Gleanings of the Week Ending April 21, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Trekking Poles - A comparison of 3 hiking sticks. I am eventually buy a pair

Innovate or Evaporate commentary - from Norm Augustine - After a major study of the ever widening education gap, Management Consultant McKinsey and Co. concluded that "if U.S. youth could match the academic performance of students in Finland, our economy would be between 9 and 16 percent larger."

4 feet of hail near Amarillo TX on 4/11 - Wow…and then came flash flooding when it melted

Traveler’s Checklist: Petrified Forest National Park - Things to do and see

1000 Days of Infrared Wonders - 10 images from the Infrared Array Camera aboard NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (there is a ‘tornado’ nebula!)

Magnifying the Universe - Click on the graphic…and start looking at the relative size of things…from the observable universe to a hydrogen atom

Space Shuttle Discovery Flies Over the National Mall - En route to its museum home on 4/17

Atul Gawande: How do we heal medicine (TED talk)

The Worrying Consequences of the Wikipedia Gender Gap - Almost half the readers of Wikipedia are women but they make up only 13% of those that contribute…and it appears to be impacting the content

State of Flux - NASA’s images of change…mining growth in Chile, Dead Sea, plus more…in time for Earth Day on 4/22 (look at the bottom to see more before and after images…there is a series of pictures of the Dallas-Fort Worth area from 1974 to 2003)

15 Earth Day Tips that Really Make a Difference

Quote of the Day - 03/18/2012

Science is one of the great creative achievements of the human mind. The motivations, the satisfactions, the frustrations of the scientist are hardly different in kind from those of any other type of creative personality, however different the products of the creative act may be. - Marston Bates in Man in Nature (Foundations of Modern Biology)

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This quote is from a book written in the early 1960s but its idea is worth considering today.

It points out that we tend to put a narrow lens to our perception of creativity. We think of artists and writers immediately - not scientists and engineers and cooks and parents and….

Creativity is a big part of every profession. Let’s get over the idea that it’s something special that only a few need apply. It is an integral part of each of us.

Science and engineering are disciplines that enable the building up of creative achievements either through collaboration or organization of individual work. In that sense they diverge from the image we sometimes have of an individual artist painting a large canvas. That doesn’t mean that creativity is not involved.

Every one of us brings creativity to everything we do. It is our choice to apply it and we consciously or unconsciously make the decision many times every day of our lives. Creativity is involved when we think or do anything differently than we have before.

Creativity in all its forms needs to be appreciated by each of us and in our culture. It begins with us.

Quote of the Day - 1/29/2012

Scientific work requires intelligence, creativity, education and determination.  As a result, the history of science is always the history of a select group of individuals. - Margaret Alic in Hypatia's Heritage (Beacon Paperback)

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Which of the requirements for scientific work (intelligence, creativity, education and determination) is the most challenging for the US population today? Determination would by my top pick and the others lag behind it by quite a lot. There are plenty of intelligent people…lots of good ideas…education is available but linked to determination just as closely as scientific work is. Our high schools and colleges have plenty of capacity in science and engineering yet we hear frequently that there are not enough US students - even though scholarship programs that support science and technology studies are available to top students. So - it comes back to determination and perseverance.

And that is going against the grain of popular culture which has tended toward the sound bite, the quick gratification, instant feedback. After a while it becomes harder to focus on one thing for very long. Determination is needed for scientific work because it can’t be accomplished without deeper thinking…and that takes longer blocks of time. It takes a commitment that evidently few are willing to make.

The ‘select group of individuals’ that make scientific history is becoming more and more self-selected based on determination rather than anything else. Statistically, it is still possible to see gender bias in some fields of science but there has been tremendous progress over the past 50 years that has accelerated in the last 20. The instances of women doing scientific work but not receiving appropriate credit are gone.  

The future health of the economy, both in the world and the US, is highly dependent on the innovations that come from the scientists and engineers among us. There needs to be a cultural inflection point toward viewing determination….thinking and acting for a longer term objective…as a positive attribute for more of our population. It would improve our capacity for scientific work and a lot of other endeavors as well.