omenti

low distortion rearview mirrors

 

History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes

      -  Mark Twain

Except it wasn't him.  

His clever and prolific writing made people assume he said it even though he never did.  It turns out it first appears around 1970 in a poem by a Canadian artist named Robert Colombo.  When asked if he knew where it was from Colombo couldn't recall other than he might have seen it in a literary section of the New York Times a few years earlier.  In fact it appears with and without attribution several times around the time of Colombo's poem in the early 70s.   That said, a hundred years from now people will still think Twain said it.

 

The process of science is much messier than the simple order kids learn in school.   There are too many dependancies to list.  A few philosophers of science  - notably Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn - have tried to describe how scientific revolutions and change happens.  The how, where and why of scientific change.  Kuhn and Popper are somewhat at odds.  Kuhn's ideas were popularized and are still taught as how scientific revolutions happen.  It turns out that both of the frameworks are deeply flawed and have fallen from favor with serious students of the history and philosophy of science.  I came to it late, but I'm more a fan of an earlier step - trying to understand some of the history of science. 

 

Unfortunately the history of science is often neglected in scientific training.  Students are told a few selective stories from the great revolutionaries without much context.  Experiments, theories and techniques are described with little background.  The struggle and small steps forward and backward are  missing.  The world seems much too messy when you start doing real science on your own.  (this is probably true in many fields!)

 

One gets bits and pieces of local history from the last generation or two in their subfield.  This can be very powerful. I learned a lot about the development of the atomic bomb as some of the people I studied with were parts of the Manhattan Project.  You need to learn the importance of failure as well as hunches and the need to distrust your own work.  

 

The history of science, like the history of art or music,  is a story of the development of ideas that can be appreciated by non-specialists.   There are some wonderful books out there.  The trigger for this post was one of them:  Einstein's Fridge by Paul Sen.  I know the technical area well, but have big holes in my understanding of how all of this came about.  If you can follow articles in the New York Times science section, you'll learn a lot of what the physics is saying without the math and how it changed the world.  He gives a very simple, but accurate, description of entropy and has the best description of photosynthesis I've seen that doesn't get into biochemistry.  The historical motivations make it come alive.  I'm stealing some of his clear descriptions.

 

Most of this is probably true in many other fields.  About twenty years ago a friend invited me to dinner with Maurice Wilkes - his grand advisor.  Even though Maurice was in his late eighties the discussion went on late into the night and continued on two more occasions. I'm not a computer scientist or engineer, but Maurice is a physicist who happened to invent a good deal of the fundamentals of computing that's still in use.  Hearing him talk about the early history and the connections to our shared background made it all come alive.  The problems computers had to solve as well as the nuts and bolts of designing one - provided a wonderfully rich learning experience.  There was this hint of how the great mind of this humble person worked. A good history book can provide that kind of experience.

 

 

mother's day

She enjoyed having to wait.  People around her would become characters in stories she'd make up.  Story making was a hobby of hers.  Often she'd invite you to join in.  As you gained experience, she'd take greater leaps.  Simple things on the street would develop complex plot twists and even find themselves in other eras or places.  

 

She was a bit on the quirky creative side and some of that may have rubbed off on me and my sister.  Here are a few lessons I learned:

° It's good to have some boredom in your life. It encourages you to try something new.

° It's fine to not be great at something if you enjoy it.

° You need several very different interests because they'll have conversations with each other if you just listen.

° Don't worry about names and dates in school. "How" and "why" are better.

° chocolate is good, pie is good, ice cream is good.

° Your friends may turn out to be at least as important as your family.  Find the good ones.

 

We were never pushed to do homework school. My parents were busy enough that our upbringing was more semi-supervised free range.  There were a lot of books and trips to the library.  The reward for a good report card we'd get an ice cream cone from Dairy Queen.  Perfect marks scored a banana split or a milk shake.  And even if she didn't understand our interests, Mom would support us how best she could. 

 

When I was about fifteen I read Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland - probably the book that had the biggest impact on me until I went to college.  As I  described the world Abbott created, Mom ran with it and developed a richer story and asked some "how" questions.  Those questions started me down a path  that taught me a little engineering - subjects she was unfamiliar with.  I began to see the value of story telling - particularly those visual stories.

 

Besides stories she enjoyed drawing and painting.  She wasn't very artistic, but spent a lot of her free time at it.  I wondered why as my sister's art was much better.   Then I went off to collage and found myself drawn to sketching.  I'm terrible, but it's a form of play that can take me to a state of flow.  I realized she was probably doing the same thing.  My sister became an accomplished artist - some her pieces have been described as snapshots of quirky short stories.   She obviously picked up a lot from Mom too.

 

We celebrate those important ones through memories and  recognition of how they helped create who we are.  Even now I find myself watching people and imaging stories when I'm waiting.  She would have laughed at how unimaginative smartphones are.

 

Happy Mother's Day Mom.

 

the power of the liberal arts

a minipost

Tomer Hanuka of the School of Visual Arts in New York asked his third year illustration students to create a post-pandemic New Yorker cover.   Some of the pieces were so moving that he posted them on Twitter where they quickly went viral.   So viral that an article appeared in The Washington Post.

 

The power of art never ceases to amaze me.  I'm clearly not an artist, but think visually.  The few beginner art classes I had in school as a teenage played a big role in how I think abstractly.   I don't understand why art, and for that matter liberal arts in general, are on the cutting block these days.  Somehow they're not seen as relevant for the job market.  I think they're necessary if the student is preparing for life long learning.  Of course I'm biased as I was a liberal arts major (physics and math are liberal arts).

 

I've spent some time trying to link art and physical science programs in a couple of colleges. No details as it's been political and was interrupted by the pandemic, but I'm still enthusiastic.  The fact that one of the physics professors is in a rock band helps..

 

the education question

Last week I sent a note to regular readers:

 

Perhaps it’s a sense that things are possible post-pandemic, but I’ve been asked for comments on the future of education three times since the beginning of the year. While I have some unscientific and undoubtedly biased thoughts I’m happy to share it occurs to me this group is exceptionally diverse.

So the request: Could you write a bit about what you’d like to see in education going forward? The subject is huge and readers represent at least seven countries so just pick a few and stay away from clear needs in some countries - like affordable and equitable education. Those are incredibly important, but perhaps some thoughts on curriculum, teaching, etc.. I’ll collect and post them with my comments in a week - say a cutoff on the 24^th of April. Let me know if you want your name attached or not. And don’t worry about it if you don’t have time.

 

Here are the responses in order of arrival:

 

I could write too much on this but one thing I think should be focused on is an increase and improvement of vocational education including changing the name and giving it an equal or near equal standing with so called academic education. With the rapid changes in technology there are numerous supporting jobs required and they must be trained for. I would also like to change the word Engineering to Applied science and technology which might attract more women and others who have a fear or not so great feeling about "Engineering" .......................you asked for it there are many other things like required mentoring in High school, more use of the case method in all education fields...... good question

Ed Hajim

__________

Thanks for the request, Steve!

I think fixing the existing bureaucracy of schooling is a fool's errand, so I'm more interested in creating a scaffolding that helps anyone learn, at any time, with others not gated by their common age, etc. We've created many kinds of artificial scarcity where abundance exists.

With that in mind, if you have the time, I'd route you to my TEDx talk, then the Vegas talk I did right after, which dovetails into the first one, then my Brain on the Hidden Curriculum of Schooling and Great Design Questions Unschooling Raises.

Happy to talk about any of the above at any moment :)

Jerry Michalski

_________

 

As a grandparent who has primary care of two elementary school aged children, I have observed, obsessed and have a lot to comment on public education in my city, Seattle.

Our system is at once both profoundly broken and resilient.

Broken? A system that refused to use a complexity lens to plan and be able to respond to changing contexts. (And appears to have NOT been planning all along, but I don't know if that is true. They appear to operate with a fixed mindset. A mechanical mindset.When the governor set a deadline to return to school, the resulting design reflected a reaction versus a design ready for complex contexts. (The lowest common denominator?)

Resilient? The teachers and learning specialists who spend every ounce of their beings supporting their students (this is not ALL teachers, but we have been blessed with ones who have been AMAZING and have saved our collective sanity. Thank you Nadia, Michelle, Kendra, Stephanie, and many more...)

Broken is a system where children of color don't want to come back into the classroom for all the racism they endured before and during the pandemic. How is it we are shocked to hear this?

Resilient? The advocates for children with special needs, for communities of color, LBGTQ, and for families sapped by Covid-related financial and emotional losses. The people who have wrapped families as best they could with food, services, support and compassion.

The resilient people are resilient. Well supported families adapted in the pandemic with home based learning, bought the additional services their children needed/wanted, and when and where they had to, made sacrifices around their own work and parenting roles. Barely skipping a beat they continued their quest to get their kids "into a good college." Yup, the system they want is one that provides the path to a good college. They make the system work for their families or they go to private school. It is a sort of bootstrap mindset for white upper-middle and upper class families. "You can make it work if you do the work!" And they donate to the PTA so they are also addressing all the ills of the system. Yeah, right. But have we leveraged white privilege to redeem the school district? I don't think so. And lump me in there as often I crumble at the depth of need and the brokenness of the system.

Broken is a system so weirdly funded that when pressed to bring back students into the classroom, the caveat is "and sorry, transportation only for those federally mandated." (Note: this example is one of cascading impact. Bus drivers laid off, weird funding approaches and what might be perceived different motivations to remove choice options from the system by denying transportation.) A system that responds to loud, privileged parents who want their kids out of the house now. How is that an option for working families and single parents, particularly those with children in multiple schools? (Broken, in that the district has poor understanding and management of their own budget and yet resist audits and insights, preferring to spend money on PR to make things look good.)

Resilient? Parents who try and set up, moderate and endure Facebook support groups (that are often hijacked) that try and serve as a critical connection points (neighborhood car pools, walking busses?) even if the data shared is often wrong. (What happened to data???)

Broken is a state leadership that says schools MUST OPEN for the mental health of students, and yet the state nor the district provides funding for additional physical or mental health services (or has to cut them due to budget shortfalls), offers no support to families struggling with the mental health needs of their children beyond a link to a help line (not the school district's), and diminishes students who must stay or choose to stay remote by hyping those who are returning to the classrooms.

Our systems are designed based on outdated, broken financing models, labor/management relationships that have deteriorated over time into spaces of zero trust and constant battles, and the instantiation of our profound, national racism.

There is no better time to reinvent, not just tinker. To do that, however, we have to re-prioritize socially and financially the role of public education for all. We can't have schools funded on real-estate taxes which continue to thread red lines through our communities. And those of us with means CANNOT WALK AWAY.

Nancy White

__________

 

I think the focus on making students a product for companies is wrong.  The skills someone might need in 10 or 15 years may be very different.  I'd like to see school focus learning how to learn rather than memorizing facts that may not be facts.  At least some of it needs to be fun and play is overlooked.  Play's where you find your passion.  For people not going to college I like apprentice systems like the German and Danish systems.   

In Alberta we had streaming. Kids were assigned to groups by what they thought was ability.    They must have thought it would be easier to put me in the slowest group because I'm deaf.   We were the kids who were constantly reminded we'd never amount to anything.   On top of that  kids and even some of the staff bullied me because I look unusual.  My parents didn't know enough to advocate for me.  Some children fall through the floor.  I'd like to see that fixed.  

Oh - I want people like Steve to teach math and science:-)

Jheri

 

__________

 

I've written quite a bit on what I think is important assuming the issues Nancy points out can be addressed, so I'll spare you.  Get in touch if you'd ever like to talk about it. But one thing..

 

The first time I was in my grad school mentor's office I noticed something on the top left of his blackboard

Knowledge is acquired and never bestowed

It was always there. 

 

questions inadequately probed

Kip sent this lovely piece 

 

 

It's pretty funny, but then you remember some misconceptions you had became you didn't ask the right questions.   When I was a kid we had to sing the Christmas carol Angels We Have heard on High.   Apart from the line  Gloria in excelsis Deo,  it made sense.  Our teacher didn't explain it was Latin, so my mind patched together a meaningless phrase that I could sing out out - something like in eggshells sustain -e-oh.   A few years later we had to sing it in a choir -  this time with a score.  I didn't know Latin, but at least there was enough information to track it down. 

 

Keeping with the family tradition one of my nieces proudly sang the line:  The ants are my friends, they’re blowing in the wind. The ants they’re a blowing in the wind.  (I wish I could remember her full take on the song - she was about four)

 

The mind is awfully good at coming up with an explanation when you don't have enough information, I've had several other dramatic misunderstandings - often much more serious than the lyrics in a song.  Over the years you learn you need to ask questions when there's cognitive dissonance.  Not that this works for all misinterpretations and misinformation, but it helps for some.  

 

Feel free to add some of yours in the comments.

 

 

chindōgu

a minipost

Several people have written asking for educational projects to occupy their kids during the pandemic.  I've answered with a number of ideas, but it hit me chindōgu could be the perfect ticket for many.  It's the absurd Japanese art of useless inventions aimed at solving everyday problems with roots in Rube Goldberg machines and the art of the kludge - a clever but inelegant solution to a problem.   A number of good examples are shown here.  I've recommended this approach to a number of middle and high school teachers.  At least one has had a lot of fun with it making a "how to program things" module more fun.  It's also become a recreational art form at an animation studio you've heard about.

 

Thinking that way can be unexpected powerful.  It cuts through barriers combining critical thinking and play with the goal of humor.  Failure is fine and can be a powerful learning experience. Simone Giertz has been credited with getting more teenage girls interested in engineering than other person or program.  She's famous for useless robots - "shitty robots" as she calls them.   Here's her TED talk (one of the few useful TED talks I've seen).  

 Here's her YouTube channel.  Earlier pieces may be more accessible to beginners as she's become more sophisticated in her craziness.  And she has done much of this with brain cancer.  A remarkable inspiration. 

 

So start off small with supplies around the house and just have fun.  There aren't any downsides and you can spend as much or as little as you want.  You're only limited by your imagination and sense of humor.  And if you are building them, you can draw or write about them.   

 

 

checking out your neighborhood

minipost and recommendation

The books you wore out when you were fourteen or fifteen are probably serious hints about your dreams and direction.  One of the two I wore out was a Norton's Star Atlas and Reference Handbook.   Beautiful, wonderful star charts to find your way around the night sky.  The graphical design was (and still is) stunning and it just works.  It cost a fortune in the day, but so wonderful.

 

Every now and again someone publishes a survey that claims only a small fraction of Americans under 30 or 35 have seen the Milky Way. That's a shame.  On a sufficiently clear dark night it's about as beautiful as anything I've seen in Nature.  Light pollution has largely taken it from us.

 

But even in suburban areas you can still see some stars and planets and the Fall in much of Europe and North America offers crisp clear skies.  Checking out our stellar neighborhood is much more inspiring than watching TV, but you need a guide to make any progress. Although I still love my Norton's (I've been through several editions), the better entryway is to use an app.  At least a dozen exist.  My clear favorite on iOS is Sky Safari at about three dollars on the App Store.  (they also have an Android version, but I haven't used it).  Go for the low-end version - currently Sky Safari 6 AR - the more expensive versions are used to drive computerized telescopes.

 

The beauty of apps like this is they know location and the time of day.  Then, using the phone or pad's compass and gyroscope, they calculate and display the section of sky you're pointed at.   Change the display magnification to roughly match the sky and it's sort of augmented reality. You can identify stars and planets as well as search for them and learn the constellations. Playing around with the settings is useful (particularly turning off the background music), but the defaults for star brightnesses displayed roughly matches the human eye in a semi-dark area.  You can also turn off the compass and gyros and explore the sky indoors.

 

If you get hooked the next thing would be a good pair of binoculars .. stay away from telescopes for awhile. 

 

 

 

how to speak

minipost

Some of you are amazing speakers.  I'm not.  Thankfully I'm not teaching anything this year - Zoom lecturing was a disaster for me for a number of reasons.  Rather than a post mortem, here's something useful.

 

This is from the 'how to speak' course that Patrick Winston gave for years at MIT. Not all of it will be applicable, but you may find a few bits of useful information. 

stories and star support

Watching the latest Physicsgirl video made me think of a couple of things, but first take a look.

Combining her almost reckless enthusiasm with a serious work ethic, Dianna is my candidate for the best visual physics explainer around. It's one thing to describe something with high production videos or stories, but quite another to fun educational demos that actually work.  These days she has a couple of people working with her and perhaps a dozen physicists who volunteer suggestions, but these still take several weeks of hard work to get right.  Her brilliance is making them look easy while being clear.  Trust me - that's hard.

 

Some types of educational story telling are a team effort.

 

It made me think of my first chemistry class in college - the basic inorganic class most people take.  I was just sitting down in the large lecture room when we heard and felt a large bang coming from the front of the room.  A cloud of chalk dust rose from the slate black board and the right quarter of the board crashed to the floor. Dr Spicer, the chemistry prof, rushed towards an opening door to the left of the slate.  As it opened Jerry and a cloud of acrid smoke poured out.   Coughing, Jerry pointed to the exists.   Our dispatch wasn't exactly orderly.

 

Jerry was a lab tech and in charge of the department's demos.  He was preparing something for a pchem class when the explosion happened.  It convinced me that pchem must be interesting.  

 

Good demos are hard to get right.  A teacher usually isn't the right person to create one.  You need someone with the inclination and time to devote to what needs to be a memorable visual story that the professor can embellish with words and equations. Often you need a someone with serious maker skills. This is true for real experiments too.  

 

I learned my lesson a few years later teaching a lab section of a physics for premeds class.  Two of us co-taught  two sections with forty students each.  The lab was a third of their grade so they paid attention.  (I didn't realize it at the time, but having power over a grade in a competitive class gives the instructor an inflated opinion of their teaching skills as the students are overly attentive.)  We hauled out an old Van de Graff generator - something that must have been made in before WWII.   A big one can generate a formidable amount of static electricity. We had demonstrated how the charge was enough to burn a hole through a piece of cardboard. The other grad student had an insulated copper wire running from his finger tip, inside his shirt, down his pants and connected to the room's electrical ground.   Since the students were interested in medicine, we reasoned they'd see this as dangerous and pay attention and learn why grounding is important.

 

The generator was at maximum power as he approached the terminal.  What neither of us realized was his connection to ground had come off.  The spark jumped about twenty centimeters and knocked him over.  I realized what had happened and yelled in anyone knew CPR.  They thought it was a stunt and started applauding.  Fortunately he wasn't hurt badly.  The sparked burned him a bit, but mostly he was startled, causing him to fall over.  At least it was memorable.

 

Another path to is memorable storytelling.  Ideally it isn't a solo effort as the audience should be involved. That's what I aspire to these days, but I'm not very good at it.   The other day we were talking about patents when I remembered Feynman's patent story.  It was one of his favorites, so I checked to see if there was recording.  Note he has an audience.  My own experience is that this kind of story telling is much easier with an audience - for me a very small one. In an odd way it becomes a collaboration.

 

making obsolete tech sing and beyond

Over the past few weeks I've been playing around trying to repurpose old hardware. Mostly CD and DVD drives and they're chock full of useful parts - lasers, motors, lenses and so on...  That and a bit of Arduino prototyping to come come up with a bag of junk that could be sent to undergrads next year.   Motivation came from the COVID-19 teaching experience.  At least in physics online classes proved difficult and labs unworkable.  Some folks at Caltech suggested a different lab experience where the student assembles or even invents a piece of  experimental apparatus to use to make some measurements.   The fact that most students have smartphones - basically computers with a number of interesting sensors and a network connection - makes this even more appealing.  It probably isn't appropriate for 101 non-major courses, but it may make a better lab experience for more advanced physics and engineering students.  The potential for real learning rather mechanically following directions is great - assuming you have good instruction to go along with it.  There's also the possibility of creating inexpensive lab kits for high schools.  High school lab experiments are ridiculously expensive and inflexible.  There are a number of interesting directions.  It's been fun and several of us are in exploration mode.

 

I need to add I'm a privileged white male with the ability to take a bit of time and focus on this kind of craziness during an epidemic.  Too many people aren't in that position.  

 

The project reminded me of some attempts to help my mother when she was dealing with dementia.  She became forgetful, so we'd make lists.  Then she lost the ability to read so picturegrams.  All along the way glasses, remote controls, almost anything that wasn't nailed down managed to get misplaced.  And then there was medication.  She went into a managed care facility. Life was less stressful, but she was constantly misplacing things and forgetting how to operate the style telephone and TV remote.  I started building gadgets to help out, but by the time one sort of worked, she had lost more capability.  

 

I've thought about it a fair amount since. The facilities are expensive - at least $80,000 a year and usually more.  What could you change to allow someone stay at home a few years longer?  Even if it cost ten or twenty thousand dollars, it could save a lot of money and be better psychologically.  (Greg Vesonder has done thinking along these lines)

 

Om and I were talking about where the local and personal application of "intelligence" is a big thing, perhaps the biggest thing, for Apple going forward.   With their sensors and local connectivity outside of the cloud, the iPhone and Apple watch have great senior citizen potential. The iPhone has machine learning hardware.  Combine this with ultrawideband location and a dozen applications immediately leap to mind.¹   Fertile ground indeed.

 

Of course the trick is to stay healthy and sharp as you get older.  It turns out there's a wonder drug which, taken regularly, doesn't have negative side effects.  The AMA now considers physical exercise a powerful drug -  often with superior results than conventional drugs. It has been shown effective in lowering the probability of several types of cancer, heart diseases, many forms of dementia, and is even associated with "happiness". You don't need a lot. Walking enough counts and you get it for free if you use a bicycle.  But you have to do it. 

 

Many people use smartphones , watches or dedicated fitbit type devices for motivation.It turns devices aren't universally motivating over time, but if they work for you it's money well-spent.  The sensors and processing can be useful for athletes training at the amateur level, but not at the elite level. That's a separate and fascinating story at the frontier of sports science these days.

 

Finally it's becoming clar that certain types of mental stimulation help push back the onset of dementia.  Forget the memory games marketed for the purpose - they've been shown to be ineffective.  What you want is something that challenges you - something you've never done that you have really work at.  Anecdotally creatives who constantly push boundaries are in good shape.  I suspect it doesn't matter how creative you are - just the fact that you're forcing a lot of new neural connections.  The brain stays plastic for a long time.

_________

¹ Current generation iPhones have the U1 ultrawideband chip.  They haven't done much with it, but it makes a lot of sense for augmented reality, ID verification and object location.  I wrote a bit on UWB a few months ago.