It’s not Rocket Science !

1,428 Americans ( so far) have signed a petition to the White House website We the People urging that the government  “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016″. A Death Star , of course , is a manmade armored planet , the size of the moon , which will be capable of pulverizing entire enemy planets with fearsome death rays . It exists only in the fertile mind of George Lucas and , even without the yawning “fiscal cliff” , we just do not have the resources or the technology to even dream of  bringing it to reality. The cost of a Death Star , were we capable of fabricating one , is a whopping $ 15.6 septillion , or 1.4 trillion times the U.S national debt. Even the cost of the steel required to build this monster is a prohibitive $ 852 quadrillion . I can’t wrap my head around terms like  , septillion, quadrillion  and trillion but I don’t need to know them exactly to figure that building a Death Star is a non-starter. Any ninth or tenth grader should know as much but , still , 1,428 adults  thought fit to sign this ridiculous petition.

The same day that Yahoo featured news of this petition , the Siemens Foundation announced the winners of its annual national science contest.Top individual honors, and a 100, 000 $ prize ,went to 17-year-old Kensen Shi of College Station, Texas. He combined two previous algorithms into a new and more efficient one that helps robots find a safe path around obstacles.The runner-up was Jiayi Peng, 17, a senior at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, N.Y., who won second place for her work building and studying a model that simulates the neuron network in the brain.

Top team honors went to a trio of seniors, Jeremy Appelbaum, William Gil and Allen Shin, from George W. Hewlett High School in Hewlett, N.Y., for their research on a protein linked to tumor formation. They will share a $100,000 scholarship. Second place team honors went to Daniel Fu and Patrick Tan of Indiana, who created new math techniques that make it easier to analyze networks of genes and proteins in the body. The networks are responsible for body rhythms involved in things like sleep. They will share a $50,000 scholarship.

Did you notice something about the names of the winners ? Of the seven, six are Asian Americans and one is a Jewish American. I mention this only to make the point that mainstream Americans still shy away from the sciences . It should be apparent by now that the future belongs to the scientists and the engineers and the technocrats and yet most young Americans don’t seem to see the writing on the wall. The only technology that they are interested in are the latest video games.and social networking. And that is why we have people who think the Death Star can actually become a reality.

Thank God for the people like those who entered the Siemens contest , the winners and the non-winners  because it is they who will determine the future of this country and whether we can be competitive in the global marketplace. I am heartened to read that Jiayi Peng, the only female competing for individual honors, said she’s interested in studying math or physics in college. We need many more like her!

Read Full Post »

Take This Great Harvard Course Online for FREE.

I first heard of Michael Sandel in connection with two lectures he was to deliver in Tokyo. The lectures were free ; admission tickets were handed out on a first come – first served basis .  So great was the demand for these lectures that some of these free tickets were being re-sold by scalpers for $ 5oo apiece. Imagine that.. $ 500 to attend a lecture  by a university professor !! Intrigued , I read up on Professor Sandel.

Michael Sandel , 59, graduated from Brandeis and went on to get a doctorate from Oxford where he was a Rhodes scholar . He is a political philosopher and educator who has taught at Harvard for more than two decades and his course on   Justice  has been attended by more than 18,000 students . It is the most popular course taught  at Harvard ; in fall 2007 , 1115 students took the course. The course was recorded in 2005 and  an abridged version  Justice : What’s the Right Thing to Do ? is available online absolutely free. It is this course that I ‘m currently enjoying and which I recommend that you check out  , if you haven’t already done so. It consists of 12 lectures , each about 55 minutes long . Each lecture explores a single topic and is divided into two parts so you , the viewer , can take a break if you so wish.

The course introduces students to the ideas of philosophers such as Aristotle , Emmanuel Kant , Jeremy Bentham , John Stuart Mill and others . It explores such topics as placing a dollar value on human life , individual rights vs. freedom of choice , and compensating for injustices such as slavery and segregation.In other hands , these topics might result in boredom but not when Prof. Sandel tackles them .

Professor Sandel employs the Socratic method , laying out a scenario  and asking his audience what they think is the right course of action . Whatever the answer is , he asks more questions which cause the students to think for themselves and examine their beliefs . The first lecture tackles this moral dilemma : If you had to choose between killing one person to save the lives of five others and doing nothing , what would you do ? Most students respond that the choice is clear-cut ; that sacrificing one life to save 5 others is the right thing to do . The professor then ups the ante : what if they had to kill the person themselves ? And so it goes …

I’m explaining the subject very poorly, but then words cannot describe the artistry of Professor Sandel’s classroom style. No wonder that his student audience is entranced , hanging on his every word .He has a very engaging personality and a calm unhurried way about him that makes his listeners immediately like him . When he speaks ,   his diction is so clear ,his explanations are so lucid , his train of thought so logical and his choice of words so perfect that his audience is swept along  with him .  The situations he postulates are also riveting. In the first lecture , for instance , he asks the students to imagine a runway trolley car whose brakes have failed. Directly in its path are five workers who are marked for certain death unless the trolley car can be diverted . The driver  notices that there is a spur to one side where only one man is working. If he can guide the car onto the spur ( luckily, the steering wheel is working)  , the five workers will be spared at the cost of the lone worker’s life . What should the trolley car driver do ? The answer is easy and most everyone agrees that he should swing the trolley onto the spur . Then Professor Sandel involves the students more directly in the decision-making : Imagine that you are standing on the bridge above the trolley line . Everything else is the same as before : speeding runaway trolley car, five workers in danger etc.  Imagine that next to you is a very fat man leaning over the side of the bridge  and you realize that if you tip him over in the path of the trolley car , it will be brought to a stop ( loud laughter from the students! ). NOW what’s the right thing to do ? This time the answer is not so easy to come by . And so it goes . Each question makes the audience think more deeply as Prof. Sandel introduces the philosophical argument he wants to explore.

Then again , there are other reasons  to sample Professor Sandel’s lectures . For one , it gives us ordinary folk a chance to ” attend” a lecture , to ” sit ” among the students in a Harvard classroom. No matter what the U.S News and World Report rankings say in any given year , Harvard has a cachet which no other college has and this is a golden opportunity to see what it’s like . It’s also a chance to see what  typical Harvard undergrads are like  and , secretly , see how one stacks up against them ; perhaps dream of what might have been if only one had taken the SAT more seriously. ( LOL). Actually , I was mightily impressed with the student attendees at Prof. Sandel’s lecture . I thought that in, their responses to Prof  Sandel’s probing questions , they were poised and articulate far beyond their years . However,  THE main reason to check out this online course is to see a great teacher in action as he brings arcane philosophical concepts to life and illumines  the minds of his listeners.

To access Professor Sandel’s course , click on   www.justiceharvard.org  or google Michael Sandel  and check out his achievements and the other lectures available online. There are some BBC podcasts that seem very stimulating.

Read Full Post »

An Exciting Unimaginable Future

The April21st- April 27th  issue of The Economist is a must-read for anyone at all interested in the world of tomorrow. The changes of the last twenty years  were staggering but they are going to be dwarfed by what is coming. The lead article in The Economist is titled ” The Third Industrial Revolution “ and it paints a picture of a vastly changed world , like something out of science fiction.

The first Industrial Revolution ( 1750 -1850) saw a transition from a manual and draft-animal based economy to machine-based manufacturing . It was distinguished by the use of steam power , generated primarily by the burning of coal and ,by the mechanization of textile manufacturing , better transportation and the use of metal machine tools . The second Industrial Revolution ( 1850  to the 1920′s) began with the introduction of steam-powered railways and ships and accelerated  with the development of the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation . Henry Ford’s introduction of assembly line manufacturing was another big advance .

 The two Revolutions began in Great Britain , technologically the most advanced nation of the time , but quickly spread to the rest of the world . The exact time periods covered by these revolutions are in some dispute  since the changes took place over a period of years but their importance in the course of history is not . During these periods there were dramatic improvements in the living standards of most of the populace as well as marked changes in the lives of humans.

The article in The Economist argues that the Third Industrial Revolution has already begun and that its impact will be no less than those of its predecessors. Exciting new technologies such as ground breaking  software, new materials , better robots , new processes ( such as three -dimensional printing), nanotechnology  and a plethora of web-based services are changing the face of manufacturing. For instance , instead of taking lots of parts and welding or screwing them together to build a product, it will be possible “to design a product on a computer and ” print” it on a 3-D printer which will create a solid object by accreting successive layers of material”. I can’t get my head around the idea but apparently it is ,or soon will be, a reality ; it is not a pipe dream . Already , 3D printing has been used to create hearing aids and parts for military jets . With 3D printing , anything can be manufactured anywhere , in quantities small and large . The new factories will be smaller and will require fewer workers  and the new “factory” workers will be engineers , designers IT specialists , marketing staff and other professionals . Labour costs will be much lower and there will be less need to export manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries. It is predicted that 10 to 30% of the goods that America now imports from China could be made at home by the year 2020.

The above was gleaned from the lead article in The Economist but there is much more detail to be found inside the  issue in the  16 page Special Report. It makes exciting reading. Do try to read it if you can.

As should be plain , these changes in manufacturing will affect other aspects of society since they will cause fundamental changes in the ways we live and work.It will be exciting to be part of the change  and it will also be challenging.

I am one of those who has been more interested in the past  than in the future. As a child , I was more taken with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table than with Flash Gordon ; as an adult , I read historical novels ,not science fiction . However , reading these articles in The Economist has , for the first time , made me wish that I was a sixteen year old looking forward to  my career , not  an older adult looking back on it .

Read Full Post »