Just like the people in the segment Jaywalking from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, you can find a few idiots in any crowd.  The video below is an example of this from the recent Tea Party gathering in Washington DC.

The best quote from the video

"You know this how?"

I would answer that question with this.  All it takes is a little skepticism.  People need to consider who is feeding them the information and what their motives might be.  Try listening to both sides of an issue instead of tuning out opposing views.  Then based on as much information as you can get your hands on, come to a rational conclusion based on real information instead of hysteria and lies.  That’s all it takes.  But we’re in America and we can’t be bothered to work to understand anything.

I’m sure there were some well informed people at the gathering, but I do think the majority are more like the people highlighted in the video, having been easily manipulated by lies and fear to the point of protest.  Somewhere there is a room full of people laughing and patting themselves on the back for what they’ve accomplished.

I’ve always hated the mess of cables that were required to connect all the components of my home theater system.  Between the DVD players, Tivo box, game machines, cable box, and Netflix streaming box, the rats nest of cables behind my component rack just keeps expanding.  Each component has some combination of audio, video and power cables (some with associated power bricks) that are needed to get them connected to the rest of the system.

And don’t forget the speaker cables.  We’ve gone from 2 channel stereo to a minimum of 5.1 channels with options to go to 9.1 channels.  Finally, with flat panel TV’s that we can hang on our walls, getting the audio, video and power cables to them is even more of a problem.

Contrast this with the way the rest of our world is evolving.  It’s going wireless.  From our phones to our MP3 players to our computer networks, GPS receivers and satellite radios.  It’s all about being free to roam around without wires tying us down.  We are quickly moving toward a world where we expect our devices to understand and automatically adapt to this wireless world.  So why can’t our home theater equipment do the same?

Let me describe how I think it could work and then I’ll talk about three existing or emerging wireless technologies that might converge to help get us a step closer to that vision.

The Vision

I would love to be able to buy a new component, bring it home and set it in my component rack.  I hit the power button (note that I didn’t plug anything in) and my receiver would recognize that a new component was placed nearby, think plug and play.  The receiver and the component would talk to each other to help the receiver know what type of device it was, what it’s requirements were for audio and video connectivity (speeds and feeds) and ask me to name the source component.  I would enter something descriptive like Blu-Ray Player and it would automatically assign the inputs to that device and push the information to my universal remote to allow me to select that component with a single push of a button.

This may sound like pie in the sky thinking, but many of the technologies to make this happen are here or in development.  More about some of those later.  The real problem isn’t technology, it’s getting the myriad of component manufacturers to agree on a standard for the devices to communicate their requirements to each other.  The manufacturers like to try to differentiate their equipment with proprietary features and getting them to agree on a base set of features that could be negotiated between them seems impossible.  But in my view, it’s all about convenience, and consumers are usually willing to pay for that.  If the manufacturers would understand this, they would not be so scared at the prospect of a universal set of standards.  Sure, the devil is in the details, but harder problems have been solved.

There’s also the small issue of some wireless standards for video distribution of High Definition signals.  But as I mentioned, there are some emerging technologies that could make this all a reality.

Read the rest of this entry »

In science education that is.  An article entitled "Why Science Standards are Important to a Strong Science Curriculum and How States Measure Up", was recently published that surveyed the states handling of Evolution in their Science curriculum.  It also compared the results to the same survey performed back in 2000 to show how things have changed.  The abstract states:

In 2000, Lawrence Lerner and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation reviewed state science standards in 49 states and the District of Columbia, specifically with respect to the coverage of evolution. We repeat his survey for all current standards publicly available as of May 2009 and discuss the history and role of state science standards in American public education. Our survey indicates that science standards tend to cover evolution more extensively than they did a decade ago, and that the average quality of the treatment has increased. However, certain types of creationist
language are also becoming more common in state standards. We also discuss the history and role of state science standards in American public education.

Sounds like a mix of both good and bad news.  But how did the individual states fare, especially Texas?  Well, as the title of this post implies, we’ve gone from a C to an F in the last decade, thanks mostly to our creationist State Board of Education and their re-writing of the science curriculum standards.  Texas is listed as "Generally comprehensive except for creationist jargon."  However, this is what they go on to say about the inclusion of creationist jargon.

"Five states, however, fail in their treatment of evolution. In these cases, the treatment of evolution is absent or made useless by the inclusion of creationist jargon and/or disclaimers.

Texas is among those five states, along with Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama and West Virginia.  Not a great group to be associated with. Hell, even Kansas gets an A.  At least it appears they woke up after their national embarrassment a few years ago.

Below is a graphic showing how all the states measure up.  Click on the thumb to view full size.

The good news is, there are a large number of states with a grade of A or B.  This gives me hope, but we really need Texas to step up and start taking the future of their children seriously.  Teaching your child superstitions and to disregard evidence is not the way to prepare them for the real world.  To try to put a positive spin on it, there is no way to go but up from here.

Ponyo is the latest animated film from the Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki.  He’s been making animated films for many decades, but I first became aware of his films a few years back when I was looking for movies with strong girl characters for my daughter to watch.  You see, most movies might have a female character, but they are usually being saved by the strong male lead.  That’s not the role model I wanted my daughter to emulate.  I wanted to find films that showed the girl in control of her fate.  Miyazaki’s movies provided that.

The first film of his I found was Kiki’s Delivery Service.  My daughter, probably around 7 at the time, enjoyed the film immensely.  I then moved on to some of his other more well known films such as Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky.  Both of which quickly became favorites of my daughter.

So when we saw that Ponyo was playing at our local theater, we were excited to go check it out.  And with a recent free weekend, we spent an afternoon in the theater.  But unfortunately, we were both disappointed.

Read the rest of this entry »