http://www.cafepress.com/cp/customize/product2.aspx?number=1555993225
All Posts (6437)
Sort by
 |
| Image Source: Link below |
Although this post mentions Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hayden Planetarium Director in New York City, this is not an African American/Black History Month post about him per se. It is apparently, the 25th time I've posted his name on this blog.
It is about something he advocates for - science literacy - and where he said it, Greensboro, North Carolina. (Probably more times than I've posted about him, I've mentioned my "old stomping grounds.")
The inaugural post for this month concerned the latest Orwellian phrase forced into the Zeitgeist: "alternative facts," which permeates history, mathematics under extreme duress (see link at "inaugural post") and sadly, science - both physical and social.
Pretty much the photo above is a summation of his comments to a sold-out crowd. In North Carolina...
- Home of the HB2 Bill the previous governor rode down to his eventual electoral defeat and lost revenue for the state (and it's apparently still in effect);
- Home of the "pizza parlor" shooter, motivated by an erroneous story he believed to be true, enough to take a gun to Washington, D.C.;
- Home to the "Greensboro Massacre," which happened my senior year in high school before I matriculated to A&T.
Each bullet (ironic phrasing in the last two examples) are stances and actions birthed from ignorance.
A continuation of Dr. Tyson's remarks:
"Americans overall are bad at science. Scared of math. Poor at physics and engineering. Resistant to evolution. This science illiteracy is a threat to the nation.
"The consequence of that is that you breed a generation of people who do not know what science is nor how and why it works. You have mortgaged the future financial security of your nation. Innovations in science and technology are the (basis) of tomorrow’s economy."
He goes on to point out that Algebra originated in a more enlightened time in the Near East, specifically Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, al-jabr translating to "the act of completion." That was pooh-poohed as unimportant by a cleric ten centuries ago with no appreciation of the future, or the impact of prolonged myopia. Science has missed the mark quite often (which is why peer review is relentless), the most recent reference to the Doomsday Clock is due to an artifact that physics in particular created with the Manhattan Project, occupying silos, kept at bay hopefully by diplomacy and sanity. Tyson could be the "voice of one calling in the [willfully ignorant] wilderness," or like Cassandra - Paris' sister in Helen of Troy - foretelling the doom of civilization for the folly of selective, "alternative facts," and neglected real ones.
It could happen so easily. It could happen so quickly. Like a mudslide, we could be under the weight of an avalanche; buried under a warm mound smothering us.
It's not just Dr. Tyson or African American cultural history: it's a fealty or phobia with reality; the inherent ability to discern fact from fiction.
One can be evidence-based, course-correcting, resource conserving; limiting only unplanned births and progressing knowledge within the species. Or, one can be self-blindfolded, deaf to new information; deluded, soothed, comfortable: and deadly.
Soothing and deadly: That is the consistency and characteristics of hog slop.
“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.”
― Carl Sagan
 |
| An animation of satellite images taken about a year apart shows a huge difference in the amount of water flowing through waterways in California’s Sacramento River Delta. (Images: NASA Worldview. Animation: Tom Yulsman) |
Topics: Civil Engineering, Politics, Weather
Look at California (Look at California)
Look at California (Look at California)
The rollin' hills seem to do something for you
It seems there meant to be looked on by you
And when the sunshine is doing it's thing
Then you know that all you see is true
Every day every night the same old groovy feelin
People that live a lot love a lot
And everything there is so good
Look at California
Look at California
All the flowers are bloomin' all about
Every kind you and I could think of
And if you see anything that's missin'
Then they make it up to you with love
Whether up or whether down
It don't even mean a thing
Look at the things around
The peace you've found
And all that you feel is so real
Look at California
Look at California
Look at California
Look at California
Maze, Featuring Frankie Beverly
Civil Engineering is often derided as "baby engineering" (by some engineering types) because they don't take many math courses past Ordinary Differential Equations and advanced science classes.
However, in defense of my youngest son's major, I prefer to call it "Civilization Engineering," as the all-important need supplied by a STEM field is not longer battery life, laptops or smart phones and their associated apps.
Infrastructure (noun) is defined as "the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise."
That's not necessarily "tree-hugging." But I'm pretty sure you need one most importantly before you can fire up your smart phone.
"Basic physical and organizational structures and facilities" have to have representatives vote on appropriating funds to repair, replace and upgrade them. No amount of market forces and magical thinking "trickle-down" economics will repair a pothole or a sinkhole. It's "Civilization Engineering," and we'd better stress that to our representatives if we want one to continue.
After five years of drought, could California really have so much rain and snow there’s no room to store all the water?
The answer – as the state’s water picture careens from bust to boom – is yes.
The Oroville Dam north of Sacramento actually overflowed today, with water topping the emergency spillway.
Nonetheless, this is pretty dramatic:
UPDATE Feb. 12: Less than a day after the DWR said there was no risk to the emergency spillway and everything was under control, everything has, in fact, changed. Today, Sunday, the earthen spillway suffered extreme erosion and became at risk of total failure. This prompted the evacuation of 130,000 people downstream to protect them from the potential for catastrophic flooding.
Discovery Magazine:
California rivers are so swollen from runoff that the impact is easily seen in these before and after satellite images
Tom Yulsman
 |
| Paperback book cover, see links below |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
The second recommended book by the inimitable Jane Elliot, though she is indomitable and unique, should at least be imitated.
The semiconductor industry is viewed as rational and logical as it appears to be from the outside: Dr. William Shockley was the co-inventor of the transistor and shared the Nobel Prize for its discovery; we study his diode equation in electronics engineering. He was also a rabid eugenicist (pseudoscience), which goes to show merely an advanced degree nor a Nobel Prize inoculates from racial prejudice. He is mentioned in great detail on pages 235-239; 244, 255 and 276. He has the ignoble distinction of having pages at Biography, Nobel Prize, PBS, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Wikipedia. These are the cracks in the foundation. Nothing, not even science is perfect.
As I have said, the two books were cathartic during a season that made me question my coworkers. I concluded after this pedagogic catharsis, they are the byproduct of forces that shaped them; credible others that impacted and framed them. They have never had "the talk" or had to give it to their children beyond "be respectful," nor do they likely look at their speedometer, registration and inspection at the sight of a police vehicle; they do not wonder if their insurance is current or expired; their hearts do not skip a beat; the rehearsal script of the talk does not form in their minds nor does a long sigh escape their lips when the representative of "law and order" thankfully passes them by.
In my initial read of this important book, this statement stood out on the page (for me). Forgive me that it is from pages 1 - 2 in the Introduction, but as a "hook," it pulled me through the rest of the book:
"Yet as recently as 2010, highly acclaimed journalist Guy Harrison (2010) wrote:
"One day in the 1980s, I sat in the front row in my first undergraduate anthropology class, eager to learn more about this bizarre and fascinating species I was born into. But I got more than I expected that day as I heard for the first time that biological races are not real. After hearing several perfectly sensible reasons why vast biological categories don't work very well, I started to feel betrayed by my society. 'Why am I just hearing about this now? ... Why didn't someone tell me about this in elementary school?' ... I never should have made it through twelve years of schooling before entering a university, without ever hearing the important news that most anthropologist reject the notion of biological races. (27, 30)"
I was an undergraduate at North Carolina A&T in the 1980s. I never had to take a class in anthropology as a physics major, but I think after reading this treatise, I likely would have enjoyed it.
"I never should have made it through twelve years of schooling before entering a university, without ever hearing the important news that most anthropologist reject the notion of biological races."
Anthropologists, biologists, geneticists (and most) physicists I know, yes: political figures manipulating fears and conditioned-from-the-crib society, no.
Biological races do not exist—and never have. This view is shared by all scientists who study variation in human populations. Yet racial prejudice and intolerance based on the myth of race remain deeply ingrained in Western society. In his powerful examination of a persistent, false, and poisonous idea, Robert Sussman explores how race emerged as a social construct from early biblical justifications to the pseudoscientific studies of today.
The Myth of Race traces the origins of modern racist ideology to the Spanish Inquisition, revealing how sixteenth-century theories of racial degeneration became a crucial justification for Western imperialism and slavery. In the nineteenth century, these theories fused with Darwinism to produce the highly influential and pernicious eugenics movement. Believing that traits from cranial shape to raw intelligence were immutable, eugenicists developed hierarchies that classified certain races, especially fair-skinned “Aryans,” as superior to others. These ideologues proposed programs of intelligence testing, selective breeding, and human sterilization—policies that fed straight into Nazi genocide. Sussman examines how opponents of eugenics, guided by the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas’s new, scientifically supported concept of culture, exposed fallacies in racist thinking.
Although eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals today claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Sussman explains why—when it comes to race—too many people still mistake bigotry for science.
Most of the martial arts I've studied have oriental origins: Japanese Goju Ryu, Korean Tukong Moosul and Tang Soo Do, Jeet Kune Do (by way of Wing Chun and Bruce Lee proteges), Muay Thai, Silat; Filipino Kali. I discovered Capoeria and African Arts much later.
Robert Wagner (not the actor) was stationed at a base in Japan where he studied Goju Ryu karate. After getting out of the military and going to North Carolina A&T on the GI Bill, he established a Dojo (training hall) well before I matriculated. There were stories of his treatment in Japan not being any different than his treatment in the United States as a black man. His initial students were Attorney, Judge and Sensei McSwain (82nd Airborne Division), Challenger Astronaut Dr. Ronald E. McNair and Dr. Gilbert and Mrs. Patricia Casterlow and Mr. Samuel Casterlow, my karate instructors when I was an undergrad. Dr. Casterlow told us about "rules" like unnecessary redness of the skin resulting in immediate disqualification. It was usually applied to disqualify the predominant African American team members of The Fighting Aggies. Point fighting has always been a subjective pursuit. It's really up to a majority of judges that "saw" your kick or punch score. In many cases it may depend on your studio, not so much your paint job as in the past.
"'Why am I just hearing about this now? ... Why didn't someone tell me about this in elementary school?' ... I never should have made it through twelve years of schooling before entering a university, without ever hearing the important news that most anthropologist reject the notion of biological races."
What indeed would have been the result of a society and a planetary species if such lessons had been learned earlier, and like its dark antithesis, disseminated globally?
"The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea," Robert Wald Sussman
 |
| Image credits: Composite image by Yuen Yiu, Staff Writer and Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator. Fiber-Optic photo by Matthew.nq/Wikimedia , (CC by 4.0) |
Topics: Computer Science, Internet, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics
Scientists break the record for data transfer efficiency by using photons and quantum communication techniques.
Scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have broken the efficiency record for data transfer. Using a quantum communication process known as superdense coding, they squeezed through an average 1.67 bits of data per qubit. Qubits, which is short for "quantum bits," are units of data that utilize quantum properties to store information.
The result beats the previous record of 1.63 bits per qubit. Even more importantly, the experiment used only simple, off-the-shelf technology, taking quantum communication closer to practical applications in the future. The work will appear in Physical Review Letters.
More bang for your bit
Computers send information in units called bits, which represent either a one or a zero. These bits can be understood as gumballs that one party (Alice) sends to another party (Bob). In a classical system, Bob would register a one if he receives a gumball and a zero for a space between gumballs. However, these gumballs also contain other properties that are not communicated in the classical system, such as color or flavor. The properties are analogous to quantum properties such as polarization or angular momentum, which can be found in the photons and electrons we use to transfer data today.
"We're basically trying to see what quantum abilities there are, and try to see what can we use them for," said Brian Williams, a quantum physicist from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is the lead author of the paper.
Inside Science: Same Spark, More Bytes, Yuen Yiu
Now, Before I Begin, Purchase Scrivener. Why? What Is Scrivener?
Peep This Article ("8 Reasons To Use Scrivener To Write And Produce Your Books") >>>> http://www.magnoliamedianetwork.com/8-reasons-to-use-scrivener/
[If You Still Want To Know More About This Program, Type In "Scrivener" Into The Youtube's Search Bar.]
Back To My Story....
I Purchase My Own Program For My MAC Desktop, A Few Years Back. Helpful? Yes, But I Still Felt Constricted. Just This Week, I Was Searching For A Better Way To Make My Movements, More Universal. After Typing In The Right Question, I Was Led to An Article, Which Mention A Particular Blogger. I Contacted Her, Via Facebook Messenger. Here Is Our Conversation:
ME: About Three Years Ago My Father Gave Me His MAC Desktop, and I Downloaded A Scrivener. (Excellent Writer's Program, By The Way). This January, I Purchased An iPhone, And I Plan On Purchasing An iPad, In The Near Future.
My Question To You, Is This:
"Is Scrivener In The Technical Position To Be Controlled, From Multiple Apple Devices; Particularly With My MAC Desktop and iPad? And If So, Can You Provide Me A Link, Explaining How?"
Thank You, In Advance.
Rebeca Schiller: The only way to control it is through dropbox. If j
ME: I'll look into drop 'Dropbox.' Thank You. What do mean "If j" ?
Rebeca Schiller: if you go to simplyscrivener.com, I have tutorial about setting it up on the iPad. Once it's setup you can access your projects from anywhere.
I keep hitting send too soon and didn't finish the sentence. That was the if j
Me: Understood. I sent you a link earlier this morning, as well. Please disregard that. I'll check in on the link after work. Once again, thank you for your time.
Sent an email, earlier this morning.
Auto correct changed the word email to Link.
Rebeca Schiller My pleasure!
I'll Post The Link Below, (Man, i am Saying That Word Too Much), Where Rebeca Schiller Goes Into Detail, With Pictures, How This Feat Is Accomplish.
But Just For A Second, Imagine..
"Wherever You Want, Whenever You Like, You Can Access Your Files, To Make Adjustments Or Progress In Your Work. This Opprotunity, Alone, Will GREATLY Increase Your Productivity; From MAC Destop, To MAC Book, To iPads, and Through iphones (Yes, There Is An Dropbox app For The Last Two)."
So, To Reiterate
1) Purchase Ios
2) Purchase Scrivener ===> http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
[If You Just Want The Program, Scrivener Is Available For PC And Apple]
3) Download Dropbox For Each Device ==> https://www.dropbox.com/?landing=cntl
4) And Write To Your Heart's Content!!! :)
As Promised, Here Is The Article Rebeca Had Referred Me To (“How to Set Up No-Hassle Dropbox Sync in Scrivener”) >>>> http://www.agdaws.com/2016/08/how-to-set-up-no-hassle-dropbox-sync-in-scrivener/
Enjoy!!!!
 |
| An early book cover at Open Library |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
Good reads has the following summary:
Published to wide controversy, it became the source (acknowledged or unacknowledged) of much of our thinking about race relations and was for many a catalyst for the civil rights movement. It remains the most courageous, insightful, and eloquent critique of the pre-1960s South.
"I began to see racism and its rituals of segregation as a symptom of a grave illness," Smith wrote. "When people think more of their skin color than of their souls, something has happened to them." Today, readers are rediscovering in Smith's writings a forceful analysis of the dynamics of racism, as well as her prophetic understanding of the connections between racial and sexual oppression.
What is now controversial would be considered genre in the 21st Century. We've come so far, and yet have so far to go.
Lillian Smith was herself an enigma: she wrote Killers of the Dream in 1949, six years before Emmett Till would take his faithful trip south ending in his brutal death that would spark more activism and less philosophy in the Civil Rights movement.
 |
| Photo of Lillian Smith at the Blog: "stuff white people do" (ahem: by a white guy, on hiatus since 2010) |
Lillian was herself a closeted lesbian, during an era where the closet was less for protection from embarrassment or shunning by one's family: being in the south, a noose was likely connected to punishment from a "righteous mob."
An excerpt below I found powerful and poignant. I encourage you at no benefit to myself, to give yourself the treat of this book. This one, along with the other I'll share Monday, was extremely cathartic during a divisive election cycle where I questioned the motivations of my coworkers not from what they did, but what they had the audacity to say in my presence.
From part II, chapter III: Three Ghost Stories, page 123 (paperback):
"Historically, the first Ku Klux Klan originated in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866, formed by six ex-Confederate soldiers, half as a lark but used quickly afterward as an impromptu way of meeting an emergency situation in which the South was left without law enforcement agencies. Had it actually been impromptu and accidental, the idea would have been discarded and forgotten when order was restored in the South. But instead, it lived on and spread like an epidemic. Now today, more than eighty years later, the Klan rides in New Jersey as well as in Georgia and Alabama. It no longer limits itself to the revenging of 'raping' and the 'protecting' of womanhood nor is it turned solely against the Negro race. It is used against unions, against middle-class 'deviationists,' against people who 'drink,' against anyone who does or says anything the Klan disapproves of. It is becoming more undisguised and more undifferentiated in its sadism and intolerance, until now it is in the main a ceremonial acting out of men's deeply repressed fantasies and deeply repressed needs for revenge and penance. It gathers under its hood the mentally ill, the haters who have forgotten what it is they hate or who dare not harm their real hate object, and also the bored and confused and ignorant. The Klan is made up of ghosts on the search for ghosts who have haunted the southern soul too long."
"Killers of the Dream," by Lillian Smith
"If you are south of the Canadian border, you are IN the south!" Malcolm X
 |
| The Dodo: The Future of Polar Bears, in One Photograph |
Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Politics
(Sigh) True-to-form, any climate post is trolled (on Google +).
Troll: Fake news
Me: Valium or Xanax. Take your pick.
S/He obviously didn't look at the source link below.
Since we don't have any spare starships lying in orbital dry dock or actually on Mars at Utopia Planitia, we don't have the luxury of firmly planting our heads in the sand like ostriches. That in and of itself is a myth, since like most birds ostrich don't bury their heads: they eat sand and rock to aid in their digestive process.
What happens next we'll all find out soon enough. The Climate Leadership Council is bringing back the carbon tax, that would at least be something. I just hope the result isn't only a killer tweet.
As the Arctic slipped into the half-darkness of autumn last year, it seemed to enter the Twilight Zone. In the span of a few months, all manner of strange things happened.
The cap of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean started to shrink when it should have been growing. Temperatures at the North Pole soared more than 20 °C above normal at times. And polar bears prowling the shorelines of Hudson Bay had a record number of run-ins with people while waiting for the water to freeze over.
It was a stark illustration of just how quickly climate change is reshaping the far north. And if last autumn was bizarre, it's the summers that have really got scientists worried. As early as 2030, researchers say, the Arctic Ocean could lose essentially all of its ice during the warmest months of the year—a radical transformation that would upend Arctic ecosystems and disrupt many northern communities.
Change will spill beyond the region, too. An increasingly blue Arctic Ocean could amplify warming trends and even scramble weather patterns around the globe. “It’s not just that we’re talking about polar bears or seals,” says Julienne Stroeve, a sea-ice researcher at University College London. “We all are ice-dependent species.”
With the prospect of ice-free Arctic summers on the horizon, scientists are striving to understand how residents of the north will fare, which animals face the biggest risks and whether nations could save them by protecting small icy refuges.
Scientific American: Arctic 2.0: What Happens after All the Ice Goes? Julia Rosen
 |
| Image Source: Diversity Delivers |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
I will promote two books; one starting tomorrow that Ms. Elliot recommended on The Karen Hunter Show, Sirius XM Urban View during an interview with the host. I enjoyed them, and found them both astonishing and cathartic. One book is anthropology tackling the origins of certain comfortable myths (for some) and the other prose written in a poetic styling that captivates as it teaches from the author's perspective, quite revolutionary and brave of her at the time of its writing. Both should be taught in the public school systems to combat racism, sexism and xenophobia, but that quaint notion - "public school" and the Common Good - seems to have been bought by the highest bidder, who will apparently protect us all from grizzly bears.
In 1968, in response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a third grade teacher, Ms. Jane Elliott, in all-white, all-Christian, Riceville, Iowa, involved her students in an exercise in discrimination based on eye color. It was her attempt to help them to understand some of the reasons why Black people were taking to the streets and demanding equitable treatment with whites.
Since then she has conducted the same exercise with people of all ages in cities all over the United States and in several other countries.
Over a dozen films have been made of Ms. Elliott conducting the exercise. In response to requests from diversity trainers, both in the US and abroad, Ms. Elliott has now provided us with a compilation DVD of some compelling moments from those films. Seeing and discussing these clips can help us to recognize some of the issues surrounding the "isms" with which we all live. It may also help us to realize how we as human beings react when we are treated unfairly on the basis of physical characteristics over which we have no control. The use of the material can help to increase our awareness of the effects of racism, sexism, ageism, able-ism, homophobia, ethnocentricity, and bigotry in general.
This DVD contains carefully selected and thought-provoking clips from the Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed documentaries. These compelling moments are to be used to help diversity educators to respond to statements most frequently expressed by participants during diversity workshops.
The accompanying study guide contains ten examples of the stereotypical remarks that are made in Diversity Training classes. It lists clips relative to the remarks from several of the films, and provides discussion questions that help to refute some of the erroneous assumptions implied in the remarks. This material is appropriate for diversity training in junior and senior high schools, colleges, corporations, military groups and civic organizations.
Main Site: JaneElliot.com
When haze built up in the atmosphere of Archean Earth, the young planet might have looked like this artist's interpretation - a pale orange dot. A team led by Goddard scientists thinks the haze was self-limiting, cooling the surface by about 36 degrees Fahrenheit (20 Kelvins) – not enough to cause runaway glaciation. The team’s modeling suggests that atmospheric haze might be helpful for identifying earthlike exoplanets that could be habitable.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Francis Reddy
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, NASA
For astronomers trying to understand which distant planets might have habitable conditions, the role of atmospheric haze has been hazy. To help sort it out, a team of researchers has been looking to Earth – specifically Earth during the Archean era, an epic 1-1/2-billion-year period early in our planet’s history.
Earth’s atmosphere seems to have been quite different then, probably with little available oxygen but high levels of methane, ammonia and other organic chemicals. Geological evidence suggests that haze might have come and gone sporadically from the Archean atmosphere – and researchers aren’t quite sure why. The team reasoned that a better understanding of haze formation during the Archean era might help inform studies of hazy earthlike exoplanets.
“We like to say that Archean Earth is the most alien planet we have geochemical data for,” said Giada Arney of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory based at the University of Washington, Seattle. Arney is the lead author of two related papers published by the team.
In the best case, haze in a planet’s atmosphere could serve up a smorgasbord of carbon-rich, or organic, molecules that could be transformed by chemical reactions into precursor molecules for life. Haze also might screen out much of the harmful UV radiation that can break down DNA.
In the worst case, haze could become so thick that very little light gets through. In this situation, the surface might get so cold it freezes completely. If a very thick haze occurred on Archean Earth, it might have had a profound effect, because when the era began roughly four billion years ago, the sun was fainter, emitting perhaps 80 percent of the light that it does now.
NASA Team Looks to Ancient Earth First to Study Hazy Exoplanets
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
In the spirit of full disclosure, I was a NACME scholar back-in-the-day.
Our Purpose
Through partnerships with like-minded entities, NACME serves as a catalyst to increase the proportion of African American, American Indian, and Latino young women and men in STEM careers. We inspire and encourage excellence in engineering education and career development toward achieving a diverse and dynamic American workforce.
STEM Education
The academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are typically referred to under the acronym STEM. These subjects have become a focal point for educators and policy makers due to the high demand for qualified professionals in these fields. To fill this demand, the pool of students who receive STEM education from K-12 through college must be expanded. NACME works to bring engineering education to underrepresented minorities (URM’s) — African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos — who are expected to comprise 40 percent of the overall population by 2050. The key to U.S. competitiveness in the future global market is engaging these groups to pursue STEM education and careers.
Scholarships for Minorities in Engineering
College students have been forced to absorb increasing amounts of debt due to rising educational costs. This issue, which NACME refers to as The College Affordability Crisis, is particularly problematic for underrepresented minority students, who, on average, accumulate higher student loan debt totals compared to their peers (see NACME’s 2013 College Affordability Research Brief). Once enrolled, many minority students are forced to work in order to support themselves financially, which can often be detrimental to their academic performance. Financial aid and scholarships in particular, can help to alleviate this burden.
For the past 40 years, NACME has awarded engineering scholarships to African American, American Indian, and Latino students seeking a postsecondary degree. NACME distributes these awards, through the NACME Scholars (block grant) Program, to colleges and universities that, in turn, distribute funding to talented underrepresented minority students enrolled in engineering programs as part of their financial aid packages. NACME annually awards more than $4 million in scholarships to underrepresented minority engineering students.
Main Site:
National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering
 |
| Image Source: LiveWorx link below |
Topics: Computer Science, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
 |
| Image Source: Girls Who Code [2] |
A LETTER FROM RESHMA
What started as an experiment has grown into a national movement
Girls Who Code has gone from 20 girls in New York to 10,000 girls in 42 states. That’s the same number of girls who graduate each year with a degree in computer science. That’s progress! I’m proud to say we’re not just aiming to close the gender gap in tech — we’re actually doing it.
When girls learn to code, they become change agents in their communities. Whether it’s a game to illustrate the experience of an undocumented immigrant or a website to provide free college prep, our girls create technology that makes the world a better place. Like us, you believed in girls’ unlimited potential. Thanks to your support and contributions, together we’ve inspired thousands of girls to see a future in tech. [1]
Reshma Saujani is recognized as a global trailblazer in technology, innovation, and design. As founder and CEO of the non-profit, Girls Who Code [2], her mission is to close the gap in STEM education and empower girls worldwide to pursue careers in science and engineering.
1. Girls Who Code: About Us/#The-Problem
2. Girls Who Code
3. LiveWorx: Keynote Address Banner Add
Much can be said for todays young folk, they party with abandonment. The popularity of Hip-Hop culture rivals Don Cornelius and Soul Train. When I looked at the Afrofuture I didn't take off from George Clinton's Mothership. I was on the ship of Sun Ra but I came through Pharaoh Sanders, John and Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp and Eddie Harris. It was a cusp of light between the worlds of the ancient and tomorrow. I kept wanting to lose it all but discipline and focus to construct what I wanted to see push me beyond the apocalyptic madness and exaggeration of abstract fantasy. A buildable future Syd Mead said, materializing the dream onto this plane. Yes my ultra barn house can float on a bed of alpha waves in a drawing but on a pond in life is a practical truth or suspended by cables. My mind defies gravity at will but floating a house requires homage to the forces at play.
I see an oriental culture like the Japanese but dressed like the Ghanaians and with the music of the Oud, Mbira, Bamboo Flute, echoing through arched halls and open courtyards, the click of sticks, drones, deep drones of bass strings and growns of voices, meditative. The cutting of hoes in the garden turning soil and the chatter of working out thoughts aloud with each stroke. Laughter and tears among the ears of corn and greens, and they wonder why fresh food makes you laugh and cry. Primitive life as it were a romance, a day dream of continual orgasm, splender after splender. War is not the adventure of choice when your flesh is beneath the blade or torn by the bullet or your congested symbionts are atomized into permanent separation. Peace can be boring but so can war. I want to make beautiful things but my hands are clumsy and my art rude. Fitting for instruments of disruption my skills. I strive to refine my art for my own satisfaction. They ask why don't you do this and that and sell these. The lure of pleasing others is strong but it is slavery and bribery. My art is my art and my dream is my dream. You can visit and stay as long as you like but soon you must awaken in your own dreams.
The mind is an open construct but before you can grasp it's understanding something is already in it, something is already in play. This is the secret of awareness, you come to realize you are immersed from the first eye opening. Things are created, carried out and concluded by you, by others. Being awake is an agreement not a control, an acknowledgement. You make the drop, not the ripple, you ride the wave. The shore or undertow requires attention, the call of sirens, the rocks, you must be awake, dream awake, walk on the water. It is an illusion that everyone in a land carries the same dream, else there would be no conspirators, no turn coats, no innovators who go beyond tradition. Tradition like cultural dreams or slavery may need an avatar or a saviour or a warrior to set a new vision before the well practiced minds thus a new future to hold for it's duration. This is why they try to put what is going on in our heads on the big screen, so they can rewrite our future. The book !984, Yeah that was there and we are almost there today. From can you hear me now to time to check in your co-ordinates and activities. Click, aaaah, my mind is my own.
A short story
With the help of his assistant, Jada and the Time Travelers Guild Da’Quan must try and stop a powerful foe from carrying out a plot that will drastically change life in the galaxy forever. Will Da’Quan put the pieces together in time? Will the clever, devious mastermind succeed in getting his revenge and change the lives of millions in the process?
Space Ships from the Escape 2 Earth Series
 |
| Spot the baryon CERN/LHCb |
Topics: Atomic Physics, Large Hadron Collider, Nuclear Physics, Particle Physics
A hint of matter and antimatter behaving differently to each other has been spotted in a new particle for the first time. If the find bears out, it could help explain the existence of all the matter in the universe, and why it was not snuffed out by antimatter long ago.
Physicists think that the big bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. But these contrasting particles annihilate each other in a puff of energy whenever they meet, so they should have destroyed each other long ago.
The fact that there is enough matter in the universe today for us to exist and wonder why, means that some mechanism must have favoured matter over antimatter.
“Today we have this complete imbalance between matter and antimatter. We have no evidence of antimatter in the universe,” says Nicola Neri of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Milan, Italy. “This is one of the main questions we’d like to answer.”
New Scientist: LHC sees matter and antimatter misbehaving in alternate particle
Lisa Grossman
 |
| CREDIT: WBRC |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
A 22-year-old college student is leading the new generation of pioneering black women depicted in Hidden Figures. Tiera GuInn is a Rocket and Structural Design and Analysis Engineer working on the space launch system that Boeing is constructing for NASA.
Guinn, who will graduate form MIT with a 5.0 GPA, is designing the “largest and most powerful” rocket in history.
“It’s really humbling,” she told Alabama news station, WBRC . “I design components for the rockets themselves and then I analyze them to make sure they’re structurally sound.”
Guinn was only 6 years old when she began doing math exercises with her mother.
“When we would go to the grocery store she was get me to clip coupons, put it in my coupon organizer, and by the time we’d get to the register I had to calculate the exact total, including tax."
“One day I saw a plane fly by and I just had this realization, ‘I can design planes. I’m going to be an aerospace engineer,’” she continued. “So every middle school class that I chose, it was directed towards that goal. The high school that I chose, that took me an hour to get to everyday, it was because I wanted to be an aerospace engineer.”
Guinn pulls inspiration from Hidden Figures (her favorite movie), and wants to see more diversity her in field.
Vibe: Student Making History As A NASA Engineer, Latifah Muhammad
 |
| Image Source: Amazon link below |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
A book report and cathartic confession on being "invisible."
Last year, I cheered for Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers because... I grew up in North Carolina, and went to school K-12 and post secondary at North Carolina A&T. How could I NOT cheer for the Panthers?
I am now post another Super Bowl, this one I didn't watch. I considered the Patriots winning a foregone conclusion, and the choke by the Falcons was probably disappointing to classmates that now live in the ATL.
This Bowl is post a very divisive election season that gave us a divisive Chief Executive. His friendship with the owner, the coach and the quarterback only politicized it more than necessary. I watched the original Star Trek episodes on BBC America and checked in on Facebook. I'm disappointed, but not as emotional as last year.
Ralph Ellison does an excellent job of painting a picture of the times through the patronage of public HBCUs by dominant financiers and the political aspects of "The Brotherhood," that I thought was an inference to Red Scare Communism that inspired the government to spy on its own citizens through COINTELPRO. We've obviously recently locked arms with the Kremlin, though such fears still seem extended to brown people.
However, I must go to a "team-building" lunch today, post this game I did not see, for the reason I will publish as having "no dogs in the hunt." It will be true, and hopefully pivot conversations from politics to just work-related issues.
A way of using a superpower of my swagger: invisibility.
Amazon: Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.
Amazon.com Review
We rely, in this world, on the visual aspects of humanity as a means of learning who we are. This, Ralph Ellison argues convincingly, is a dangerous habit. A classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952, Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness. Searching for a context in which to know himself, he exists in a very peculiar state. "I am an invisible man," he says in his prologue. "When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me." But this is hard-won self-knowledge, earned over the course of many years.
As the book gets started, the narrator is expelled from his Southern Negro college for inadvertently showing a white trustee the reality of black life in the south, including an incestuous farmer and a rural whorehouse. The college director chastises him: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here?" Mystified, the narrator moves north to New York City, where the truth, at least as he perceives it, is dealt another blow when he learns that his former headmaster's recommendation letters are, in fact, letters of condemnation.
What ensues is a search for what truth actually is, which proves to be supremely elusive. The narrator becomes a spokesman for a mixed-race band of social activists called "The Brotherhood" and believes he is fighting for equality. Once again, he realizes he's been duped into believing what he thought was the truth, when in fact it is only another variation. Of the Brothers, he eventually discerns: "They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves.... Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men."
Invisible Man is certainly a book about race in America, and sadly enough, few of the problems it chronicles have disappeared even now. But Ellison's first novel transcends such a narrow definition. It's also a book about the human race stumbling down the path to identity, challenged and successful to varying degrees. None of us can ever be sure of the truth beyond ourselves, and possibly not even there. The world is a tricky place, and no one knows this better than the invisible man, who leaves us with these chilling, provocative words: "And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" --Melanie Rehak
