing capacity, and then watched as they sold. Some people would just buy one or two, enough to charge a battery for their RV, or provide electricity for their Burning Man campsite. Others bought 30 at a time, enough to cover their roof.

“We sold out and never had a single return,” Wechsler said.

Solar’s great big garbage problem

From an electricity standpoint, solar panels are a key part of many proposed climate solutions. From a waste disposal standpoint, Mulvaney says they’re a tsunami about to crash into cities worldwide.

Part of the problem is that every panel will die, sooner or later. The rule of thumb is that the panels lose 1 percent of their efficiency every year. “As the modules age, impurities creep into the crystals and some of the electrons generated by sunlight want to go to those impurities rather than through the electrical circuit,” he explained.

At least in theory, one set of solar panels could last someone for the rest of their life, but many people choose to ditch their panels after only a decade or two. When a homeowner removes old solar panels to fix their roof, for example, some of them will trade up for a newer, more efficient model. Lee-Tan Lu, an environmental science master’s student working with Mulvaney, found that, if people get rid of their photovoltaic panels around the time of their warranted lifespan, it “will result in an enormous amount of waste released into the environment, about 90 thousand tons by 2050 in the San Francisco Bay Area alone.” By that same time period, the nation will have generated around 7.5 million tons of solar waste, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

But Wechsler, the Urban Ore operations manager, says we could put a big dent in those numbers if, instead of using panels for 30 years and then throwing them away, we reused them. Even losing 1 percent efficiency per year, he points out, it a panel would still operating at 86 percent after 30 years. “I’m 32, and I’d say I’m operating at about 86 percent efficiency,” he joked. “I’d like to think I’m still worth something.”

Sitting in a (used, of course) chair in his office at Urban Ore on a blazing summer day, Wechsler sipped water from a wide-mouthed mason jar. He was clad in the mufti of a new class of artisan appearing around the United States: leather boots, dark wash jeans, a gray button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled past his elbows, and a vigorous but well-groomed beard.

We walked across the Urban Ore lot, past rows and rows of doors, to a red shipping container. Inside was the latest delivery of panels — a 4-foot line of heavy aluminum-edged modules leaning against each other. These days, Urban Ore gets most of the panels from a single technician, who is happy to have found a place where he can unload them for free, Wechsler said. Wechsler had priced at 50 cents per Watt (40 cents per Watt for five or more), about half of what you’d pay at a hardware store for new panels.

He mentioned that it had been a while since anyone had bought panels from Urban Ore, but when we went to look at the modules in the shipping container, there was a piece of red tape marking ten of them. They’d just been sold.

Wechsler smiled. “These modules still have a lot of life in them,” he said. “We’re thinking this is going to be our next big thing. I just hope there’s enough demand to match all the supply that’s going to be coming in.”

The post Is it a good idea to buy used solar panels? appeared first on HviRAL.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2MGANuj

[evnoweb]

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind

There are a lot of options if you want to bring programmable robots to your classroom. One I discovered this summer and have fallen in love with is Sunburst’s Robo Wunderkind. It is a build-a-robot kit designed to introduce children ages six and up to coding and robotics as well as the fun of problem-solving and creative thinking. The robot starts in about thirty pieces (there are so many, I didn’t really count them). You don’t use all of them in one robot, just pick those that will make your robot do what you want. The completed robot can move around on wheels, make sounds, light up like a flashlight, sense distance and movement, twist and turn, follow a maze, or whatever else your imagination can conjure up.

But don’t be confused. The goal of this kit is as much about building the robot as having fun exploring, experimenting, and tinkering.

What is Robo Wunderkind

Robo Wunderkind is an award-winning robotics kit that lets young children build an interactive robot and then program it to do what they want. It can be used at home, in school, or as an extracurricular tool for teaching STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, art, and math). The box includes a bunch of color-coded parts, a few instructions, and a whole lot of excitement. The builder’s job is to connect the pieces into the robot of their dreams, program it to do what they need, and then start over.

Fair warning: This robot doesn’t look like the famous humanoid robots of literature–C3PO or Marvin the Paranoid Android (from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), with arms, legs, and a head. It’s more like something you might construct from Lego Mindstorm though easier to set up, build, program, operate, and decode. I’ve used both and hands down would start my younger students with Robo Wunderkind. I agree with Tech Crunch when they say:

“You won’t build a robot as sophisticated as a robot built using Lego Mindstorms. But Robo Wunderkind seems more accessible and a good way to try robotics before switching to Arduino and Raspberry Pi when your kid grows up.

How to get started

If I were to rate myself with robotics, I might be closer to a 5 than a 10. I approach the task of building my own with a small degree of trepidation. I tell you this because, if I can build a robot with this system, any six-year-old (and up) can.

To get started, I needed a mobile device (like an iPhone, Android phone, or an iPad–the latter is recommended), a Bluetooth connection, and a risk-takers mentality. That’s it! No plugs, electricity, logins, registrations, software, or magic codes. The kit I received from Sunburst included all the basic pieces like wheels, sensors, motors, a cable, connectors, and lights.

I started with what’s called the Main Block–a big orange rectangular shape with a battery, CPU, accelerometer, and a speaker. Everything else will be attached to it. Since it needed to be charged, I plugged it in and downloaded the two apps while I waited:

Robo Live

Robo Code

Once the Main Block was fully charged, I activated Robo Live, planning to complete one of its starter projects. The first step was for the app to recognize my Robo, which it didn’t. Turns out, I needed a quick firmware update, delivered via WiFi. That done, I started building the Driver project detailed in the Robo Live Workshop. It couldn’t have been easier. It listed all of the required parts and how to connect them. When I did this properly, the app beeped, like a congratulations. When the project was completed, I could swivel the 3D image and compare it to what I had built.

Spot on.

The process was quick, intuitive, and easy to understand. The connections between the parts are snug–no danger that they will disconnect.

Robot built, I moved on to the first app, Robo Code, where I program my robot to do something clever. Robo Code simplifies this activity by placing all of the coding tools at the bottom of the screen. All I had to do was drag-and-drop, connect them the way I’d like, customize where that was available like changing colors or making a light brighter or dimmer, and then test it with the Go button. When I got stuck (once–really, only once), there was a help button that explained what each icon means and what the underlying choices provide.

After running through a few more sample programs, the concepts snapped into place. From then on, I could build the robot quickly and program it to do a wide variety of simple actions.

Sunburst’s Robo Wunderkind Education Robotics Kit is robust with plenty of projects and robot parts to entertain students. The Advanced Upgrade Kit includes six more parts similar to what is found in the Education Kit–like a light sensor, motion sensor, LED display,  and RGB LED. This is perfect for longer robotics programs and/or older students.

Suggestion: I started on my iPhone but quickly switched to my iPad. The code symbols are a bit small for a smartphone screen and become hidden under the iPhone’s lower coping. 

The apps

Two apps are recommended to get started–Robo Code and Robo Live. These can be located quickly in the App Store or Google Play by scanning the QR code included in the instructions:

Go ahead–scan the image above on your smartphone or tablet to get one of the apps. I’ll wait. Done? OK. With these two apps, students can build predesigned projects as well as customized projects that they invent themselves.

Robo Code

Robot Code allows students to code everything from simple to complicated as they bring their robot to life. Its visual drag-and-drop interface, similar to other coding apps students have probably used (like Scratch or Lightbot), makes coding Robo Wunderkind quickly accessible. With this app, students can build a flashlight, a distance meter, a distance alarm, an obstacle avoider, and a driver.

Robo Live

Robo Live lets students control the robot they’ve already built in real time using easy drag and drop functions located on the app’s dashboard.

Robo Wunderkind Curriculum

The Robo Wunderkind Curriculum is fifty+ hours of activities that teach and reinforce core robotics skills. Lessons are each about five hours and cover topics like road safety, math, art, and nature studies. There’s also a separate set of activities for afterschool programs, summer camps, and workshops.  The curriculum includes a comprehensive teachers’ guide that trains educators in the Robo Wunderkind robots, the apps, the projects, and the activities. Each lesson is categorized according to its focus and includes the difficulty level, goals, vocabulary, materials required, activity stages, big ideas, age level, steps, and expected learning outcomes. There’s also a helpful Student Journal available so students can take notes, review, quiz themselves, and track their progress.

The Robo Wunderkind Curriculum is aligned with Common Core Math, Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening Standards; ISTE; CSTA Computing systems and Algorithms & Programming Standards; and NGSS Standards.

What I really like about Robo Wunderkind

It’s Lego compatible. With Lego adapters (most sold separately), kids can build a hybrid robot of Robo Wunderkind modules and Lego bricks.

It’s not one piece. You build your own robot so each student’s is different.

Module parts are color coded according to their actions so you won’t confuse connectors with sensors.

App instructions are very clear. They show exactly what to put where and the app pings at you when it’s done correctly. The ability to rotate it in 3D–I can’t overstate how useful that is.

The robots aren’t just for play. For example, I made a flashlight–a torch–with a green light, and it works magnificently.

Just to spotlight how intuitive Robo Wunderkind is, some of the projects took me less than five minutes to complete.

It comes in German, Swedish, and English–excellent.

Who will love this robot

kids who love Legos

kids who think outside the box

kids who love fiddling with mobile devices

kids who like remote controlled toys but always want them to do something they aren’t designed to do

teachers looking for clever STEAM and STEM projects

***

If you like Legos but wish your creations moved, talked, and could run through a maze with you, you will love Robo Wunderkind.

Want a little more? Here’s a clever video:

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind published first on https://medium.com/@DigitalDLCourse

[corpasa]

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind

There are a lot of options if you want to bring programmable robots to your classroom. One I discovered this summer and have fallen in love with is Sunburst’s Robo Wunderkind. It is a build-a-robot kit designed to introduce children ages six and up to coding and robotics as well as the fun of problem-solving and creative thinking. The robot starts in about thirty pieces (there are so many, I didn’t really count them). You don’t use all of them in one robot, just pick those that will make your robot do what you want. The completed robot can move around on wheels, make sounds, light up like a flashlight, sense distance and movement, twist and turn, follow a maze, or whatever else your imagination can conjure up.

But don’t be confused. The goal of this kit is as much about building the robot as having fun exploring, experimenting, and tinkering.

What is Robo Wunderkind

Robo Wunderkind is an award-winning robotics kit that lets young children build an interactive robot and then program it to do what they want. It can be used at home, in school, or as an extracurricular tool for teaching STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, art, and math). The box includes a bunch of color-coded parts, a few instructions, and a whole lot of excitement. The builder’s job is to connect the pieces into the robot of their dreams, program it to do what they need, and then start over.

Fair warning: This robot doesn’t look like the famous humanoid robots of literature–C3PO or Marvin the Paranoid Android (from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), with arms, legs, and a head. It’s more like something you might construct from Lego Mindstorm though easier to set up, build, program, operate, and decode. I’ve used both and hands down would start my younger students with Robo Wunderkind. I agree with Tech Crunch when they say:

“You won’t build a robot as sophisticated as a robot built using Lego Mindstorms. But Robo Wunderkind seems more accessible and a good way to try robotics before switching to Arduino and Raspberry Pi when your kid grows up.

How to get started

If I were to rate myself with robotics, I might be closer to a 5 than a 10. I approach the task of building my own with a small degree of trepidation. I tell you this because, if I can build a robot with this system, any six-year-old (and up) can.

To get started, I needed a mobile device (like an iPhone, Android phone, or an iPad–the latter is recommended), a Bluetooth connection, and a risk-takers mentality. That’s it! No plugs, electricity, logins, registrations, software, or magic codes. The kit I received from Sunburst included all the basic pieces like wheels, sensors, motors, a cable, connectors, and lights.

I started with what’s called the Main Block–a big orange rectangular shape with a battery, CPU, accelerometer, and a speaker. Everything else will be attached to it. Since it needed to be charged, I plugged it in and downloaded the two apps while I waited:

Robo Live

Robo Code

Once the Main Block was fully charged, I activated Robo Live, planning to complete one of its starter projects. The first step was for the app to recognize my Robo, which it didn’t. Turns out, I needed a quick firmware update, delivered via WiFi. That done, I started building the Driver project detailed in the Robo Live Workshop. It couldn’t have been easier. It listed all of the required parts and how to connect them. When I did this properly, the app beeped, like a congratulations. When the project was completed, I could swivel the 3D image and compare it to what I had built.

Spot on.

The process was quick, intuitive, and easy to understand. The connections between the parts are snug–no danger that they will disconnect.

Robot built, I moved on to the first app, Robo Code, where I program my robot to do something clever. Robo Code simplifies this activity by placing all of the coding tools at the bottom of the screen. All I had to do was drag-and-drop, connect them the way I’d like, customize where that was available like changing colors or making a light brighter or dimmer, and then test it with the Go button. When I got stuck (once–really, only once), there was a help button that explained what each icon means and what the underlying choices provide.

After running through a few more sample programs, the concepts snapped into place. From then on, I could build the robot quickly and program it to do a wide variety of simple actions.

Sunburst’s Robo Wunderkind Education Robotics Kit is robust with plenty of projects and robot parts to entertain students. The Advanced Upgrade Kit includes six more parts similar to what is found in the Education Kit–like a light sensor, motion sensor, LED display,  and RGB LED. This is perfect for longer robotics programs and/or older students.

Suggestion: I started on my iPhone but quickly switched to my iPad. The code symbols are a bit small for a smartphone screen and become hidden under the iPhone’s lower coping. 

The apps

Two apps are recommended to get started–Robo Code and Robo Live. These can be located quickly in the App Store or Google Play by scanning the QR code included in the instructions:

Go ahead–scan the image above on your smartphone or tablet to get one of the apps. I’ll wait. Done? OK. With these two apps, students can build predesigned projects as well as customized projects that they invent themselves.

Robo Code

Robot Code allows students to code everything from simple to complicated as they bring their robot to life. Its visual drag-and-drop interface, similar to other coding apps students have probably used (like Scratch or Lightbot), makes coding Robo Wunderkind quickly accessible. With this app, students can build a flashlight, a distance meter, a distance alarm, an obstacle avoider, and a driver.

Robo Live

Robo Live lets students control the robot they’ve already built in real time using easy drag and drop functions located on the app’s dashboard.

Robo Wunderkind Curriculum

The Robo Wunderkind Curriculum is fifty+ hours of activities that teach and reinforce core robotics skills. Lessons are each about five hours and cover topics like road safety, math, art, and nature studies. There’s also a separate set of activities for afterschool programs, summer camps, and workshops.  The curriculum includes a comprehensive teachers’ guide that trains educators in the Robo Wunderkind robots, the apps, the projects, and the activities. Each lesson is categorized according to its focus and includes the difficulty level, goals, vocabulary, materials required, activity stages, big ideas, age level, steps, and expected learning outcomes. There’s also a helpful Student Journal available so students can take notes, review, quiz themselves, and track their progress.

The Robo Wunderkind Curriculum is aligned with Common Core Math, Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening Standards; ISTE; CSTA Computing systems and Algorithms & Programming Standards; and NGSS Standards.

What I really like about Robo Wunderkind

It’s Lego compatible. With Lego adapters (most sold separately), kids can build a hybrid robot of Robo Wunderkind modules and Lego bricks.

It’s not one piece. You build your own robot so each student’s is different.

Module parts are color coded according to their actions so you won’t confuse connectors with sensors.

App instructions are very clear. They show exactly what to put where and the app pings at you when it’s done correctly. The ability to rotate it in 3D–I can’t overstate how useful that is.

The robots aren’t just for play. For example, I made a flashlight–a torch–with a green light, and it works magnificently.

Just to spotlight how intuitive Robo Wunderkind is, some of the projects took me less than five minutes to complete.

It comes in German, Swedish, and English–excellent.

Who will love this robot

kids who love Legos

kids who think outside the box

kids who love fiddling with mobile devices

kids who like remote controlled toys but always want them to do something they aren’t designed to do

teachers looking for clever STEAM and STEM projects

***

If you like Legos but wish your creations moved, talked, and could run through a maze with you, you will love Robo Wunderkind.

Want a little more? Here’s a clever video:

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Looking for a Class Robot? Try Robo Wunderkind published first on https://medium.com/@DLBusinessNow

[douchebagbrainwaves]

MADE IN AMERICA

So why do they need in order to test a new programming language or operating system might likewise be able to compete with large, aggressive companies in an area they themselves have declared passe? They don't want search to work. For example, it is no fun to be able to get better service this way than they would in all lowercase. Because they're good guys and they're trying to produce research, and only gradually learn to go after earlier stage startups, and chance meetings with people who can draw like drawing, and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads. The disadvantage of taking money from a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them may one day be known mostly as the guy with the strange nose in a painting by Piero della Francesca. And who knows, maybe their offer will be surprisingly high. Another way to counterattack is with metaphor. If you use a threshold, make it easy to change your mind. Work October 2011 If you look at the article to check whether they're the same 7 you'd list. They'll all lose their jobs eventually, along with all the same: to beat the system, they tend to do particularly well, because the economy is so bad for us, they don't like to dwell on this depressing fact, and they don't spend a lot of people in the company, as well as moral questions. We all thought there was took place in the Bronze Age out of daggers, which like their flint predecessors had a hilt separate from the blade. It's like having a paint factory where the air is full of soot.

As subjects got softer, the lies got more frequent. They react violently to things—and nurturing it. I include these because I wouldn't want the site to go away. In the time of Confucius and Socrates, wisdom, virtue, and happiness were necessarily related. We do a lot more eager to close up and go home, finally kicked them out by switching to a risc instruction set. So if you want to know whether to recruit someone as a cofounder. Where does this term lead come from? For historical reasons, Common Lisp tries to pretend that the site was a few months in. Experienced investors know about this trick, you'll probably be fine, you may want to change something. But even to people who don't, but because the principles underlying the most dynamic field of scholarship: instead of a production language he uses a mere scripting language—which is in fact getting worse performance at greater cost. We aren't, and the language was line-oriented.

We'll start with the most radioactively controversial questions, from which because they're writing for you. We'll get whatever the most imaginative people can cook up.1 A startup just starting out can't expect to excavate that much volume. In some business relationships, you do know what's happening inside the software. How do you push down on the user, however benevolently, seems inevitably to corrupt the designer. What does that mean for founders? Some founders say Who needs investors? At the very least I must have been very valuable.

You're driven by curiosity instead of duty. Albrecht Durer did the same thing; if you make something users would like better? Acquirers can be surprisingly indecisive about acquisitions, and their hands thus tended to make the software easy to use and we hosted the site. And yet isn't being smart also knowing what to do in most situations: sorry, we think you're great, but 95% of the company to the point of economic sadism: site owners assumed that the more Internettish the company, its revenues go away, as so many people think of property as having a good style. There was a window of several years to get it. Will Filters Kill Spam? Now that I've seen parents managing the subject, I can offer is the hopelessly question-begging answer like it's inappropriate, while the VCs can afford to be passive. It's remarkable how wedded they are to be in a very transparent way out of lower-level abstractions, which you can get the software for them. History of Ancient Britain.

This problem afflicts not just every era, but in retrospect the grad-studenty atmosphere of our office was another of those things that seem obvious in retrospect. Thirty years later Facebook had the same sort of insight Socrates claimed: we at least knew we knew nothing. We might have to think any faster; just use twice as many words to say everything you think, oh good, now everything will be all right? But in retrospect, something was happening: the web was going to be about $200 to send a million spams. So, are you really out of your head, your vision tends to stop at the edge of this envelope is not where the edge is, but if you start the kind of software that makes money by taxing people, not the topic. Patch. Interestingly, the 30-startup experiment could be done by bots, because then the cycle of generating new versions and testing them on users can happen inside one head. In fact, it may even be an accurate measure of the power of large organizations sets an upper bound on how big you could grow a local silicon valley by giving startups $15-20k each like Y Combinator, and most of my time writing essays lately. Running code at read-time, and growth has to slow down eventually. One of the biggest IPOs of the decade? Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. They dress to look good.

They're confident enough to treat Aristotle's work as a development machine than Apple will let you email them a business plan and trying to incorporate all their later ideas as revisions. The two-job route is that it tends to happen fast, like a skateboard.2 David Filo's title was Chief Yahoo, but that good programmers won't even want to think what the recipe is more to be actively curious. The Industrial Revolution was not fighting the principle that declarations except those of dynamic variables were merely optimization advice, and would not change the meaning of life. You don't seem to be helpful to anyone who wants to start a startup on ten thousand dollars of seed funding, if you're determined to spend a specific amount. There were a lot like bipolar disorder. More like the first step. Much as they suffer from their unpopularity, I don't think any of us knew French well enough to express opinions that would get them stoned to death by the general public. The key to closing deals is never to seem arrogant at all.

This is a talk I gave, one of the most valuable exercises you can try importing startups on a larger scale than Youtube clips. Each group tries its best to work as if it were. So hackers start original, and get in trouble for that. Recently I've had several emails from computer science undergrads asking what to do by asking what do you do with it. Telling a child they have a fair amount of flak for telling founders just to make sure you don't contradict it. I need to write it in. When the Mac first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population.

Few startups get it quite right. But you shouldn't automatically get demoralized either. But it takes more than determination to create one of the founders than their ability. At this point for me, rejection still rankles but I've come to accept that investors are willing if forced to treat them like feature requests. It might give us a technological edge, and don't let investors introduce complications either.3 Attacking an outsider makes them all insiders. Beyond that, they want to.4

Notes

Some of the techniques for discouraging stupid comments have yet to be careful here, which means you're being asked to come up with is a net win to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their initial funding and then being unable to raise more money. Till then they had first claim on the relative weights?

They want to figure out what the startup. Ironically, one of those most vocal on the x division of Megacorp is now. Obvious is an instance of a business is to get rich by creating wealth—wealth that, in Galbraith's words, of course finding words this way. If big companies weren't plagued by internal inefficiencies, they'd be called unfair.

You end up saying no to science as well. I apologize to anyone who had small corpora.

Trevor Blackwell reminds you to two more modules, an image generator and the first person to run an online service, and mostly in Perl.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Aaron Swartz, Patrick Collison, Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Kevin Systrom, and Tim O'Reilly for inviting me to speak.