Recovering, and a few points

View whatever, Monday, January 5, 2015

Another strenuous day, which is what I want. Learning to stand, sit, walk in the walker … meanwhile Mike Donahue and Roberta get the house ready while Alex and Eric are in Las Vegas working CES. Life goes on, I have my towel, the nurses here are angels, and recovery continues. It is not exciting to many, but now I can touch my little finger with my thumb and make the Spock sign with my right hand. Doesn’t sound like much, but it is something.

What recovery from a stroke means is that you must learn things all over again. What used to be an automatic act becomes a voluntary one, at least until it becomes a habit. One such action is swallowing, then swallowing without choking. I had to learn those all over again. I am learning it, but it is surprising how long it takes.

I intended to write more , but the therapists have exhausted me. That’s good but it is exhausting.

 

Tonight is a bit thin, but it has some interesting points

This is a full report I have not been able to examine in sufficient detail, but it contains more information on author earnings than anything I have yet seen:

authorearnings.com.

<http://authorearnings.com/reports/>

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Roland Dobbins

If you are interested in self publishing I heartily recommend you read it.

The  education mess is the greatest threat to the US of all.  Here is more on what is happening

“With all this studying, the kids’ brains become rigid. They know how to take a test, but they can’t think for themselves.”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/inside-a-chinese-test-prep-factory.html?_r=0>

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Roland Dobbins

Is it worth going into debt – lifetime debt, becoming a bondsman – for what most colleges give? I recommend to your attention http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/learning-curve_822394.html

Jerry,

With respect to Mr. Dobbins’ quote, “With all this studying, the kids’ brains become rigid. They know how to take a test, but they can’t think for themselves,” let me add a bit.

I have done a fair amount of tutoring; in fact I brought in some spare cash while I was getting well started as an author by doing so, by then having left my space job after losing a friend aboard the Columbia disaster. And I’ve seen that thinking bit first-hand.

I will never forget the private school senior taking Algebra II and preparing for the graduation exam. With a little bit of guidance, not very much, she worked her way through setting up the problem, manipulating the equation into the needed form, and plugging and chugging the numbers, all the way down to the final bit of arithmetic, in which she had to multiply 2 x 13. I have no doubt but that any of your readers can give that result almost without thinking about it.

She reached for her calculator.

I smacked her hand away and took the calculator. "That’s basic arithmetic," I told her. "You should be able to do it in your head."

She couldn’t. She had never learned the multiplication tables. I had to sit down with her and show her how to multiply it out on paper. A senior, ready to graduate FROM AN ELITE PRIVATE SCHOOL, who could not do basic multiplication.

And that was only one example I could give you, out of my own experience.

And it’s quite apart from the substitute teaching session I did at a local public middle school, wherein two boys abruptly squared off against each other with fists raised, and I had to break it up fast, as the rest of the class was taking sides…

Or the myriad of kids who had developed test anxiety so severe that they made A’s in their homework and F’s on their tests…

On and on…

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

Certainly everyone can and should learn the addition and times tables, preferably up to twenty,  by second grade end.  Actually they can be learned in first; we did in St Anne’s in Memphis in 1938.  Maybe a few won’t learn the tables, as a few won’t learn to read, and now apparently the public schools can’t teach anything that all don’t learn with the worst teachers. We sow the wind

.  The result is a class that educates their children in private schools or at home, and all the rest. That is the end of the Republic

 

Taranto on Sony Hack and NK

http://www.wsj.com/articles/escape-from-you-nork-1420234603

Money quote:

As long as we had (Bruce Bennett, the RAND Corp.’s North Korea expert)’s ear, we asked him who he thought was behind the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures. He said, contrary to much speculation, that he thought it was indeed Pyongyang. How could a country that barely has electricity—we’ve all seen those satellite photos <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140226-north-korea-satellite-photos-darkness-energy/> —pull off such a sophisticated act of sabotage? Bennett said the North Korean regime has a cadre of several thousand hackers, conscripted as schoolchildren recognized for mathematical gifts, who are based in China and carefully guarded to avoid defection

 

 

http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/12/29/area-of-arctic-sea-ice-is-nearly-identical-to-30-years-ago/

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

 

 

‘Global Sea Ice Breaks Record High For The Day – Antarctic Sea Ice Also Breaks Record High For the Day’

And it’s SUMMER in the Antarctic!

Stephanie Osborn

 

 

Interesting.  Given the weather in the US – well North America –  what is the source of the statement that this is the hottest year ever?

I think that it is not…except for places where the data set is, uhm, "off," shall we say…

http://surfacestations.org/images/MarysvilleCA_USHCN_Site_small.jpg

A nice example of what the data stations look like. The ones in Death Valley are just as bad.

Stephanie Osborn

And yet she should know.  I have asked others. and get no good answers. One friend who ought to know says

What she said, but with considerably more detail:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/12/2014-a-record-warm-year-probably-not/

The running satellite data record, for comparison http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/12/uah-global-temperature-update-for-nov-2014-0-33-deg-c/

The general web site:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

I continue to question the data that says this the hottest year ever

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.