Archive for January, 2011

Winter !

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Last summer, I moved to the mountains. I had owned weekend homes here 30 years ago and always thought about retiring to this mountain resort area. I looked for homes last spring and finally settled on a house on a large level lot. That combination is rare up here. Since my basset hound Winston was to be my housemate and friend, the large yard was important.

We had a relatively snowless Christmas but a good dinner and a peaceful setting made up for it.

The Christmas tree had plenty of presents under it. Winston even got his own present, a nail grinder to trim his nails.

Here he is in his favorite place. Look at those nails !

Cindy and Annie were there. The other kids now have their own families and it is a long drive up the mountain.

Then, we had a big snowstorm Sunday afternoon and Monday morning. Here is the result.

Late Monday morning, as the falling snow slackened and stopped, this was the view of the front of our house. Since the front is heavily screened by trees, the best view is from the access road behind the house. Some of the young men who worked on the roof project last summer showed up and asked if I wanted my long driveway cleared. I answered yes and they did the job in 30 minutes. It was worth 50 bucks.

This is the view from the access road, a sort of alley very common here and the only access for some neighboring houses. I plan to build a garage just about in the foreground. It will open onto the access road. My neighbor, who has a garage opening to the access road, and who is a full time resident, takes his snow blower to clear the road from his garage to the street. Above his driveway, it is unplowed.

We took the dogs on a walk through the snow. Winston loves it, galloping through the snow like a sled dog. Of course, if the snow is more that 6 inches deep, it touches his chest and he would have a tough time with deeper snow.

Here is another view showing that the house really faces this way. The decks and the big windows all look out on this magical view of my back yard and the trees beyond. Below is a view from the upper access road where it is unplowed. My daughter and three of her friends came up Monday afternoon and have been sledding in the area.

The house can just be seen in the distance with the access road going downhill toward it. This is a good sledding area as the houses here are mostly owned by weekenders and several are vacant. The economic collapse has hurt this area badly.

Here Winston is investigating the new snow. In many places he is down to his chest in the snow and he prefers to gallop along like a sled dog.

After loping through deep snow (for him) for a while, he decides the plowed pavement is easier.

After a day playing in the snow, a nap is in order. Anyone who disturbs Winston while he is asleep learns that he really likes his sleep and hates to be disturbed. He will growl at me if I wake him up getting into bed.

That is his expression when awakened from sleep.

He has never growled at my grandchildren, however. They were up over the New Year weekend but missed the snow because they had to go home Sunday.

They did find some snow in a large lot that is vacant and is a popular place for sledding. There wasn’t much snow around but there was enough here.

Here are Kendall and William. She is 7 and he is about to be 5. Mary is the youngest and she is the daredevil.

Mary had her snow suit on and her mittens but her boots had been left at home. It did not slow her down a bit.

The kids got plenty of chances to slide down the gentle slope and even Mary got a couple of rides with Mom. Finally, the sledding had to come to an end.

A final slide with all three.

Winter is here.

The education bubble and science

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

I like George Will’s writing and his insight. I watch the ABC Sunday news commentary show to see him make pithy comments containing more wisdom that the rest of the commentary combined. His column this week is an example of his insights.

Deborah Wince-Smith of the Council on Competitiveness says: “Talent will be the oil of the 21st century.” And the talent that matters most is the cream of the elite. The late Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod said, “Ninety-nine percent of the discoveries are made by 1 percent of the scientists.”

With populism rampant, this is not a propitious moment to defend elites, even scientific ones. Nevertheless, the nation depends on nourishing them and the institutions that sustain them.

U.S. undergraduate institutions award 16 percent of their degrees in the natural sciences or engineering; South Korea and China award 38 percent and 47 percent, respectively. America ranks 27th among developed nations in the proportion of students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or engineering.

He goes on to recommend support of the “elite universities,” by which I suppose the Ivy League. I think there is another point of view that should be considered.

There’s a lot of work ahead to enable the United States to meet the coming challenges. I’m reasonably confident that we remain the best placed large society on earth to make the right moves. Our culture of enterprise and risk-taking is still strong; a critical mass of Americans still have the values and the characteristics that helped us overcome the challenges of the last two hundred years.

But when I look at the problems we face, I worry. It’s not just that some of our cultural strengths are eroding as both the financial and intellectual elites rush to shed many of the values that made the country great. And it’s not the deficit: we can and will deal with that if we get our policies and politics right. And it’s certainly not the international competition: our geopolitical advantages remain overwhelming and China, India and the EU all face challenges even more daunting than ours and they lack our long tradition of successful, radical but peaceful reform and renewal.

No, what worries me most today is the state of the people who should be the natural leaders of the next American transformation: our intellectuals and professionals. Not all of them, I hasten to say: the United States is still rich in great scholars and daring thinkers. A few of them even blog.

The number of hard science and engineering students at major and/or “elite” universities is a small fraction of the total enrollment. Harvard, for example, only recently revised its engineering curriculum.

The A.B. in engineering degree teaches students how to solve problems and builds confidence doing so, explains Cherry Murray, dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The degree is a good bridge to further education such as business, law, government, architecture, and medical schools, she says, and draws people who might not normally be interested in more narrow engineering subjects. Another benefit of the broader curriculum: Murray says 38% of the A.B. enrollees at Harvard are women, almost double the national average in regular engineering programs.”

I’m sorry to say that doesn’t sound like a rigorous engineering program. What about MIT ? The list of majors is reassuring, although I don’t know why anyone would major in Theater Arts at MIT.

My own personal favorite is Cal Tech. In 1956 I was accepted and even had my dorm room assigned but my father refused to provide any financial information so I was not able to get a scholarship and there were very few loans in those days. It’s one of two missed chances that I cannot forget. Cal Tech is serious science and engineering education. I’m sorry to have missed it.

There are many excellent state university engineering programs so the emphasis on “elite” universities is an example of provincialism on Will’s part. Stanford is considered elite these days and has excellent engineering programs. The University of Southern California, where I was a student, has good engineering programs, especially chemical and petroleum engineering. In the days I attended it was an inferior program but I had a scholarship so that’s where I went. I eventually switched to medicine and that was excellent for the times.

The biggest problem, and one hinted at by critics of the “Education Bubble,” is the plethora of weak majors, like the “studies” programs, which enroll students with weak scholarly skills and produce graduates with large student loans who cannot find a job. A recent book by Charles Murray, of Bell Curve fame, makes the point that too many students are attending college today under the fallacious impression that all are equally entitled to a college degree. His theory is that there is a minimum IQ below which a college education is probably a poor choice. There are many trades that can provide a good stable income and real pleasure in performing tasks that suit one’s ability. The role of vocational education has been minimized the past 40 years and there are few vocational high schools anymore that teach the basics of manual trades. This may suggest that the smaller number of male college students, compared to female, may in fact be the result of better choices on the part of the young men.

Women fill the classes in weak majors like Women’s Studies and Sociology. Many undergraduates in big universities are expected to digest a steady diet of leftist politics before they can get to the serious part of their major field of study.

There is something to be said for limiting student loans to certain fields of study. Engineering and hard science should be eligible for loans without restriction. For other majors, especially the weak ones, the loans should be limited to those with high grades. If a student wants to continue in a weak major, they or their parents should be responsible. Limits on student loans might even bring tuition inflation under control.