If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I hate bad test questions. I was working with my daughter to help her get ready for her finals. On the test prep package we ran into a problem were there is no right answer based on the facts presented.

The problem went something like this:

Jason can do the job in 5 hours. Sloan can do the job in 3 hours. How long will it take them to do the job together?

Totally unsolvable. It completely depends on the nature of the job. Can the job be split? Is it a linear problem (eg filling a pool with water) or a non-linear problem (eg counting money)? If it’s non-linear, how evenly can it be broken down into sub-tasks?

You don’t know enough to solve the problem, yet it asks for an answer.

I hated these kinds of questions when I went to school. I used to take them to the teacher and tell them why it could’nt be solved. It’s totally unfair to kids who are taught there should be a “right” answer.

Teachers and schools should know better, given all the money we spend to test what kids have learned.

I just got back from a great presentation by Daniel Kraft, MD at a METal breakfast(Ken Rutkowski’s breakfast group) about regenerative medicine.

It’s amazing what’s going on with stem cells, especially adult stem cells (where you get them from yourself) and cancer stem cells( the cells that seem to drive cancer cells). They are making so much progress.

If what they’re doing progresses at the rate he describes we are going to see some amazing breakthroughs in health care and longevity.

Looks like it should be fun to watch.

Amazon has just released a new console for their Web Services.  Here’s a copy of the email.  I also have a screen shot below.  Click on it to see the full screen version.

Wonder what this means for RightScale, which provided a great front end for AWS. They just got $13 million in funding last month, so they should have some time to figure out how to compete with this.

Dear AWS Developer,

We’re excited to announce the initial beta release of our AWS Management Console, a web-based, point-and-click, graphical user interface that makes it even easier to access and manage AWS Infrastructure Web Services. The initial release provides an online interface for Amazon EC2, with additional AWS services scheduled to be added in the coming months. The console presents an intuitive, global picture of your cloud computing environment so that you can control your AWS resources without programming directly to an API.

You do not need to write any code or install any software if you access Amazon EC2 via the AWS Management Console. You simply log in to the console after signing up for Amazon EC2 and immediately begin managing your resources through the point-and-click interface. Within minutes, you will be able to configure your application environment and begin launching and managing Amazon EC2 instances, mounting Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes, and listing your Amazon Machine Images (AMIs).

Access to the AWS Management Console is provided free of charge at https://console.aws.amazon.com. We invite you to have a look, start using it to manage your applications, and tell us what you think. Feedback links are located at the bottom of each page, and we wholeheartedly welcome your suggestions, requests, and comments.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Web Services Team

Click on image to see full version

Saw this post Musings: How to determine your “Star Wars” name

For your new first name:

1. Take the first 3 letters of your 1st name and add
2. the first 2 letters of your last name

For your new last name:

3. Then take the first 2 letters of your Mom’s maiden name and add
4. the first 3 letters of the city you were born

How to determine your Star Wars honorific name and title:

1. take the last three letters of your last name and reverse them.
2. add the name of the first car you drove/owned
3. insert the word “of”
4. tack on the name of the last medication you took.

What’s your Star Wars name? Leave a comment.

May the force be with you,

Alene Cloxn
tti fiat of atenolol

Good presentation by Chris Brogan about social media strategy.

Obama and Biden are doing a great job of scaring the Hell out of the market. Obama’s. “spread the wealth” comment was about as dumb as I’ve seen, with perhaps the exception of Biden’s comments that if Obama is elected America will be tested.

No wonder thing market is tanking even further despite the credit crunch easing. Spreading wealth is a loser econ policy and a crises is a sure downer for the market.

Obama and Biden should stop talking before they destroy our 401ks completely and blow their chance of winning.

This says it all

Got this from a friend via email:

Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villager’s that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He further announced that he would now buy at $20 for a monkey. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to $25 each, and the supply of monkeys became so small that it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50. However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers, ‘Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35, and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.’ The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

They never saw the man nor his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how Wall Street works.

Source:??