Jurnal Singkat

Why Are Finlands Schools   Successful http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html It was the end of term at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a sprawling suburb west of Helsinki, when Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme—by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. The school’s team of special educators—including a social worker, a nurse and a psychologist—convinced Louhivuori that laziness was not to blame. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete. Finland has vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy over the past decade in large part because its teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. This 13-year-old, Besart Kabashi, received something akin to royal ...

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2013/09/the-real-population-problem/ Sometimes considered a taboo subject, the issue of population runs as an undercurrent in virtually all discussions of modern challenges. Naturally, resource use, environmental pressures, climate change, food and water supply, and the health of the world’s fish and wildlife populations would all be non-issues if Earth enjoyed a human population of 100 million or less. The subject is taboo for a few reasons. The suggestion that a smaller number would be nice begs the question of who we should eliminate, and who gets to decide such things. Also, the vast majority of people bring children into the world, and perhaps feel a personal sting when it is implied that such actions are part of the problem. I myself come from a long line of breeders, and perhaps you do too. Recently, participating in a panel discussion in front of a room full of physics educators, I made the simple statement that “surplus ene...

https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to-paint-10000-paintings/ When Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo toiled for four years on his master work. Renoir spent six months painting Luncheon of the Boating Party—the painting featured in the film Amélie. Even Guernica, which Pablo Picasso painted quickly to publicize the bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica, took over a month to complete. When we received orders for over 20 paintings in two weeks, we knew we were on to something. We also knew that we’d have to produce paintings much faster than Michelangelo, Renoir, or Picasso. We received the painting orders as the result of an experiment. Prior to that, we spent several years in the startup wilderness, pivoting between ideas without gaining traction, until we decided to test out a business where customers could send us photos they wanted turned into oil paintings. We created a ve...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/portable-devices/novena-a-laptop-with-no-secrets How we built a laptop with nothing but open-sourced hardware and software Has the computer become a black box, even to experienced electrical engineers? Will we be forever reliant upon large, opaque organizations to build them for us? Absolutely not, we say. And to prove our point, we built our very own laptop, from the circuit boards on up. Admittedly, we did not delude ourselves that we could build a laptop that would be faster, smaller, or cheaper than those of Apple, Dell, or HP. However, we did set out to build a machine powerful and convenient enough to use every day. Fortunately, our dream inspired enough people to crowdfund the effort. Our laptop, which we call Novena, started shipping to backers in January 2015. Events favored our quest. Because Moore’s Law is slowing down , garage innovators can take a couple of years to develop a high-tech ga...