zachrahan - Slashdot User

Esther Dyson To Train For Space Flight 38

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 11, 2008 @02:12PM from the dyson-vacuum-of-space dept.

DynaSoar writes "Esther Dyson, known to many as a founding and consistently guiding member of ICANN, and for working with the startups of Flickr, del.icio.us, Medscape and others, is now expanding her interests upwards. She recently announced that she will be heading to Moscow to train as backup astronaut for Charles Simonyi, who plans to fly aboard Soyuz TMA-14 next year. The US$3 million price tag won't be her first cash contribution towards personal space flight. She's already an investor in Space Adventures, the company that arranges the space tourist flights on Soyuz."

How US Schools' Culture Stifles Math Achievement 888

Posted by timothy on Friday October 10, 2008 @07:18PM from the expensive-gubmint-babysitting-castles dept.

Zarf writes "I'd like to file a bug report on the US educational system. The New York Times reports on a recent study that shows the US fails to encourage academic talent as a culture.'"There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn't really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics," said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.'s math department. "Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none."' While we've suspected that the US might be falling behind academically, this study shows that it is actually due to cultural factors that are devaluing the success of our students. I suspect there's a flaw in the US cultural system that prevents achievement on the academic front from being perceived as valuable. Could anyone suggest a patch for this bug or is this cause for a rewrite?"

Comment Yes, wood is "nature loving" (Score 1, Insightful) 467

by zachrahan on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @01:34AM (#8642229) Attached to: Wooden Computer Accessories

To all those (sanctimonious) posters who say "gosh, those guys claim that they are nature loving, but then they condone cutting down trees to make computer parts" :

Well what renewable resource is your computer case made of?

Well, they have to remove entire mountains from the ground to get metal, and I can't say that the petrol industry (you know, plastics!) is too "nature friendly." So come back when you're typing on keyboards assembled from windfall wood and bones of animals that died of natural causes. Otherwise I really don't want to hear about it.

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