Engineering, Education and more

• Science and Engineering Need to Be Cool Again, India is taking the education of its next generation much more seriously than the U.S. David Kirkpatrick , Fortune, March 2005.

• The long tail of software. Millions of Markets of Dozens. - "Whatever business your starting, think about how to serve millions of markets of dozens instead of dozens of markets of millions. Serving the head isn’t a bad strategy. You can build a great business. But, figure out how to serve the tail of your market efficiently and you’ve got a blockbuster."

• Dealing with a legacy school system - "The traditional classroom model (learners as passive listener/receiver, emphasizing memorization over thinking) violates pretty much everything we know about how learning actually happens, although kids managed to memorize and learn and graduate in spite of this."


• Schools Must Be Redesigned for All Students to Succeed - "America’s high schools are obsolete.
  
  By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded – though a case could be made for every one of those points.
  
  By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today. " - Bill Gates speech text (I agree with Kathy Sierra's quote: "I don't agree with a lot of what's being said on solutions from all these folks (including Gates), but there's no question that our educational model is horribly out of date"

• The last three relate to a post from our other blog, Who Influences Your Thinking.
  

• Face recognition powered cat door - Our cat "has a habit of catching various animals, dragging them inside through the cat door, and letting them loose so they can be chased for hours. Very cruel. To put an end to this we have built a computer-controlled device that visually determines if Flo is carrying anything in her mouth when she enters, and if she does, it simply does not let her in."

• The California effect - Flush with equity, Californians are driving up home prices in markets outside the Golden State.
  

Update - also see our Science and Engineering Blog