ESPN, New Math, Water & Light Solar Farming, Brazil

ESPN Magazine has published it's new Body Issue with 6 covers which I present a few to you.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I am so out of touch with school.

When I was a kid there was the Sputnik crisis and all of a sudden there was a perceived intellectual threat of the Soviet Union.  Something had to be done to make us kids in the 60's smarter and New Math was invented.  A new way to learn  modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra.

I really have no clue what the difference was between OLD math and NEW math and frankly I don't have a clue what NEW math is anymore.

But it seems there is a NEW NEW Math called Common Core math.  Without going into it deeply because I don't understand it . . . or want too, Common Core reminds me of some problems I had when learning computer programming.  It's not the answer that is important, it's HOW you figured out the problem.

It seems Common Core is teaching kids HOW to think and figure things out, not memorizing tables and so forth.  Is it harder?  I have to think so - hell, I can't figure it out.  It's the journey, not the destination.

In college we had computer problems and then when the project was complete the instructor said, use this instead and 100 lines of complicated code went down to like 5 but we learned a process on figuring things out.

I THINK that's what Common Core does (correct me if I'm wrong) Pretty cool!
--------------------------------------------

I'm pretty sure Thursday's Columbus Water & Light Committee at the City Hall is not on the top of your to do list but there will be some interesting discussion on a proposed WPPI Solar Farm.

WPPI (where we get our energy - they are like the Green Bay Packers of electric companies - owned by member communities not a fat cat huge conglomerate) wants to award two test communities with a large solar farm and Columbus fits the bill . . . .IF . . .we want it.

Well, OF COURSE we want it but we need the public to want it also because "we" need about 30 contracts to make this viable.

Columbus has not been selected yet (although we have the perfect location) which is why we need public input.  Is there interest?

There are LOTS of questions which no one knows the answer too yet but we need to get the ball rolling.

The basic plan is that instead of having a solar panel on your house you would rent one (or shares) from W&L and get a rebate on your bill. Instead of paying $10,000 to install one on your house you use the cities.  They would take care of all maintenance and so forth.  I'm not sure of the logistics of anything yet but if you are at all interested call the Columbus Water & Light ((920) 623-5912) or come to the meeting Thursday or just stay tuned.

--------------

Every time I'm at the keyboard my little friend Iggy watches. I believe he has more then doubled in size in the last 5 weeks.

----------------------------------------
Not real worried about the Brewers yet.

           

They are doing what teams do - going into a funk.  All teams do it.  Unless you win 100 games every team will go into a 10 game stretch where they can not do anything right.  If you will notice it's not like St. Louis is catch up, it's the Brewers coming back to earth.   Their first real slump of the year. 

Baseball Prospectus still has the Brewers making the playoffs 67.4% of the time. 36.9% Division Winner and 30.5% Wild Card. 

------------------------------

And then there is the World Cup and Brazil.  Not sure how many Americans know just how crushing this defeat was.  Brazil is all about soccer, they live, breath and die soccer. 

20 years ago a guy on Brazil accidentally scored a goal for the wrong team.  Days later he was murdered.  Many say that many of the current players will never play for Brazil again.

Analysts are saying this is not only the darkest day in the history of Brazil Soccer but actually the darkest day in Brazil history. 

Nate Silver says losing 7-1 would be like losing 73-0 to The Bears at home to go to the super bowl, but worse.  

Scoring 7 goals was a 1 in 4,500 chance and winning by 6 goals was a 1 in 4,000 chance. It was the most shocking game in World Cup History and one of the biggest blow-outs in professional sports history and it was all at home, on the worlds biggest stage where Brazil was SUPPOSE to win the World Cup. 

------------------------------------

Gardens - Columbus has only had 0.45 inches of rain in the last 7 days - might want to water.  One inch a week is what many growing things need each week.