Month: October 2012

Maybe education can be saved?

i am amused by these articles popping up everywhere. it’s always the same: some liberal arts writer complaining how hard STEM is, taking an online class, and then ending on a hopeful note that people will learn useful skills in the future, for a change.

Ideally, Udacity and other MOOC providers will help strip away all the distractions of higher education — the brand, the price and the facilities — and remind all of us that education is about learning. In addition to putting downward pressure on student costs, it would be nice if MOOCs put upward pressure on teaching quality.

DNA sequencing on Mars

venter is such a show off. after wining the human genome race, he sailed around the world, collecting dna samples, and doubled the number of all known genes. then he claimed to have created “synthetic life”, and now this. the man clearly has enormous talent, but i wonder if he is as insufferable as the biography suggests.

Craig Venter and Jonathan Rothberg are competing to put a DNA sequencing machine on Mars, each claiming that it is the best way to search for and confirm Marian life. “This will work only if the DNA on Mars is exactly the same in its fundamental structure as on Earth. It is very unlikely that terran DNA is the only structure able to support Darwinian evolution.” Though I lean slightly toward Venter. Some of the chemistry of DNA life has been shown to imply have the best combinations of stability and just the right breakability and attachment probabilities in the bonds.

Bretton Woods transcript

The transcript provides “insight in how it was that they were able to maintain a pace of work which allowed them to reach 2 really big agreements, on the I.M.F. and the World Bank, within a space of 3 weeks. Keynes was something of a task master”

cue new conspiracy theories from the gold standard nutters.