Including culturally relevant instructional materials represented a driving focus of our course development," explained ECS Team members who now advise Code.org. "Cultural design tools encourage students to artistically express computing design concepts from Latino/a, African American, or Native American history as well as cultural activities in dance, skateboarding, graffiti art, and more.

Fifty years ago the African Americans' lag in education was attributed to textbooks that ignored them, and a lack of adult role models in the schools. As time went on many black educators entered the workforce and textbooks included african american in pictures and as examples. Unfortunately it did not help much. We still have a gap.

Catholics, Jews and Protestants have different translations of the 10 Commandments. Some translations differ on how to divide the commandments. Muslim translation(s) may differ too.

I suggest a lawsuit to post all translations, or perhaps just post the original Hebrew version.

Has the accident rate increased?

When the LHC was first built I was impressed by the multi billion $USD cost. Now we spend that much just bailing out a bank so they can pay bonuses to their never-indicted criminal executives.

It's funny how we can't afford to repair our bridges and schools, but when it comes to bailouts and worthless wars, cost is no consideration.

For 2008, the average worldwide generated electric power is in the order of 5 TW. . This is estimated to increase at the rate of 2.2 percent per year from 2010 to 2040 .

This means will need to increase generation capacity by about 110 Gigawatts per year. If we generously assume that each nuclear power plant generates 1 GW, to supply all the increase from nuclear generation we will need to open a new plant about every three days. Given the immense cost, complexity and large delays associated with construction of new nuclear plants there is no way we we get close to that number.

One if Enron's hare-brained schemes was to develop a market in bandwidth . It was one of the things that steered me away from investing in what was then the hottest stock in the market

Thought experiment: What if just before we went into Vietnam and Iraq, someone leaked all our intelligence about these countries. There is a good chance the outcry would have stopped these stupid/criminal wars.

All of us benefit from being the heirs of the industrial revolution. Even the poorest of us have better health and nutrition than before. We all have better healthcare than the mightiest king did 300 years ago. Yet for the average person who lived during the industrial revolution life was poor hell. Craftsmen and herders were sent into Dickensian factories and mines. I hope we can live long enough for the majority of citizens to see a benefit from our present computer revolution.

I counted 102 beans in my coffee scoop. I weighed a scoop at 15 grams which gives 30 scoops to a pound (454 g ). This means there are 3060 beans in a pound. At a price $400/pound civet coffee comes out to 7.65 cents per bean.

I measured Brazilian coffee, not civet. The real number may differ.
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Another example of the increasing skill requirements for today's work force. 50 years ago the only skills required to rob a bank was the ability to hold a gun and drive a getaway car. Now - sheesh - you have to know how to break into a high security switch.

The average guy has no chance to make it nowadays.

The bacteria gets its energy from sugar in the plant. How much sugar? How much does it decrease the plant's yield.

If done properly and carefully, fracking does not produce environmental damage.

If done properly and carefully, deep sea oil drilling does not produce environmental damage.

If done properly and carefully, nuclear power does not produce environmental damage.

However, we know from the last two examples, things are not always done properly and carefully.

If we allow fracking, we have to assume that failures will occur, and have public plans, with pre-arranged financing, on how we will handle the inevitable failures

A large part of the total cost is the supporting structure, and the smaller the needed collector, the less the structure costs.

All of us benefit from being the heirs of the industrial revolution. Even the poorest of us have better health and nutrition than before. We all have better health care than the mightiest king did 300 years ago. Yet for the average person who lived during the industrial revolution life was poor hell. Craftsmen and herders were sent into Dickensian factories and mines. I hope we can live long enough for the majority of citizens to see a benefit from our present computer revolution.

Posted previously Jan 23, 2013