Hubble Is Closer To Coming Back

It’s Still A Long Journey, Though

Phil Plait, of Bad Astronomy Blog gives us our first report on HST since it “safed” on Friday.

There had been two separate problems. The first was with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Phil informs us:

Basically, the software had been changed to support the upcoming servicing mission, and the test wound up stepping on some of the new code. This issue has been resolved.

<voice character=Newman>Excellent!</voice>

Second, there was an “electrical event” that tripped a hardware reset in the science payload.

This too was not a big deal, but the hardware is programmed to shut down in such an event so humans can take a look and see what happened. This too has been resolved.

Also good news!

According to The Bad Astronomer, more news will be coming this weekend.  We look forward to more science coming from HST before it’s through.

A Damning Review of Higher Education

Still Think It’s For Everyone?

Higher Ed

Marty Nemko writes at the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!

Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and devastated self-esteem from their unsuccessful struggles. Perhaps worst of all, even those who do manage to graduate too rarely end up in careers that require a college education.

That last paragraph startled me.  But this startled me even more:

Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that’s terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they’d still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound – they’re brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.

It startled me because, self-evident as it is, I hadn’t thought of it before.

Sometimes a hard-nosed realism is the most accurate take on a given situation. Here’s the one offered by Nemko, when he discusses what, and how, students actually learn.

Often there is a Grand Canyon of difference between the reality and what higher-education institutions, especially research ones, tout in their viewbooks and on their Web sites. Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students.

Emphasis mine.  That fits my experience.

H/T to Instapundit for the link.

Some People Are NOT Victims

And Will Never Be One

If you’re like that, apparently there are people in this world who will hate you because of it.

I am fascinated by how some women hate Palin so intensely. I think of Madonna shouting curses at her at concerts, or the really nasty comments on some female websites. It is not only because they disagree with her ideas or policies. It isn’t even because they think she is not capable or experienced enough to be president. My friend Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal thinks it is partly because she appears to be a genuinely happy woman. She is enthusiastic about the opportunities that being an American woman has given her. She does not complain about her lot in life. For a long time now, many politicians, as well as female-focused media outlets, have been telling women they are victims. But Palin never acts like a victim nor talks about all women as victims, even though she so obviously has faced challenges in her family life.

I have a suspicion that most Americans appreciate and are inspired by a positive outlook, the anti-victim mindset that we might think of as the kind of individualism that is hated so much in Europe. It’s a mindset that the main stream press seems unable to see. I saw that in 1980, when then Gov. G.W. Bush was asked who his favorite philosopher was. The press (and many others on the east coast, I can tell you) laughed. They didn’t see about 49 million others, by actual count, who thought to themselves “Um… I understand that.”

Palin is, in a way, almost a throwback to that resilient American woman of our past, who could look at her life without self-pity and with good cheer and just get on with it. Women who like her recognize this and see great value and wisdom in such an attitude. Women who don’t are not simply offended by her; they are genuinely threatened.

It’s the same sort of blindness, I think.

So here are the thoughts of

Bruce Bawer, who spent enough time in Europe to come to understand some things about his countrymen that the press seems to miss.

I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by “experts”; they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there’s important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style “morning in America” cliches may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air.

These people may or may not be a majority of voters come November. But their numbers are not small.

Added: Some people are not victims. And then again, some people are.

Harvard Studies The Gore Effect

Who Better?

The most famous (and probably most highly regarded) University in the country is happy to have landed former Vice President Al Gore to be the keynote speaker at the Harvard Sustainability Celebration.

From The Reference Frame:

But they are kind of obliged to be happy about the keynote speaker, Mr Al Gore, who is famous for his big house, jet, and the so-called Gore effect. Dictionaries explain the term as

The phenomenon that leads to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming. Hence, the Gore Effect.

Apparently, The Gore Effect still works.

In Cambridge, the warmest October 22nd occurred in 1979 when the temperature climbed to 83 deg. F. Well, it doesn’t look like what they see today. Even the average high temperature for this day is 60 deg. F which is still far too high. After the noon, the temperature in Cambridge is 44.5 deg. F. Tonight, it is predicted to drop to 34 deg. F, close to the record low of 28 deg. F measured in 1940.

Cool! Um… Sorry!

And if you happen to still be worried about global warming, you shouldn’t be. There’s a much bigger worry out there for you to lose sleep over. I suggest you read Don Surber, and follow the link he provides.

Lorne Gunter of the National Post reported: “The number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures – they’re going down, not up.”

From the cyclical change in the temperature of the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to the cyclical change in solar activity, to the cyclical change in solar winds, signs point to a global cooling, which is not a good thing. This would shorten growing seasons and reduce the range for all animals, including polar bears.

Global cooling happens quickly. Global warming slowly.