What worries me is that these people who think they are so educated are not really able to differentiate between what they know and what they don't know. I would say that a course in philosophy might fix this, but that would fix the issue of ego that is probably at the root of the problem.
It is not something a government is going to do. That is why it is unlikely that humans are going to leave the earth local area for a while yet, at least on a government craft.
What we have to ask ourselves is there is value to actually being there. If there is value in actually learning to live in the harsh environment, to see what it is really like. We know that going to space is hard because no matter how carefully you try to work things out, there is always a gotcha you forget about. It is working out these problems in real time that teaches us how to cope and survive. This is true even in regular life, and some people fail, and die early. I clearly think there is a value to actually being there. I think that we do not have the technology to bring people back, so setting up a system where there is an even chance for some heroes to live out their lives and explore the planet would be good. If it is ok for someone to climb mount Everest even though several people die every year, but not to explore another planet? Mars One may be a scam. I don't think we are going to be able to explore other planets in person without higher risks than we have accepted thus far.
This is interesting, because despite the diplomatic title of the post, many if not most researchers who are publishing against man made climate change are funded by people who are going to lose money, at least short term, if man made climate change becomes a political reality. To be sure the improvements to industrial processes are going to create a whole new class of very wealthy people, but those who will no innovate will be left behind.
If we assume that students still need textbooks, giving those textbooks on an iPad or similar device can be cost efficient. If the student buys a keyboard, the iPad can do much of what they student would do on a regular computer. One can even teach the basics of programming or web development on the iPad, if there is a server running somewhere they can telnet to.
Of course the iPad is different from a book because the iPad is worth real hard cash, and the market for stolen iPads is robust. That is a hard problem to solve. It is the same problem with calculators. Students steal them and sell them.
At some point education will enter the 21st century and kids will have computers, and we will just each the cost of stolen machines. If we are to have a trained workforce, kids need to learn to use computers as tools, and that requires an acquaintance with them. We have not had a powered machine quite like the computer. The closest thing would be the car, but the car is not a general work device.
The biggest problem to educating our children is the idea that 'they don't need a computer'. I am fortunate in that in the 80's my family did not believe that. If they did I would be as ignorant and underemployed as so many who graduated in the last century are.
The real issue here is the idea that medical science is in fact a science. It may have elements of science, but if science is to flourish we must root for the null hypothesis, and there is no incentive in medical science to so do.
No, everyone want to believe the snake oil works. The desperate patient who wants to believe the snake oil will magically cure the illness. The doctor who is going to be paid a huge sum of money to promote the drugs. The legislators who need to win the next election. The regulators who want to get a job after they do their government stint.
I would support allowing risky drugs to be used for terminally ill patients, even children. What I don't support is the routine use of drugs we know are dangerous, and then the litigation after the fact, which arguably a major reason drugs are more expensive. Don't put dangerous drugs on the market, and the pharmcos would save billions, if not ten of billions.
I myself was taught FORTRAN when I was 14 in a one year high school course. The first grading period we solved problems, wrote algorithms, learned the vagaries of pre-pc computing, and learned to behave. Then we spent the rest of year learning FORTRAN, complete with coding sheets I picked up at the university bookstore.
This included recursion, and we used the only reasonable example one can give a high school student. The Fibonacci series. I assume that everyone has coded this by the time they 18. Like the swap function.
It is not so much that there are not simple and meaningful things kids can code to learn the proper technique. It is just that most of these are already part of the library, so kids are going to balk or copy or just not do it. For instance it would be great for kids to learn linear algebra by coding it, but how we can justify it when the row reduction is already part of most libraries.
Here is a little bit of AP trivia. In AP Physics they want kids to collect data and practice a least squares fit by hand. They note that computers do this now, but it is good experience. It is like AP CS. The kids are not being trained in basics, so they really don't know how anything really works. CS should be a craft, physics should be a process, but it is not always being taught that way.
It is unfortunate the the law has to be called in because the kid did not have the guidance or the sense to stop anti social actions on his own.
One of these authors that was writing before 1950 was Robert Heinlein who first published in 1947 and had established serious science fiction by the mid 1950's.
What lead to the popularization of science fiction, arguably, was the technological innovation in print. That is, printing paperbacks was cheap enough so that even if very few books sold, it was still possible to at least break even. The advent of the paper back is like the advent of direct to video movie. Lower risk, more titles, profits are driven by the few that sell well, the rest are pulped.
So this is what those publishing houses invented. Pulp Fiction.
Automatically upgrading non critical systems makes sense. Upgrading the working of a car through a insecure interface is nuts, automatically more so. You leave work to go home, the upgrade failed, you are stranded. Someone hacks the interface, upgrades you car to their car, you no longer have a car.
I am sure people are going to attack dealers over this as well. But when I needed the firmware of my car upgraded to allow the new commutation standard, I drove the car to my friendly ane highly reputable dealer, they upgrade the software for free, made sure everything still worked, and I did not have to risk the upgrade would brick my car.
I see this a lot. People know one thing, and want to make sure that everyone else are made miserable.
I blame the demise of Radio Shack on the fact that no one building electrical equipment or electronics anymore. I don't mean plugging boards together, or hooking up an Arduino, but actually taking components and building.
20 years ago the only other electronics parts store moved out of our city. Without radio shack there really is no place for a inner city kid to go with a little cash to buy some stuff and throw it together.
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money. - Ed Bluestone