Monthly Archive for January, 2010

Inkling lets textbook makers embrace the iPad

Published on 1/31/2010 in Technology . 0 Comments Tags: .

This is a puff piece on startup company Inkling. It summarizes some of the concepts that I believe will dramatically boost the learning power of textbooks. This is just a sample of what technology could do for education if the unions would just get out of the way.

The ten-person San Francisco startup, stacked with pedigreed veterans of Microsoft and Google, Harvard, MIT and Stanford, came out of stealth mode after this morning’s iPad launch. Funded with about $1M in seed money led by Ram Shriram and Mitch Kapor, Inkling is working with McGraw-Hill, Pearson and other top textbook makers.


Textbooks are different animals than e-book novels and business books, in ways that current e-readers can’t handle. For starters, you don’t read a textbook’s pages serially from first to last. You need to be able to jump around, skip, skim, and flip back and forth between chapter review and chapter content. A textbook’s content should ideally be dynamic from year to year, not frozen in time like a novel.
You also need to be able to link the textbook content with your own notes, highlights, reports, project plans, etc. And all must be embedded in a collaborative environment — think Facebook for study teams.
The iPad makes it possible to replace static images with interactive puzzles that MacInnis says burn important concepts in to students’ brains better and longer. He showed me a demo learning module that explained the biological concept of cellular mitosis. It starts with a real microscope image of a cell. A caption, simultaneously spoken by a voiceover (They call this karaoke mode. It turns out to help memory better than either text or speech by itself) instructs me to tap the cells nucleus three times to simulate its breakdown. Further steps in the mitosis process require me to pinch, drag or swipe components in the cell after identifying them. When I’m done, I have a memory of having walked through the process physically, rather than just scanning an illustration with my eyes.
We cannot imagine the creative ways that code-in-book technology can enhance learning. Consider what you can do with say physics and chemistry simulations and models.
Let’s hope that Inkling has some powerful secret sauce that will slash the amount of high-skilled labor it typically takes to produce these textbook enhancements. The next Inkling claim posits “much cheaper than current textbooks“. Reproduction cost is zero, but I think the $180 price is largely determined by the very small market relative to the book development investment.
But the real breakthrough is in pricing. Instead of a $180 textbook, learning modules built with Inkling will be priced individually on iTunes, just as music and TV shows are. Instead of buying all 50 chapters of a 1,200-page biology book, an instructor can create a customized bundle of only the modules students will actually use. Pricing hasn’t been determined yet, but it’s likely to be a few dollars per unit — much cheaper than current textbooks. (Apple’s cut of book sales is said to be 30 percent.)

Please continue reading Venturebeat. And check out CourseSmart.

A Serious Take on Internet Game Play

Published on 1/31/2010 in Technology . 0 Comments

We just listened to the recent Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar hosting “serial entrepreneur and Zynga founder Mark Pincus and Bing Gordon, longtime Electronic Arts creative mind and investor on behalf of KPCB, provide a very laid-back and desultory conversation. Topics touched upon include successful CEOs, building sustainable companies, mentorship, and the consumer pay-driven Web 3.0.” That is Pincus at left posing for a Farmville PR shot. {More on Farmville below}
This is a disjointed conversation between two very smart and competent startup guys — well worthwhile for you budding entrepreneurs out there.

More, Jessica Shambora wrote this short brief on Zynga. Excerpts:

(…) Social games are free online applications accessed through sites such as MySpace and Facebook. If you’ve spent any time on either site you’re probably familiar with titles such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Caf World. All three games, which rank among the top five games played daily on Facebook, were developed by San Francisco-based Zynga, one of the tech sector’s most talked-about companies these days.

Behind the buzz: Annual revenue at the two-year-old firm is likely to surpass $100 million this year, prompting speculation that the company — backed by the likes of LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and PayPal cofounder-turned-investor Peter Thiel — will soon go public. The software company also has managed to do something that other hot online brands such as Twitter and Facebook have not: Zynga has found a way to make social networking profitable.

(…)

Once hooked, Pincus says, players spend real money on virtual goods to help them advance to higher levels — thereby enriching Zynga. And although playing requires only short spurts of time, the game never ends, as Zynga’s designers keep adding levels so that players come back for more.

Pincus was interviewed by Charlie Rose — that must be like the imperial seal of importance.
Techcrunch has some of Mark’s bullets from the Web 2.0 Summit. Excerpt:
Pincus believes that Web 3.0 is the App Economy. That is to say, it will be a web in which people use various apps to share things. And there will be money behind this thanks to direct payments, and social goods.
Of its 50 million daily users,, 20 million are using Farmville, Zynga’s most popular game about yes, farming. Pincus announced on stage that they had made $830,000 in just two weeks selling a certain kind potato seed (a virtual good), and that they donated half of that to school children in Haiti. That money will feed 500 of them for a year, he says.
There have been various reports around the web in recent months that Zynga is already making nine figures in revenues thanks largely to these social goods.
Below find some live notes (paraphrased)
  • Social gaming started in May 2007, when Facebook opened its API for its Platform
  • They don’t get enough credit today for how revolutionary that was. 100 million users at the time.
  • Our first game July 2007, social poker game.
  • 50 million daily active users as of yesterday (across Zynga games)
  • Web 1.0 was discovery of the web and links
  • Web 2.0 was the Google, both search and AdSense
  • Web 3 is the App Economy
  • The currency of this realm is what users want to talk about and like, “social breadcrumbs”
  • Monetization in Web 3 is users paying for stuff directly, a great idea.
  • Farmville 20 million active users alone.
  • 800,000 virtual tractors sold
  • Users finding services through apps
  • Users will pay for things in the future, it’s already up to $6 billion economy

Stewart Brand’s Strange Trip: Whole Earth to Nuclear Power

Published on 1/31/2010 in Energy Policy and Nuclear Power . 3 Comments Tags: , , .

In recent years, Brand, 71, has begun to rethink his earlier opposition to nuclear power and has embraced genetic engineering, geoengineering of the earth’s climate system, and other issues that were anathema to the traditional environmental movement. This evolution of his thinking has led to his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

(…) Environmental journalist Todd Woody met Brand in his book-lined office — located nearby in a beached fishing boat on the Sausalito waterfront — and conducted the following interview for Yale Environment 360.

Yale Environment 360: Who did you write this book for?

Stewart Brand: For two versions of environmentalists — the ones who already know their environmentalism and the ones who are finding out their environmentalism because of climate change.

An assertion I make in the first chapter is that in light of climate change everybody’s an environmentalist. And in light of climate change people who already know they’re environmentalists are facing a changed situation. And I’m trying to help adjust the course in light of the situation and the technologies that are emerging.

e360: Is the environmental movement ideologically stuck in the 1970s?

Brand: It’s moved on in some areas. The environmental movement used to hate cities and is now halfway toward loving cities. The Sierra Club has been very active in supporting compactness in cities. Environmentalists don’t call themselves ecologists any more, and that’s good.

(…) e360: Do you have concerns that support for geoengineering will be used by others as an excuse to carry on with business as usual?

Brand: (…) Suppose we had energy that had that quality of way more than we could use or need, and it was clean.

There is another set of people in the environmental movement who are what I’m calling calamatists, who feel that industrial civilization has committed crimes, sins against nature, and retribution is coming and we must repent, reform, and redeem ourselves in light of these terrible crimes and this terrible sin.

The way you can tell if someone is of that mode is to raise this: Suppose we had clean, squanderable energy available, what do you think of that? The ones that have that frame of mind would say that is the worst thing that could happen.

Again, I think that is not a perspective that makes a lot of sense in the developing world. You can go to African peoples and say what do you think of clean, squanderable energy, they would say, “Yes please. How soon?”

Please continue reading the Brand interview — this is one of the better interviews. Unfortunately most journalists are completely clueless on these issues.

High speed rail

Published on 1/31/2010 in Energy Policy . 0 Comments

The Wilson Quarterly has a survey article on high speed rail, with a bit of discussion of Obama’s plan. I am not recommending the article — the link is for reference.

Why should the FDA ban drugs?

Published on 1/31/2010 in Healthcare . 0 Comments

Tyler Cowen raises an important question — the answer requires a careful risk-benefit analysis of the “effective” clause:

305 Economists Called to Smart Questionnaire on the FDA:

Daniel Klein, Jason Briggeman, and Kevin Rollins have designed a questionnaire about the economic rationale for the policy that makes new drugs and devices banned until individually permitted by the FDA. Klein and Briggeman present the questionnaire and the list of economists. Will anyone provide a sensible market-failure rationale for the policy?

The link is here, take a look. I believe Congress should eliminate the “effective” part of the “safe and effective” clause, dating from 1962. If the question is allowing people to experiment with all pharmaceutical products, I see a few possible arguments (I’m not necessarily endorsing them) against doing that:

(…snipped Tyler’s questions…) Still, I think there is a good case for greater freedom for choice when it comes to pharmaceuticals.

Please continue reading Tyler Cowen.

Stewart Brand Lectures About His New Book “Whole Earth Discipline”

Published on 1/31/2010 in Nuclear Power . 0 Comments Tags: .

Thanks to Pro Nuclear Democrats for this one.



Stewart Brand, one of many environmentalists who have been converted from anti-nuke to pro-nuke gives a great overview of his new book “Whole Earth Discipline”. Brand covers urbanization, genetic engineering, nuclear power, and geo-engineering. He’s a very interesting thinker and mirrors my philosophy very much – we need to trust scientists and engineers not condemn them by harboring ideological thinking.

Run time is 1:30 minutes.
[From Stewart Brand Lectures About His New Book "Whole Earth Discipline"]

Rod Adams and Jim Hopf on nuclear plant costs

Published on 1/31/2010 in Nuclear Costs . 0 Comments

Reading the comments on Environment 360 I noted a useful anecdote in Rod Adams’ comment regarding nuclear costs in the Stewart Brand interview. I can’t link direct to the comment, you’ll have to open the interview link and search for “Rod Adams”.

No one who has spent any time associated with nuclear technology can fail to admit that they have seen countless stupid processes that increase costs.

I remember when I was an engineer officer on a submarine and ordered two identical valves. One was intended for a non nuclear cooling system, one was used in a cooling system associated with the reactor plant. The non-nuclear version cost about $20; the one with the pedigree cost about $2,000. Those two very common parts came from exactly the same factory, were produced with the same materials and used the same drawings. The only real difference was the certified paperwork!

Don’t conclude that Rod is advocating “cowboy nuclear construction”. What needs careful study is what safety & certification constraints are actually justified by the risks. If Dupont and Dow had to build chemical plants under the same burden as nuclear, we would all be wearing flax, wool and cotton. As Brand said
When you’re trying to design solutions, you really, really have to get used to the idea of tradeoffs, risk balancing, short-term versus long-term. All this stuff that engineers are comfortable with.
A bit farther on in the comments is this tightly-written, very true excerpt by Jim Hopf:
We need a cost to be placed on CO2 emissions, either through cap-and-trade, or through a carbon tax. Fossil fuels’ other huge externalities (e.g., 30,000 deaths every single year) should also be priced. Then we should just let the market decide how to respond.

It must be understood that it is the “environmentalists” (i.e., the anti-nuke, renewables-only advocates) who are dead set against any such free and fair market competition, and who work tirelessly to ensure that no such competition ever occurs. Instead, they insist on massive govt. interventions in the clean energy market, through enormous subsidies for renewables (only) and through outright mandates for large amounts of renewables use (20%) regardless of cost or practicality.

Note that in Waxman-Markey, the required CO2 emissions reduction by 2020 is only about equal to the mandated percentage for renewables for the same timeframe (17% vs. 15-20%). In other words, almost the entire non-emitting energy market has been handed to renewables, by govt. fiat.

The reason they do this is because they know that other options, including nuclear and replacing coal with gas, are significantly cheaper than renewables, and would win out under any system that left emissions reductions up to the market. Official (EIA) govt. statistics show that the cost of intermittent kW-hrs from wind and solar are more expensive than reliable kW-hrs from nuclear. Add in the costs related to intermittentcy (standby fossil power, huge grid upgrades) and their costs are much higher. Analyses by govt. bodies such as the EPA and CBO all show that under a system where CO2 emissions are limited, and the market is left to respond, nuclear’s share of overall generation increases substantially. Translation, when CO2 emissions are limited, nuclear is one of the least expensive options.

When you hear all these talk about nuclear being really expensive, all they’re saying is that its expensive compared to fossil fuel plants that are free to release all their CO2 (and other pollutants) at no charge. That and conservation. How nuclear compares to other non-emitting (renewable) source is a subject that they are (deliberately) not choosing to talk about.

Copenhagen on $2,200 a Day

Published on 1/31/2010 in Politics . 0 Comments

Jonathan Adler reminds us that public servants are not like you and me:

CBS News has been reporting on what the government spent to send over twenty members of Congress, along with staff, spouses, and others, to the Copenhagen climate conference, and what they’ve uncovered isn’t pretty. More here.

Guest post: How could the IPCC foster social learning?

Published on 1/31/2010 in Climate Science . 0 Comments

I believe this essay in Die Klimazwiebel is correct — the science/policy coupling in climate science is much too tight:

by Falk Schützenmeister

The fact that relative small scientific mistakes, public misperceptions of the scientific method, and maybe the misconduct of a few can shake up a major field of international policy indicates that the institutional coupling between science and policy is too tight. The reputation of Harvard would never be at stake only because a few alumni became felons. In climate research, the outcome of international negotiations depends on a level of moral integrity among IPCC scientists that is unlikely to be found in priesthood.

At the onset of environmental science the tight coupling of technological systems and the rigidity of organizational structures were identified as reasons for low resilience and a high risk of catastrophic outcomes (Perrow). Ironically, today’s climate regime and the coupling between science and policy is an example for a high risk system where the failure of one small element (which might not even be at the core of the system) can endanger the whole.

One reason is a common misperception about the role and the functioning of the IPCC in science as well as in policy. Scientists often believe that the current deadlock in climate policy is due to difficulties to effectively communicate science to politicians (and the public). However, the IPCC has also a legitimatory function. In policy and public, the fact that a high number of scientists agree on something might count more than on what they actually agree.

The line by line approval of the Summaries for Policy Makers of IPCC reports constitutes a consensus about science (not policies) among the parties of the FCCC (governments). Nevertheless, some IPCC scientists feel uncomfortable about consensus since scientific progress is driven by scrutiny. Sure, most climate researcher identify themselves with the IPCC process and they trust the work of colleagues (cf. Bray). Nevertheless, reviewers discuss findings in their fields and in adjunct areas. They are not necessarily able to scrutinize the sophisticated findings of colleagues from other disciplines. The number of scientists who reviewed the glacier melt in the Himalayas is certainly pretty small, but it is treated as a consensus of 3000 scientists.

How could the problems of the IPCC (and climate policy) be solved?
(…)

Thorium-Fueled Underground Power Plant Based On Molten Salt Technology

Published on 1/31/2010 in Nuclear Power . 2 Comments Tags: .

In Nuclear Technology, Sep 2005 you will find the paper “Thorium-Fueled Underground Power Plant Based On Molten Salt Technology ” by RALPH W. MOIR and EDWARD TELLER (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). Though written for a technical audience the paper is mostly accessible — it makes a clear case for the need to evaluate this design promptly. We don’t know if it can be deployed as quickly as the IFR design, but we can certainly find out.

Below I’ve excerpted a few key paragraphs which represent the basic ideas and arguments:

Summary:

We propose the burning of this thorium dissolved as a fluoride in molten salt in the minimum viscosity mixture of LiF and BeF2 together with a small amount of 235 U or plutonium fluoride to initiate the process to be located at least 10 m underground. The fission products could be stored at the same underground location. With graphite replacement or new cores and with the liquid fuel transferred to the new cores periodically, the power plant could operate for up to 200 years with no transport of fissile material to the reactor or of wastes from the reactor during this period. Advantages that include utilization of an abundant fuel, inaccessibility of that fuel to terrorists or for diversion to weapons use, together with good economics and safety features such as an underground location will diminish public concerns

V. Fuel Cycle without reprocessing and without weapons-useable material:

The strong advantage of this fuel cycle is that it breeds essentially all of its own fuel, thus removing the need for transportation of weapons-usable material to the reactor site once it is star ted up. Also it makes no further demands for mined uranium for several hundred years although the graphite had to be changed a number of times. For example, a present-day reactor would use 38 000 tons of mined uranium over 200 yr, while the molten salt reactor once star ted up on 235 U and thorium would need only 600 tons of mined uranium and could operate for 200 yr ~see footnote g again!. One hundred thirty- seven tons of thorium would be fissioned. The burnup of the 600 tons of uranium and 137 tons of thorium would be ;18%.

VI. Economic Competitiveness

Our economic goal is to achieve a cost of electrical energy averaged over the life of the power station to be no more than that from burning fossil fuels at the same location. Past studies have shown a potential for the molten salt reactor to be some- what lower in cost of electricity than both coal and LWRs ~ Refs. 4 and 12!. There are several reasons for substantial cost savings: low pressure operation, low operations and maintenance costs, lack of fuel fabrication, easy fuel handling, low fissile inventory, use of multiple plants at one site allowing sharing of facilities, and building large plant sizes. The cost of undergrounding the nuclear part of the plant obviously needs to be determined and will likely not offset the cost advantages of a liquid-fueled low-pressure reactor.

Vii. Why has the molten salt reactor not already been developed?

If the molten salt reactor appears to meet our criteria so well, why has it not already been developed since the molten salt reactor experiment operated over 30 yr ago?

Several decades ago an intense development was under- taken to address the problem of rapid expansion of reactors to meet a high growth rate of electricity while the known uranium resources were low. The competition came down to a liquid- metal fast breeder reactor ~ LMFBR! on the uranium-plutonium cycle and a thermal reactor on the thorium- 233 U cycle, the molten salt breeder reactor. The LMFBR had a larger breeding rate, a proper ty of fast reactors having more neutrons per fis- sion and less loss of neutrons by parasitic capture, and won the competition. This fact and the plan to reduce the number of candidate reactors being developed were used as arguments to stop the development of the molten salt reactor rather than keep an effor t going as a backup option. In our opinion, this was an excusable mistake.

As a result there has been little work done on the molten salt reactor during the last 30 yr. As it turned out, a far larger amount of uranium was found than was thought to exist, and the electricity growth rate has turned out to be much smaller than predicted. High excess breeding rates have turned out not to be essential. A reactor is advantageous that once star ted up needs no other fuel except thorium because it makes most or all its own fuel.

Studies of possible next-generation reactors, called Gener- ation IV, have included the molten salt reactor among six reac- tor types recommended for fur ther development. In addition the program called Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative has the goal of separating fission products and recycling for fur ther fissioning.


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