Saw this list of 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering (via Wired, via Bookforum) the other day and was happy to see that ‘advance personalized learning‘ made the cut — seemingly out of place among challenges like ‘provide energy from fusion‘ and ‘engineer better medicines‘. The selection committee (some smart people there, including Craig Venter and [...]
I usually try not to use such ugly words as ‘recapitulation and renascence’ but I’m always open to change — and change happens to be what I’m talking about. (No, this isn’t about Obama.) After watching a debate on cloud computing last week on The Agenda, particularly some of the comments made by Jesse Hirsh, [...]
I’m not a numbers guy — I don’t know where to find the facts to support the conjectures I’m about to make, nor would I know how to use those facts if I had them. (That’s sort of a joke. I mean maybe I could find the facts, and maybe I could figure out how [...]
I seem to be gravitating away from this blog’s original intention — to practice writing the kind of “short, gossipy, and meaningless” things that people might actually read. Oh well. So I’m looking at two options: find an editor, or focus on “writing for myself.” The fact that I’m publishing this stuff at all is [...]