When I was a kid and was bored in Chem classes I would occasionally daydream of a messenger arriving at the classroom door to tell the late, great, Fr Farrell of a scientific breakthrough. Of course, in later years, I always assumed that it would be years before a breakthrough would filter down to High School Chem. But, today, may be a possible day like that. According to a BBC report from CERN (HT, WUWT): Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early. The result – which threatens to upend a century of physics – will be put online for scrutiny by other Read More ›

And how sure is that?

When we think of design, we normally think of biology or perhaps physics, but usually not mathematics. How can we see design in something that could not be any different than it is? I don’t know if mathematics could have been different than it is, but as a mathematician, I still see design in mathematics, and plenty of it. The non-mathematician, who may think of mathematics as consisting only of arithmetic and perhaps algebra and geometry, could never imagine the richness that is here, waiting to be discovered, in the many fields and subfields of mathematics. How could he imagine that there are enough interesting and challenging problems to keep thousands of mathematicians busy and entertained throughout their lifetimes? Many Read More ›

My company has been very generous in providing me with all kinds of training in highly sophisticated computational technologies. I’ve attended numerous training seminars, primarily in the areas of finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics. These three- to five-day courses are universally incredibly intensive, and it is assumed that the attendee has a thorough background in mathematics (integral and differential calculus, and differential equations), a complete understanding of basic physics (e.g., F=ma, so that the mathematical engine of the FEA or CFD solver can process the input), and experience with command-line Unix or Linux operating systems. In my experience attending these training courses I am struck by the fact that I am almost always among the very few who Read More ›

John Stossel thinks so: I visited another charter chain, American Indian Public Charter Schools in Oakland, Calif., that gets similar top results, also at lower cost. “Kids in American Indian Public Charter Schools score so far above the average for the state for public school children that there isn’t even a word for it,” says Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. Those schools use methods different from the charters in Harlem. For example, they pay some kids to tutor other kids. Both charters do something that regular public schools rarely do: fire teachers. One charter principal calls it “freeing up a person’s future.” (“Exciting Schools” Townhall , September 21, 2011) Of course, part of this Read More ›