"You don't need a meteorologist to tell you what lake-effect snow is: it's snow that's, um, caused by a lake, right? As it turns out, things are a teensy bit more complicated than that, and if you live in one of the states bordering the Great Lakes that are forever getting clobbered by the stuff - or even if you just marvel at the footage of the latest white-out to hit those luckless places - it can help to know what's actually going on."
"NASA made it much easier to explore Mars this week when the agency released a video featuring a 360-degree view of the planet.
The video, stitched together from images taken by the Curiosity rover, offers views of the downwind face of the Namib Dune and a glimpse at Mount Sharp on Mars. The rover is about 23 feet from the bottom of the nearest dune, according to NASA, the mission's examination of dunes along lower Mount Sharp is the first glimpse of active sand dunes anywhere other than on the Earth's surface."
"Once upon a time, only the wealthy and privileged could afford to have their portraits painted by a small, select circle of artists. With the advent of photography, parents of all backgrounds could have pictures of their children, which were coveted as documents of their development and a way to show off their innocent beauty and charm to family and friends."
"Kids who struggle with reading get an early lesson in one of life's more sucky realities; the earlier a person falls behind, the harder it is to even want to catch up. Their classmates move on to more interesting books, write stories that get noticed and get rewarded for finishing their work fast. Meanwhile the slower readers can barely make sense of the activity sheet in front of them. When a child can't read, school becomes either a huge, grinding drag or a very efficient confidence-removal machine. Usually both.
Reading is not a natural ability. The vast majority of humans don't just pick it up; they have to be taught it quite explicitly. Until Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type, most people had little use for reading, just as now the vast majority of people have no use for weaving. And for some, acquiring this essential skill is an incredibly frustrating experience. Education experts are not of one mind about how much of the population has a diagnosable reading disorder such as dyslexia, but it's clear that while kids all read at different ages and stages, some otherwise average-intelligence people find reading an unusually hard slog."
"Years ago, I wrote a piece suggesting that computer coding should be a basic requirement in junior high schools. I compared it to a required class I myself took in grade school: Typing, a skill that helped throughout my life.
I brought up the idea again last week while moderating a panel at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. One of the panelists, MIT Media Lab Senior Research Scientist Kipp Bradford, challenged me on the idea.
Bradford acknowledged the importance of coding classes. But he argued that given today's complex programming landscape (there are well over 100 languages in use), basic coding isn't the right course to prepare students for the job market of the future. He suggested teaching "computational thinking" skills instead."
