*Merry Refreshmas!(TM)*

I hereby declare that the 25th day of every month be Refreshmas!(TM)

Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katielips/ / CC BY 2.0

The mother tongue - bill bryson

I just finished this book The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. It is not a new release. It was written back in the 90's but I just stumbled across it during a visit to Vancouver back in the summer. It is a book about the history of the English language. Sound dry? No. It is a highly entertaining and readable volume. It is packed (packed) with great stories and histories of how the English language got to be the way it is.

Online education is more effective than classroom

Read the story:
Online education is more effective than classroom


Classroom learning. The teacher-student model of learning is a highly ineffective way to learn.

How did our public education system get started? Why is this the way we are today?
A system that will create industrial discipline – show up, work, read, count

Schools resemble factories
-Show up on time
-Bells ring
-Teacher is the boss
-Commute to school = commute to work – preparing students
The education system is obsolete. Don’t reform it. Replace it.

Japan – your daily definition of insanity:
Doing the same thing over and over in hope of getting a different result

Alvin Toffler on the education system – speaking, toward the end about the Japanese school system

A laptop computer for under $100

Did it come from Toshiba or Samsung? No. Dell? No. How about SONY or Apple? Hardly. The netbook did not come from these companies, either. But once it appeared and it was popular, all these big, sluggish, inbred companies jumped on it, except Apple. The netbook, by the way, was the creation of Asus, in Taiwan.

Cherrypal. Yup. Cherrypal. That’s the company that’s cracked the $100 price point for a web browsing computer. Origins are in Silicon Valley and are now owned by Tristate Lifestyle Brands (Tristate Hong Kong Group Limited).

PC maker Cherrypal has done something Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child couldn't do: make a laptop that breaks the US$100 price barrier.

Cherrypal on Tuesday announced a no-frills laptop called Cherrypal Africa, which includes hardware usually found in smartphones. It can run the Linux or Windows CE operating systems, which are also found on cell phones.

If these catch on you will see all the fat, bloated, greasy, drooling PC makers clamouring to produce their own sub-$100 PCs, likely for $129 due to Microsoft’s bullying in on the action, appearing soon.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/184709/cherrypal_offers_laptop_for_under_100.html

The Warmest Decade on Record

Data has been collected about the Earth's temperature. Records extend back to 1850. 160 years. The Earth extends back 4.5 billion years. 160 years versus 4,500,000,000. The warmest decade on record? What can this possibly mean if records have been kept for just 16 decades versus 450 million decades. Data collected represents 16/450,000,000 or 0.0000035556% of all earth's climactic data.

The Thames used to freeze over and Greenland used to be green! The vikings named it from it's colour. In the grand scheme of history of the planet, that was not so long ago.

Past Decade Set to be the Warmest Ever