Podcasts about mars climate orbiter

Few concepts are more important to our society than resilience. Agnostic of domain, of nation, culture, and scale (as vital, indeed, to the individual life as to the planetary civilization), it would be impossible to overstate the pressure on us to understand it. If resilience is a core competency of our time, it would not be hyperbole to say that Dr. David Woods one of our most important thinkers. Origins Podcast WebsiteFlourishing Commons NewsletterShow Notes:three mile island (07:20)resilience engineering (12:30)the theory of graceful extensibility (12:30)The Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (13:10)how do you know? (14:00)scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts (15:00)retrenchment vs revitalization (16:00)the novelty inequality (28:00)Simon DeDeo on Origins (28:30)Mars Climate Orbiter report (31:00)'faster, better, cheaper' pressure (32:00)Erik Hollnagle and Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off principle (33:30)graceful extensibility (36:20)Douglas Hofstadter and strange loops (41:00)SNAFU catchers (42:00)dialectic between the individual and collective (44:00)Arnold Toynbee (45:00)multi-hazards and changing climate (52:20)John Doyle (54:00)Elinor Ostrom and reciprocity (54:20)Lightning Round (01:01:30):Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas HofstadterPassion: History and Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History by Helen Hornbeck TannerHeart sing: graceful extensibility and resilience engineering video seriesScrewed up: building interfaces to the knowledge of resilienceFind David online:Ohio State University siteLogo artwork by Cristina GonzalezMusic by swelo on all streaming platforms or @swelomusic on social media

Heute vor 25 Jahren herrschte bei der NASA gespannte Erwartung: Der Mars Climate Orbiter sollte in eine Umlaufbahn um den Roten Planeten eintreten. Wegen eines haarsträubenden Fehlers wurde der erhoffte Triumph zum Desaster. Lorenzen, Dirk www.deutschlandfunk.de, Sternzeit

This interview was recorded at GOTO Amsterdam for GOTO Unscripted.http://gotopia.techRead the full transcription of this interview hereMark Rendle - Creator of Visual ReCode with 7 Microsoft MVP Awards & 30+ Years of Experience Building SoftwareHannes Lowette - Head of Learning & Development at Axxes, Monolith Advocate, Speaker & Whiskey LoverRESOURCESMark Rendle: https://youtu.be/Y9clBHENy4QHannes Lowette: https://youtu.be/wkFx2R4uk2ASir Tim Berners-Lee: https://youtu.be/Rxqko96C5ZIEli & Mark: https://youtu.be/Gs1exPFXnQ8Matt & Mark: https://youtu.be/vzqzLSJWo3kKevin, Dylan & Hannes: https://youtu.be/HevYXFZcb98Martin & Hannes: https://youtu.be/vzywu1ol-b8Anita Sengupta: https://youtu.be/Q_O9pmSpg_8Markhttps://twitter.com/markrendlehttps://github.com/markrendlehttps://linkedin.com/in/markrendleHanneshttps://twitter.com/hannes_lowettehttps://github.com/Belenarhttps://linkedin.com/in/hanneslowetteDESCRIPTIONHannes Lowette and Mark Rendle explore the highs and lows of programming, ranging from the monumental mistakes that have shaped the industry to the subtle yet impactful errors in code that translate to wasted time. They dissect the intricate world of FinTec, uncovering the dark side of digital markets and the pitfalls that emerge. The duo scrutinizes JavaScript's role in the programming landscape, questioning whether it's a revolutionary force or a coding misstep, while also delving into the potential drawbacks of package managers.The conversation takes a turn to the negative aspects of programming languages, highlighting their flaws and the havoc they can wreak on software development. Finally, they reflect on the interconnectedness of coding decisions and business failures, emphasizing the profound impact of programming choices on the success or downfall of a business in the tech realm.RECOMMENDED BOOKSTomasz Lelek & Jon Skeet • Software Mistakes & TradeoffsHenney & Monson-Haefel • 97 Things Every Software Architect Should KnowMerih Taze • Engineers Survival GuideDave Farley & Jez Humble • Continuous DeliveryNicole Forsgren, Jez Humble & Gene Kim • AccelerateTwitterInstagramLinkedInFacebookLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

In this age of fake news, disinformation, shadow banning and government agencies like CISA aiming to manipulate what it calls our “cognitive infrastructure” it is hard to answer this question.  To explore how we can go about finding what's true and what is not,  Jim Agresti, the founder of Just Facts, returns to help clarify our thinking.  Just Facts is an institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies and teaching research skills using exacting Standards of Credibility to determine what constitutes a fact and what does not. The vision of Just Facts is to equip people with facts “to make truly informed decisions. This means facts that accurately and fully convey reality—not pseudo-facts, half-truths, or talking points.” “Do you have the information you need to make quality decisions in your life and in the voting booth? You can rarely get the full picture of what something is about from an 800-word news article or commentary. You have to dig much deeper,” explains Jim. In this episode we talk about Just Facts exacting Standards of Credibility that is uses to produce research that is accurate and truly informative. Here's a summary: Comprehensiveness: It's a simple thing to distort reality by selecting only facts that align with partisan views while ignoring others. Half the truth can amount to a total lie. Primary Sources means identifying credible primary sources instead of secondary ones that often reflect an “interpretation” of the facts instead of the actual facts.  Rigorous Documentation means documenting facts far more thoroughly than academic standards require, footnoting every fact with creditable sources, and citing quotations or data exactly. Harvard's Claudine Gay should have consulted with Jim.  Raw Data presents data in its rawest comprehensible form to safeguard against data corrupted by errors, rhetorical mischaracterizations, or statistical manipulation.  Verification uses different sources, methodologies, and calculations to double-check verifiable facts. If they'd done this, NASA wouldn't have lost a Mars Climate Orbiter because they mixed up metric and English units when coding the mission software. Clarity means using language that is precise and unambiguous in order to minimize the potential for misinterpretation.  Balance: In this age of raging partisanship, almost no one does comprehensive accuracy or tries to balance views. Instead, sound bites are laced with rhetoric and misinformation, and opposing views given short shrift.  Of course, not everyone is interested in a disinterested discussion rooted in a dispassionate comparison of facts.  Vladimir Lenin - and most all on the Left who have followed him - said that “moral and factual considerations are irrelevant when it comes to how to sway the public most effectively. Our morality is entirely subordinated to our interest of advancing communism.” So the question we have to ask is: even if we know what's factual and true does it matter in today's world of raw power politics?  Listen in to decide for yourself. 

Een Nerdland special live op het Standaard Podcastfestival, lekker toepasselijk over standaarden in de wetenschap. Mars Climate Orbiter! Piraten! Napoleon's roede! De Smoot! USB! Duiven! Peter's Mijt! En veel meer... Shownotes: https://maandoverzicht.nerdland.be/nerdland-special-standaarden/ Gepresenteerd door Lieven Scheire met Kurt Beheydt, Peter Berx, Hetty Helsmoortel en Jeroen Baert. Montage & mastering door Els Aerts en Jens Paeyeneers.

We're releasing episodes from our mini failure library while we're on production hiatus. This week's Mini Failure is about the Mars Climate Orbiter. Due to unit conversion errors, a space probe crashed into the Martian surface, a really, expensive mistake, setting back Mars data collection for years.  Original Air Date: January 9, 2022 Episode Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/mars-climate-orbiter/in-depth/ Ways to get in touch with us Twitter - https://twitter.com/failurology Email - thefailurologypodcast@gmail.com Website - www.failurology.ca

Mateusz Pusz joins Phil and new guest co-host, Anastasia Kazakova. Mateusz talks to us about his physical units (and quantities) library, mp-units, why v2 is a complete redesign compared to the previous version, and how incorporating a system of quantities is so central to this new design. Show Notes News clang 17 released Conference videos released in October AMA with Abbas Sabra (automatic/ static analysis) Is it too hard for junior developers to get on the C++ career ladder (Reddit) Links mp-units on GitHub mp-units - Documentation C++ on Sea 2023 video The Mars Climate Orbiter crash p1935 - "A C++ Approach to Physical Units" p2980 - "A motivation, scope, and plan for a physical quantities and units library" p2981 - "Improving our safety with a physical quantities and units library" p2982 - "std::quantity as a numeric type" p3003 - "The design of a library of number concepts"

Das NASA-Raumschiff Mars Climate Orbiter sollte Ende der 90er Jahre Wetter und Klima auf dem Mars untersuchen. Aber dort kam das Raumschiff nie an – denn die vorgenommene Kurskorrektur war zu groß, aufgrund unterschiedlicher Maßeinheiten-Systeme. Die Mission missglückte.

We believe in science here at No Good Ideas, but what happens when scientists don't believe in themselves? That's not a totally accurate description of the episode but it sounds good.Follow No Good Ideas on the internet!@NoGoodIdeasPod on Twitter and Instagram!Review No Good Ideas with Brad & Hank on Apple PodcastsFollow Hank Farr:Twitter: https://twitter.com/HankAnimatesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/HankAnimates/YouTube: http://youtube.com/HankFarrMindmill Games: https://bio.fm/mindmillstudios/Faraway Bricks: @farawaybricksFollow Bradley Miller:Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradleywithaneTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bradleywithaneInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradleywithane/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/bradleywithaneWebsite: https://brad.rocksSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/nogoodideas/donations

We talk to Kevin Riggle (@kevinriggle) about complexity and safety. We also talk about the Twitter acquisition. While recording, we discovered a new failure mode where Kevin couldn't hear Thomas, but David and Deirdre could, so there's not much Thomas this episode. If you ever need to get Thomas to voluntarily stop talking, simply mute him to half the audience!https://twitter.com/kevinriggleTranscript: https://beta-share.descript.com/view/WTrQGK4xEVj ErrataIt was the Mars Climate Orbiter that crashed due to a units mismatchDavid confused the Dreamliner with the 737 MaxLinkshttps://free-dissociation.com/blog/posts/2018/08/why-is-it-so-hard-to-build-safe-software/https://complexsystems.group/https://how.complexsystems.fail/https://noncombatant.org/2016/06/20/get-into-security-engineering/https://blog.nelhage.com/2010/03/security-doesnt-respect-abstraction/http://sunnyday.mit.edu/safer-world.pdfhttps://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/john-allspaw/https://www.etsy.com/codeascraft/blameless-postmortemshttps://increment.com/security/approachable-threat-modeling/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/arts/music/taylor-swift-tickets-ticketmaster.htmlhttps://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/we-are-not-special/https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/what-we-can-learn/https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Denethor_IIhttps://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/1587597972136546304"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@davidcadrian)

Tratamos los siguientes temas: - El clima marciano es más hostil de lo que pensábamos. - Mars Climate Orbiter y la historia de las unidades de medida, por Daniel Migueles. - La controversia por el descubrimiento de Neptuno. - Impacto del cambio climático en la población. Temas musicales: - Jupiter Veil of Clouds - Vangelis - Juno to Jupiter (2021) - Tour de France - Kraftwerk (2003) - Neptunus - Distant Worlds - Ulises Labaronnie (2009) - Taste of future - Chip Meditation - Part II - Software (1989)

Ανάλυση της πτώσης της αποστολής στον Άρη του 1998, Mars Climate Orbiter Τι έφταιγε; - LOL United States customary units How NASA Lost a Spacecraft From a Metric Math Mistake | SimScale Επικοινωνία hello@notatop10.fm @notatop10 @timaras @giorgos.dimop

El 11 de diciembre de 1998, la NASA lanzó la sonda Mars Climate Orbiter desde Cabo Cañaveral, con el objetivo de estudiar el clima de Marte. Después de una inversión de 125 millones de dólares y de un viaje de 9 meses, el 23 de septiembre de 1999, el artefacto, contra todo pronóstico, se estrelló […] La entrada Creator Economy y picar piedra creando marca personal, con Daniel Primo #214 se publicó primero en Toni Colom.

En 1999, la sonde américaine Mars Climate Orbiter s'est sans doute écrasée sur la planète rouge, en tous cas a connu un sort funeste. Et les raisons de cet incident sont des plus contingentes. Une sonde en échec La sonde Mars Climate Orbiter devait s'acquitter d'un double objectif. Comme son nom l'indique, elle devait d'abord recueillir des informations sur le climat martien. Elle était aussi conçue pour servir de relai de transmission à une autre sonde, Mars Polar Lander, qui devait atterrir sur la planète rouge début décembre 1999. Elle avait notamment pour mission de rechercher de l'eau sur Mars. Or, cette sonde, en raison d'une erreur technique, s'est elle-même écrasée sur le sol martien. C'est aussi ce qui a pu arriver à la sonde Mars Climate Orbiter. Il se peut aussi qu'elle ait été mise en pièces par l'atmosphère martienne. En tous cas, les techniciens de la NASA ont perdu sa trace. Une erreur de navigation Si la sonde Mars Climate Orbiter s'est sans doute écrasée sur Mars, c'est parce qu'elle s'en est approchée de trop près. En effet, elle devait se placer, en orbite, à une altitude d'environ 225 km. Or, la sonde est descendue jusqu'à 57 km. Cette altitude beaucoup trop basse l'a amenée au contact d'une atmosphère très dense, qui a sans doute provoqué la désintégration de la sonde. Comment une telle erreur de navigation a-t-elle pu se produire ? Il semble qu'elle soit due à une mauvaise coordination dans la transmission des données. En effet, la sonde a été conçue pour traiter des mesures appartenant au système métrique. Or, il semble bien que la sonde ait reçu des données calculées selon le système impérial, autrement dit le système d'unités de mesure en vigueur dans les pays anglo-saxons. On peut penser qu'avec des vérifications plus soigneuses, une telle négligence n'aurait jamais dû se produire. En tous, elle a coûté cher aux investisseurs, le projet ayant entraîné une dépense de plus de 300 millions de dollars. À l'époque, les scientifiques de la NASA avaient cependant considéré que cet échec ne compromettait pas vraiment le programme martien. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

En 1999, la sonde américaine Mars Climate Orbiter s'est sans doute écrasée sur la planète rouge, en tous cas a connu un sort funeste. Et les raisons de cet incident sont des plus contingentes.Une sonde en échecLa sonde Mars Climate Orbiter devait s'acquitter d'un double objectif. Comme son nom l'indique, elle devait d'abord recueillir des informations sur le climat martien.Elle était aussi conçue pour servir de relai de transmission à une autre sonde, Mars Polar Lander, qui devait atterrir sur la planète rouge début décembre 1999. Elle avait notamment pour mission de rechercher de l'eau sur Mars. Or, cette sonde, en raison d'une erreur technique, s'est elle-même écrasée sur le sol martien.C'est aussi ce qui a pu arriver à la sonde Mars Climate Orbiter. Il se peut aussi qu'elle ait été mise en pièces par l'atmosphère martienne. En tous cas, les techniciens de la NASA ont perdu sa trace.Une erreur de navigationSi la sonde Mars Climate Orbiter s'est sans doute écrasée sur Mars, c'est parce qu'elle s'en est approchée de trop près. En effet, elle devait se placer, en orbite, à une altitude d'environ 225 km.Or, la sonde est descendue jusqu'à 57 km. Cette altitude beaucoup trop basse l'a amenée au contact d'une atmosphère très dense, qui a sans doute provoqué la désintégration de la sonde.Comment une telle erreur de navigation a-t-elle pu se produire ? Il semble qu'elle soit due à une mauvaise coordination dans la transmission des données. En effet, la sonde a été conçue pour traiter des mesures appartenant au système métrique.Or, il semble bien que la sonde ait reçu des données calculées selon le système impérial, autrement dit le système d'unités de mesure en vigueur dans les pays anglo-saxons.On peut penser qu'avec des vérifications plus soigneuses, une telle négligence n'aurait jamais dû se produire. En tous, elle a coûté cher aux investisseurs, le projet ayant entraîné une dépense de plus de 300 millions de dollars. À l'époque, les scientifiques de la NASA avaient cependant considéré que cet échec ne compromettait pas vraiment le programme martien. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

We will review each section of Leveson's paper and discuss how she sets each section up by stating a general assumption and then proceeds to break that assumption down.We will discuss her analysis of:Safety vs. ReliabilityRetrospective vs. Prospective AnalysisThree Levels of Accident Causes:Proximal event chainConditions that allowed the eventSystemic factors that contributed to both the conditions and the event Discussion Points:Unlike some others, Leveson makes her work openly available on her websiteLeveson's books, SafeWare: System Safety and Computers (1995) and Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety (2011)Drew describes Leveson as a “prickly character” and once worked for her, and was eventually fired by herLeveson came to engineering with a psychology backgroundMany safety professionals express concern regarding how major accidents keep happening and bemoaning - ‘why we can't learn enough to prevent them?'The first section of Leveson's paper: Safety vs. Reliability - sometimes these concepts are at odds, sometimes they are the same thingHow cybernetics used to be ‘the thing' but the theory of simple feedback loops fell apartSumming up this section: safety is not the sum of reliability componentsThe second section of the paper: Retrospective vs. Prospective Accident AnalysisMost safety experts rely on and agree that retrospective accident analysis is still the best way to learnExample - where technology changes slowly, ie airplanes, it's acceptable to run a two-year investigation into accident causesExample - where technology changes quickly, ie the 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter crash vs. Polar Lander crash, there is no way to use retrospective analysis to change the next iteration in timeThe third section of the paper: Three Levels of AnalysisIts easiest to find the causes that led to the proximal event chain and the conditions that allowed the event, but identifying the systemic factors is more difficult because it's not as easy to draw a causal link, it's too indirectThe “5 Whys” method to analyzing an event or failurePractical takeaways from Leveson's paper–STAMP (System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes) using the accident causality model based on systems theoryInvestigations should focus on fixing the part of the system that changes slowestThe exact front line events of the accident often don't matter that much in improving safetyClosing question: “What exactly is systems thinking?” It is the adoption of the Rasmussian causation model– that accidents arise from a change in risk over time, and analyzing what causes that change in risk Quotes:“Leveson says, ‘If we can get it right some of the time, why can't we get it right all of the time?'” - Dr. David Provan“Leveson says, ‘the more complex your system gets, that sort of local autonomy becomes dangerous because the accidents don't happen at that local level.'” - Dr. Drew Rae“In linear systems, if you try to model things as chains of events, you just end up in circles.'” - Dr. Drew Rae“‘Never buy the first model of a new series [of new cars], wait for the subsequent models where the engineers had a chance to iron out all the bugs of that first model!” - Dr. David Provan“Leveson says the reason systemic factors don't show up in accident reports is just because its so hard to draw a causal link.'” - Dr. Drew Rae“A lot of what Leveson is doing is drawing on a deep well of cybernetics theory.” - Dr. Drew Rae Resources:Applying Systems Thinking Paper by LevesonNancy Leveson– Full List of PublicationsNancy Leveson of MITThe Safety of Work PodcastThe Safety of Work on LinkedInFeedback@safetyofwork.com

Gehaltvolle Gedanken von Andreas «Boppi» Boppart, Leiter Campus für Christus und Initiator der Explo DaysDie Explo Days vom 27. und 28. November 2021 schaffen eine neue Sicht auf die befreiende Botschaft von Jesus Christus - das Evangelium in seiner ganzen Dimension. Ein tiefschürfendes Interview von Jonathan Bucher mit Andreas «Boppi» Boppart, dem Gast- und Pulsgeber der Explo Days, weshalb das Evangelium neu gedacht und gelebt werden muss.

Der Weltraum, unendliche Weiten. Wir schreiben das Jahr 1999. Dies sind die Abenteuer des Mars Climate Orbiter, der seit 286 Tagen auf seiner Reise zum Mars ist. Doch am Ziel angekommen reißt der Kontakt ab und die Sonde verglüht wahrscheinlich in der Atmosphäre des roten Planeten. Die Mission ist verloren. Grund dafür ist ein Fehler bei der Berechnung der Flugbahn. Die Systeme nutzen nämlich unterschiedliche Einheiten. Während die NASA mit metrischen Einheiten rechnet, verwendet der Hersteller der Sonde imperiale Einheiten. Ein kleiner Fehler mit großen Folgen. Sprecher & Produktion: Wolfgang Schoch Musik: BACKPLATE von https://josephmcdade.com

In this episode Patrick and Greg discuss the challenges of having ordered categorical data, as well as the seemingly magical limited information and full information analytical options to deal with such data. Along the way they also discuss sky cranes, the Mars Climate Orbiter, metric vs. imperial units of measurement, Lockheed-Martin, left hands and right hands, the A380, 6-inch extension cords, Home Depot, billion dollar shooting stars, being unidextrous, playing the recorder, star wipe, Jell-O molds, throbbing and pulsating distributions, Fast Pass walk of shame, Monarch notes, mahnamahna, and 1.7.

Der Mars ist der einzige bekannte Planet, der komplett von Robotern bewohnt ist. Wir haben in den letzten 60 Jahren jede Menge Sonden dorthin geschickt. Das ist öfter schief gegangen als es geklappt hat. Warum? Hört ihr in der neuen Folge der Sternengeschichten.

Ran Levy, a well known and prolific technology podcaster joins the show to talk with the panel about software bugs. Topics of discussion include the inevitability of software bugs – are they an intrinsic part of software development? Also, can they be minimized and their impact mitigated? And what can software companies, and the developers themselves, do in order to deliver properly working software. Sponsors Raygun | Click here to get started on your free 14-day trial The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide – Grab a Copy Today Faithlife | Now Hiring Software Developers CacheFly Panel Charles Max Wood AJ ONeal Aimee Knight Dan Shappir Steve Edwards Special Guest Ran Levi Links Are Software Bugs Inevitable? The Wix Engineering Podcast Picks Dan The Explosion of the Ariane 5 Mars Climate Orbiter AJ Magic Keyboard & Trackpad 2 Final Fantasy 1 GameCube + GBA + HDMI Homebrew Guide Charles Max Wood MUD List of MUDs Follow JavaScript Jabber on Twitter: @JSJabber

Ran Levy, a well known and prolific technology podcaster joins the show to talk with the panel about software bugs. Topics of discussion include the inevitability of software bugs – are they an intrinsic part of software development? Also, can they be minimized and their impact mitigated? And what can software companies, and the developers themselves, do in order to deliver properly working software. Sponsors Raygun | Click here to get started on your free 14-day trial The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide – Grab a Copy Today Faithlife | Now Hiring Software Developers CacheFly Panel Charles Max Wood AJ ONeal Aimee Knight Dan Shappir Steve Edwards Special Guest Ran Levi Links Are Software Bugs Inevitable? The Wix Engineering Podcast Picks Dan The Explosion of the Ariane 5 Mars Climate Orbiter AJ Magic Keyboard & Trackpad 2 Final Fantasy 1 GameCube + GBA + HDMI Homebrew Guide Charles Max Wood MUD List of MUDs Follow JavaScript Jabber on Twitter: @JSJabber

Ran Levy, a well known and prolific technology podcaster joins the show to talk with the panel about software bugs. Topics of discussion include the inevitability of software bugs – are they an intrinsic part of software development? Also, can they be minimized and their impact mitigated? And what can software companies, and the developers themselves, do in order to deliver properly working software. Sponsors Raygun | Click here to get started on your free 14-day trial The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide – Grab a Copy Today Faithlife | Now Hiring Software Developers CacheFly Panel Charles Max Wood AJ ONeal Aimee Knight Dan Shappir Steve Edwards Special Guest Ran Levi Links Are Software Bugs Inevitable? The Wix Engineering Podcast Picks Dan The Explosion of the Ariane 5 Mars Climate Orbiter AJ Magic Keyboard & Trackpad 2 Final Fantasy 1 GameCube + GBA + HDMI Homebrew Guide Charles Max Wood MUD List of MUDs Follow JavaScript Jabber on Twitter: @JSJabber

Spaceflight news— Nanoracks ISS airlock is nearly complete (spacenews.com) (youtube.com)— Dynetics HLS mockup arrives at JSC (twitter.com/Dynetics) (techcrunch.com) — On-orbit refueling is required to get Dynetics HLS to the moon (spacenews.com)Short & Sweet— Russia announces solo mission to Venus (dailymail.co.uk) (nplus1.ru) (twitter.com/katlinegrey)— China preps for Chang’e 5 launch (spacenews.com)— Artemis III’s landing site (spacepolicyonline.com) (spacenews.com)Questions, comments, corrections— Ben Hallert: FH has launched three times, not two (twitter.com/chairboy)— Ben Hallert: Any Vulcan can have up to 6 SRMs, it’s Centaur that gets heavy (twitter.com/chairboy)— Andrew Z: Interesting Boeing read (aviationweek.com)This week in SF history— 23 Sept, 1999. Mars Climate Orbiter failure (wikipedia.org) (spectrum.ieee.org) (PDF: sunnyday.mit.edu)— Next week in 2003: a bureaucratic Voltron

Royalty free music from Danosongs.Read more about the Seven Bridges of Königsberg:https://www.mathsisfun.com/activity/seven-bridges-konigsberg.htmlLinks about weather modelling:http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/charts/about/about_access.shtmlhttp://www.bom.gov.au/australia/charts/bulletins/nmoc_bulletin.shtmlMore about the sad story of the Mars Climate Orbiter:https://www.wired.com/2010/11/1110mars-climate-observer-report/What's wrong with opinion polls:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/20/mathematics-does-not-lie-why-polling-got-the-australian-election-wronghttps://reason.com/2016/01/14/why-polls-dont-work/https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-pollinghttps://theconversation.com/heres-how-to-make-opinion-polls-more-representative-and-honest-117405And how we don't grieve in five stages:https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130219-are-there-five-stages-of-griefhttps://blog.sevenponds.com/professional-advice/why-doesnt-everyone-go-through-the-five-stages-of-grief-an-interview-with-dr-paul-coleman-part-two 

Sponsored by DigitalOcean: pythonbytes.fm/digitalocean Michael #1: Final type PEP 591 -- Adding a final qualifier to typing This PEP proposes a "final" qualifier to be added to the typing module---in the form of a final decorator and a Final type annotation---to serve three related purposes: Declaring that a method should not be overridden Declaring that a class should not be subclassed Declaring that a variable or attribute should not be reassigned Some situations where a final class or method may be useful include: A class wasn’t designed to be subclassed or a method wasn't designed to be overridden. Perhaps it would not work as expected, or be error-prone. Subclassing or overriding would make code harder to understand or maintain. For example, you may want to prevent unnecessarily tight coupling between base classes and subclasses. You want to retain the freedom to arbitrarily change the class implementation in the future, and these changes might break subclasses. # Example for a class: from typing import final @final class Base: ... class Derived(Base): # Error: Cannot inherit from final class "Base" ... And for a method: class Base: @final def foo(self) -> None: ... class Derived(Base): def foo(self) -> None: # Error: Cannot override final attribute "foo" # (previously declared in base class "Base") ... It seems to also mean const RATE: Final = 3000 class Base: DEFAULT_ID: Final = 0 RATE = 300 # Error: can't assign to final attribute Base.DEFAULT_ID = 1 # Error: can't override a final attribute Brian #2: flit 2 Michael #3: Pint via Andrew Simon Physical units and builtin unit conversion to everyday python numbers like floats. Receive inputs in different unit systems it can make life difficult to account for that in software. Pint handles the unit conversion automatically in a wide array of contexts – Can add 2 meters and 5 inches and get the correct result without any additional work. The integration with numpy and pandas are seamless, and it’s made my life so much simpler overall. Units and types of measurements Think you need this? How about the Mars Climate Orbiter The MCO MIB has determined that the root cause for the loss of the MCO spacecraft was the failure to use metric units in the coding of a ground software file, “Small Forces,” used in trajectory models. Specifically, thruster performance data in English units instead of metric units was used in the software application code titled SM_FORCES (small forces). Brian #4: 8 great pytest plugins Jeff Triplett Michael #5: 11 new web frameworks via LuisCarlos Contreras Sanic [flask like] - a web server and web framework that’s written to go fast. It allows the usage of the async / await syntax added in Python 3.5 Starlette [flask like] - A lightweight ASGI framework which is ideal for building high performance asyncio services, designed to be used either as a complete framework, or as an ASGI toolkit. Masonite - A developer centric Python web framework that strives for an actual batteries included developer tool with a lot of out of the box functionality. Craft CLI is the edge here. FastAPI - A modern, high-performance, web framework for building APIs with Python 3.6+ based on standard Python type hints. Responder - Based on Starlette, Responder’s primary concept is to bring the niceties that are brought forth from both Flask and Falcon and unify them into a single framework. Molten - A minimal, extensible, fast and productive framework for building HTTP APIs with Python. Molten can automatically validate requests according to predefined schemas. Japronto - A screaming-fast, scalable, asynchronous Python 3.5+ HTTP toolkit integrated with pipelining HTTP server based on uvloop and picohttpparser. Klein [flask like] - A micro-framework for developing production-ready web services with Python. It is ‘micro’ in that it has an incredibly small API similar to Bottle and Flask. Quart [flask like]- A Python ASGI web microframework. It is intended to provide the easiest way to use asyncio functionality in a web context, especially with existing Flask apps. BlackSheep - An asynchronous web framework to build event based, non-blocking Python web applications. It is inspired by Flask and ASP.NET Core. BlackSheep supports automatic binding of values for request handlers, by type annotation or by conventions. Cyclone - A web server framework that implements the Tornado API as a Twisted protocol. The idea is to bridge Tornado’s elegant and straightforward API to Twisted’s Event-Loop, enabling a vast number of supported protocols. Brian #6: Raise Better Exceptions in Python Extras Michael: Naming venvs --prompt Another new course coming soon: Python for decision makers and business leaders Some random interview over at Real Python: Python Community Interview With Brian Okken Joke via Daniel Pope What's a tractor's least favorite programming language? Rust.

In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. 2 Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king. 3 And the king said to them, “I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.” 4 Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation.” 5 The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, “The word from me is firm: if you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. 6 But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. Therefore show me the dream and its interpretation.” 7 They answered a second time and said, “Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will show its interpretation.” 8 The king answered and said, “I know with certainty that you are trying to gain time, because you see that the word from me is firm— 9 if you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change. Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation.” 10 The Chaldeans answered the king and said, “There is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” 12 Because of this the king was angry and very furious, and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed. 13 So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed; and they sought Daniel and his companions, to kill them. 14 Then Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Arioch, the captain of the king's guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. 15 He declared to Arioch, the king's captain, “Why is the decree of the king so urgent?” Then Arioch made the matter known to Daniel. 16 And Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time, that he might show the interpretation to the king. 17 Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, 18 and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. 19 Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. 20 Daniel answered and said: “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. 21 He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; 22 he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. 23 To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king's matter.” 24 Therefore Daniel went in to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went and said thus to him: “Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will show the king the interpretation.” 25 Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus to him: “I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known to the king the interpretation.” 26 The king declared to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, “Are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?” 27 Daniel answered the king and said, “No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these: 29 To you, O king, as you lay in bed came thoughts of what would be after this, and he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be. 30 But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind. 31 “You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. 32 The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34 As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. 36 “This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. 37 You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, 38 and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold. 39 Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. 40 And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. 41 And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. 44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, 45 just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.” 46 Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him. 47 The king answered and said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.” 48 Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. 49 Daniel made a request of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon. But Daniel remained at the king's court. Daniel 2:1-49, ESV In the late 1990's, as part of the continued exploration of the planet Mars, NASA launched an expensive one hundred and twenty-five million-dollar unmanned space probe to Mars. It was known as the Mars Climate Orbiter. It was basically a weather satellite that NASA wanted to send one hundred forty million miles away to the red planet. Where it ideally would have entered into orbit and captured important weather data on the planet of Mars that could aid in future missions and explorations. Unfortunately, this elaborate and expensive mission that NASA undertook ended in complete and total disaster. When the Orbiter arrived, to everyone's surprise it propelled right into Mars's upper atmosphere and burned up. It was a total loss and the mission was a complete failure. But very quickly on the ground, back on old planet Earth, they began to realize what the problem was. To NASA's embarrassment, it wasn't something highly complex and outside their control. Instead the problem boils down to a very simple and elementary math error. Someone in this highly skilled and intelligent group of engineers and scientists and mathematicians who were overseeing this mission forgot to convert English measurements feet into metric measurements meters. If you don't know anything about math, that's a shocking oversight for a group of that caliber. It is something you can basically calculate on your phones. Worse than that is that it was an error that nobody caught in the planning process and nobody caught it in the more than nine-month journey to the planet Mars. This is intense complexity requiring the collective wisdom of some of the best and brightest minds that are out there and yet even with all of this wisdom available to the mission, all of this wisdom available to the contractors and to NASA, in the end it's still crashed and burned. When we open up this morning to Daniel two, we learn that apparently all of the resources of wisdom and knowledge in Babylon were also available to King Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar led a flourishing kingdom with armies and servants and counselors and whatever he might need at his disposal. Yet for everything that the king had access to, everything that was designed to secure his reign and prop up his empire, we meet a king in our text who is anything but secure in the wisdom of Babylon. Instead we meet a king who is deeply insecure. A king who is unsatisfied even with all of the collective wisdom that Babylon has to offer and who is petrified that his kingdom is going to crash and burn as well. If you remember when we were in Daniel two weeks ago, we learned that Daniel is a book for God's people in exile. The issue pressing on the exiles and Daniel was whether the wisdom and power of Babylon and their gods was superior to the wisdom and got power of God. The wisdom and power of Babylon must have been quite impressive to any audience experiencing it in the sixth century BC. Babylon had just defeated Egypt, another superpower of the day, and then subjugated Judah along with a whole lot of other people under their authority. They were a cultural powerhouse in the region. Think about the meccas of culture today in our own day. Those places that are on the frontier of the advancement of civilization and culture and just how captivated we often are with those kind of places. That's how it was with Babylon in the sixth century BC. Things, we learn from our text, aren't as they seem. In Daniel two, the prophet exposes the ultimate emptiness that the wisdom of Babylon. Ultimately the wisdom of Babylon, as impressive as it may seem from the outside, cannot offer a satisfactory response to the king's dilemma. Even when Daniel comes along as we will see a little bit later in this text, he offers a clear interpretation and a clear solution to the problem that has vexed to the king throughout this text. We learn that the wisdom of the kingdom of Babylon and the wisdom of every other kingdom has to offer is destined to be supplanted and outdone by the wisdom of the power of the kingdom of God. The message to exiles in Daniel's day and the exiles today, that's you and me, is one and the same. The wisdom of God supplants the wisdom of the world. That's our big idea from the text this morning. As we work through this text, we are going to see how just how the wisdom of God, although it might seem unimpressive on the surface, is simply better than the wisdom of the world. We're going to work through this text in three parts. 1. The Powerlessness of the Wisdom of Babylon 2. The Power of the Wisdom of God 3. The Power of the Kingdom of God The Powerlessness of the Wisdom of Babylon In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. 2 Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king. 3 And the king said to them, “I had a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.” 4 Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will show the interpretation.” 5 The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, “The word from me is firm: if you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins. 6 But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. Therefore show me the dream and its interpretation.” 7 They answered a second time and said, “Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will show its interpretation.” 8 The king answered and said, “I know with certainty that you are trying to gain time, because you see that the word from me is firm— 9 if you do not make the dream known to me, there is but one sentence for you. You have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me till the times change. Therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me its interpretation.” 10 The Chaldeans answered the king and said, “There is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. 11 The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” 12 Because of this the king was angry and very furious, and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed. 13 So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed; and they sought Daniel and his companions, to kill them. Daniel 2:1-13, ESV We learn from the text right at the beginning that we are now in the second year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar. Commentators and historians note that in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, at this point in his administration, the king had quite a bit on his plate. He already defeated Egypt, as I had mentioned, another cultural and military superpower of the day. At that same time, he subjugated a variety of other people, including Judah, under his reign. He was also facing mounting resistance as he sought to expand the borders of his kingdom further and further in the ancient near East. There's a lot happening for good old Nebuchadnezzar in the second year of his reign as he focuses on building and expanding his kingdom. All of this is going on in his life and then we learned that one evening Nebuchadnezzar falls asleep and has dreams. Disturbing dreams. So disturbing that he can't sleep. When he wakes from these dreams, he is compelled to summon all of the experts in his kingdom to help make sense of what he just experienced. There were about this dream, at this point in the narrative we don't know what it was it's still a mystery to us it's the reader, but whatever it was Nebuchadnezzar senses at this point that there's something so significant about it that he has to enlist some serious muscle to help him out. He summons a group of people who collectively represent the best that Babylon has to offer; the Chaldeans, the enchanters, and the sorcerers. These are the people in the Kingdom of Babylon who specialize in wisdom. This is the council that a king would call to himself in order to make sense of things of significant such as this dream. When they come before the king, they are confident in their abilities to appease him and whatever he might ask. But Nebuchadnezzar makes an absolutely impossible demand. He demands that they interpret the dream, but also makes it known to them that they have to recall the dream to him. In other words, because Nebuchadnezzar senses that this dream, whatever it is, is of such significance that he has to know that these wisdom people aren't ultimately charlatans and the only way that he'll be able to trust any interpretation that they give of his dream is if they can also call the dream to him. The council knows that this is impossible. Yet despite politely informing the king, sir we can't quite do that for you, Nebuchadnezzar grows more and more agitated and irrational. The council that he's surrounded by grows more and more helpless as they try to maneuver around the king's demand. Finally, the Chaldeans tell the king that there's not a man on earth who can meet the kings demand and that no one can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with the flesh. What the king is asking for is theologically impossible for the gods of Babylon. But for a man bent on conquering the world, a man who may even consider himself such a god, a man who is even named after the Babylonian god for wisdom, those answers don't suffice. Nebuchadnezzar has enough and calls for all of the wise men of Babylon to be destroyed. He doesn't trust them and he's not going to take no for an answer. We see that for all of the resources of wisdom that good old Nebuchadnezzar has at his disposal, in the end the wisdom of Babylon can only produce insecurity, anxiety, and anger when it's relied upon to address the big theological questions of the future that are weighing heavy upon the king. It cannot peer into the is the present, it cannot give him assurance about the future of his kingdom, and it cannot give him assurance about the days ahead. Nebuchadnezzar might be the leader of a powerful kingdom with resources of wisdom aplenty, but the kind wisdom that he's calling upon to build his kingdom is in the words of James is not, “the kind of wisdom that comes from above.” It's earthly wisdom, wisdom that results in jealousy and selfish ambition and disorder. In that way Nebuchadnezzar isn't just some lone example of a Babylonian king who lives in some point in history who we can write off this ancient histor. Because what we learned about his heart it is symptomatic of any heart bent on building the kingdom for self, while at the same time resting upon the wisdom of the world to address questions and offer meaning that only the wisdom of God is equipped to do. One of the questions this passage leads us to ask out of ourselves, is when we get angry, when we are overcome with anxiety, and when we are deeply insecure, why is that? I think if we're honest with ourselves, we're often much more focused on building kingdoms for ourselves than. We realize we see what the wisdom of the world has to offer and we feed upon that wisdom to give us security, to give us comfort, to prop up our own little kingdoms and to make us feel like we're in control of things that are really far outside of our control. When we do that, in the end we're often led to the same place as Nebuchadnezzar. Ultimately the wisdom of the world, just like the wisdom of Babylon, cannot alleviate us from the crippling anxiety of life. It cannot offer satisfactory answers to the big theological questions brewing in our hearts. It cannot comfort us during the dark nights of the soul. In the end it exposes the ultimate folly of the little kingdom we set up for ourselves. This is the kind of wisdom that Nebuchadnezzar pursues and it's kind of wisdom that, in the words of Paul, is ultimately folly with God. So, as captivating as the wisdom of Babylon was for Nebuchadnezzar, and for anyone in the sixth century BC. As enchanting as the wisdom of the world so often is for us today, we are called to remember in this text that its ultimate weakness. Instead we need a better kind of wisdom, we need a better kind of kingdom and we need a better kind of king. As this section in Daniel two draws to a close in verse thirteen, we are faced with another problem and that is, will the wisdom of God even be given a day in the king's court? Nebuchadnezzar just commanded that wise men of Babylon be destroyed and when that decree went out, we learned verse thirteen that Daniel and his companions were sought too. They were included in this decree of destruction. Now remember from chapter one, Daniel and his companions they faced one challenge and God gave, God preserved them through it by giving Daniel wisdom. Now the question stands before us, will God give again? Will Daniel and his companions survive this ordeal? So, will now be the moment for the wisdom of God that God gave Daniel shine? This leads to our second point where we see the power of the wisdom of God on display. Look with me now with in Daniel 2:13-30 and follow along with me as I read. Power of the Wisdom of God 13 So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed; and they sought Daniel and his companions, to kill them. 14 Then Daniel replied with prudence and discretion to Arioch, the captain of the king's guard, who had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. 15 He declared to Arioch, the king's captain, “Why is the decree of the king so urgent?” Then Arioch made the matter known to Daniel. 16 And Daniel went in and requested the king to appoint him a time, that he might show the interpretation to the king. 17 Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, 18 and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. 19 Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. 20 Daniel answered and said: “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. 21 He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; 22 he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. 23 To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for you have made known to us the king's matter.” 24 Therefore Daniel went in to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went and said thus to him: “Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will show the king the interpretation.” 25 Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste and said thus to him: “I have found among the exiles from Judah a man who will make known to the king the interpretation.” 26 The king declared to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, “Are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?” 27 Daniel answered the king and said, “No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these: 29 To you, O king, as you lay in bed came thoughts of what would be after this, and he who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be. 30 But as for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom that I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind. Daniel 2:13-30, ESV Now we learn how Daniel responds to Nebuchadnezzar's decree. Once again, just like we saw back in chapter one, we see how Daniel's character and approach he takes to his future is a complete contrast to that of Nebuchadnezzar. Where is Nebuchadnezzar is demanding and impulsive at every point, Daniel isn't, even when he's in jeopardy of losing his life. Whereas, Nebuchadnezzar hastily demands the council of wise men give him an answer now and he's not going to wait upon them; Daniel knows how to wait upon the Lord. He enlists his friends in prayer and then having entrusted the matter to God, that it's all in God's hands, he's even able to fall asleep, something that evaded Nebuchadnezzar since his dream. Then the most startling thing, in my humble opinion, happens. When Daniel wakes from his sleep, where we learned that he has been given the wisdom to peer into things hidden from Nebuchadnezzar and the wise men, he doesn't run in haste to Arioch in fear of his life. Instead he does what might seem absolutely foolish to us in light of the dire situation that he is in. He pauses and he worships. He gives thanks to the God who gives gift of wisdom to his servants. Then Daniel pauses and the narrative slows down almost to a screeching halt and Daniel reflects and invites us to reflect and praise and worship upon the character and work of the God who gives. In verse twenty through twenty-three Daniel begins here by praising the Lord for his character, simply for who he is. To God we learned belongs wisdom. He is, in the words of Paul, the only wise God. That means that in everything that God does, he is always acting for the right end. We can trust that as God moves the wheels of history and Daniel's day and in our own day, perplexing as things might seem to us at times, God's ways are the definition of wisdom. We also learned from Daniel's worship that to God belongs might. God is in omnipotent, he all powerful. He has the power and the ability to bring to pass whatever he wills. As we continue through this block of worship, Daniel moves to praise God for his deeds, for what God does for his people. We learn that the Lord is the one who changes times and seasons in the Lord is the one who removes kings and sets up kings. Remember we saw back in verse nine of this chapter that Nebuchadnezzar was terrified about the times possibly changing. About the sun possibly setting on his rule and reign, but according to Daniel that's is in God's hands, not Nebuchadnezzar's. Finally, we learn that the Lord, in contrast to all of the Babylonian gods who are not with flesh, gives to his servants wisdom and knowledge. He condescends to reveal to his people hidden things. The Lord speaks to the prophets throughout redemptive history. He speaks revelation to Daniel in this specific situation in a vision and the Lord even today speaks to his church through his word. In other words, the Lord is the kind of God who covenants with his people. So, Daniel praises God for his being. He praises God for his works of providence. He praises God for his work in this specific situation. You see, even in the midst of exile amongst a cultural and military superpower, Daniel isn't enamored with what Babylon has to offer. He's not enamored with the threats, he's not enamored with the glories, he's captivated through and through by the Lord. His gaze turns immediately to the Lord who gives. The notice what happens right after he lifts up his voice in praise and worship to the Lord. A few verses later he comes before the king and Daniel declares in the courts of the greatest king of the day, Nebuchadnezzar, the supremacy of the one true God who gives Now if you are anything like me, I know how often I let this so-called tyranny of the urgent dictate things in my own life. Rarely do I find time throughout the day and pause, if it's not already part of my schedule, to reflect and meditate on the God who gives spontaneously. When I was thinking about this during the week, I was reminded of something that Martin Luther reportedly once said about prayer. Apparently, Luther once said something to the effect of, “I have so much to do today, so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” If we are honest with ourselves, doesn't that sound counter-intuitive? For Luther the urgent and the pressing matters of life drove him to deeper communion and fellowship with God. And that's what happens here with Daniel too. Daniel prays and then Daniel praises God in private and then he declares him in public. And noticed that even all throughout all of this, the matter hasn't been resolved. The matter hasn't been dealt with. Daniel's life is still hanging in the balance. The narrative tension is still there. For Daniel he has to give praise and glory to God, and only after he does that and after that he turns and explains to Nebuchadnezzar what he saw along with his interpretation, only after those things will he give the dream and it's interpretation. This then leads to our final point, where we see the vision. We now finally get to see what this was and ultimately see we in this vision the power of the kingdom of God. The Power of the Kingdom of God 31 “You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. 32 The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34 As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. 36 “This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. 37 You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, 38 and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold. 39 Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. 40 And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. 41 And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. 44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, 45 just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.” 46 Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him. 47 The king answered and said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.” 48 Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. 49 Daniel made a request of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon. But Daniel remained at the king's court. Daniel 2:31-49, ESV So now at last Daniel communicates the actual content of the dream, along with its interpretation. But before he launches into the interpretation of this puzzling vision, he reminds the king yet again of something that we've heard over and over again in Daniel and that is God gives. In verse thirty-seven, before Daniel expounds on the interpretation, he reminds the king that everything he has; the kingdom, and the power, and the might the glory, the subjects, everything that resides in his kingdom, is given by the God of Heaven. Daniel once again gives Nebuchadnezzar a gracious lesson in humility and only after that does he interpret the dream, in which as we will see is yet one more lesson in humility to this great King Nebuchadnezzar. Now as we work through the details of this colossal image that Nebuchadnezzar has seen and that Daniel interprets. One of the big questions that often ask today is what did these kingdoms correspond to in history? We know that the head of gold corresponds to Nebuchadnezzar, because we're told that is the kingdom of Babylon but what about the other ones? That question has been debated and continues to be debated, but the best answer seems to follow very simply upon what happened in Judah's history after Babylon. After Babylon fell and the sun set on Nebuchadnezzar and the kings that followed in succession in Babylon, another empire, Medo-Persia came on the scene. It was under the reign of this Persian King Cyrus, whom we learned about in Daniel one, that the people of God in exile were released and allowed to journey back to the land of promise. But then after the sunset on Medo-Persia another empire was raised up and that was Greece. The people of God had to deal with that kingdom for a time. And finally, after Greece, the Roman Empire came through and occupied the land of promise and subjugated the people of God under their reign and rule. So, this picture where we moved from Babylon to Meto-Persia to Greece to Rome seems to fit the four kingdoms described here in Daniel chapter two and in light of some other texts that will encounter later in Daniel. But more important than identifying who all of these various kingdoms are is that in the end Daniel reports that none of these kingdoms will have the final word. In the days of the kings of the fourth kingdom, which is presumably Rome, God is going to set up his own kingdom, a kingdom that will never be destroyed. We learn, in fact, it will break in pieces all of the other kingdoms that stand in the way and this kingdom will endure and stand forever. Commentators note in Luke 20:17-18 Jesus alludes to this very passage in Daniel. 17 But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'? 18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” Luke 20:17-18, ESV It's almost paradoxical about what Jesus says there in Luke chapter twenty is that this stone is both rejected and yet at the same time powerful. On the one hand it's an unimpressive stone, it's a powerless stone, it's scorned. On the other hand it's indeed revealed to be powerful, quite impressive, and honored, but this is the gospel. After all, this is what Paul calls the power and the wisdom of God. That our Lord Jesus Christ, the rejected cornerstone, the one who was humiliated, beaten, bruised, and crucified for us and for our salvation is this stone. At the same time as his humiliation, he's also the stone who's exalted, and who crushes all other human kingdoms. So, what Daniel sees now in the fullness of time is nothing more than the kingdom that God will set up when the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, comes on the scene some 600 years later. This whole vision points to Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. How then does Nebuchadnezzar respond to all this? In verse forty-six, maybe to our surprise, we learned that this news doesn't wreck him in the way we thought it might have. Instead he falls on his face and he confesses that Daniel's God is the God of Gods and the Lord of Kings. And the he promotes Daniel and his friends to positions of honor and the kingdom and he doesn't shoot the messenger, as some might say. Some note in this text here that Nebuchadnezzar's response is really just a response of relief. Because he although he knows that his kingdom is bound to come to an end one day, it's not going to last forever, at least he knows, it is suggested that all of this is going to happen after him. We read that phrase a couple times here, it's going to happen after, not while he's still on the throne. So even though his kingdom is going to fall one day, he can at least deal with it. There might be something to that interpretation, but as Sinclair Ferguson notes, what else could he have done? You see he now understands in some sense that there is a God who directs all of the events of human history for his glory. He now knows that, historically, his kingdom is just a flash in the pan. He now knows in more ways than one that the wisdom of Babylon is nothing compared to the wisdom of God. So, in the face of these realities, what else could he do except worship? Friends, as these realities become more and more real in our own lives, as we encounter the surpassing greatness of the wisdom and power of God in comparison with the wisdom of the world. As we consider all of the little kingdoms that were so bent on setting up for ourselves, and as we learned that they're nothing compared to the wisdom and power of God, may that be our response too, worship. So, let's look at a few brief applications for this text. Application 1. Pray for wisdom. Now it's important to note that the wisdom that Daniel is endowed with in this passage is a unique revelatory wisdom. That is the wisdom that Daniel prays for and the wisdom that he receives is unique and prophetic in nature. It is a wisdom, in other words, that is no longer normative in the church now that we have the final enclosed authority of God's word. None the less, the scriptures still call us to pray for wisdom. God says in James 1:5, “if you lacks wisdom let him ask God who gives generously to all approach and it will be given to you him.”James 1:5, ESV You see, we need wisdom given by the spirit of God to understand and apply the scriptures to our own lives as we learned to navigate our own exiles. We need the wisdom to work through the difficult relationships that all of us have. We need wisdom to see the wisdom of the world exposed for what it is and to hunger and thirst for the better wisdom and the better kingdom of God. We need wisdom, again in the words of James, in order to count it all joy when we meet trials of various kinds. So, pray for wisdom. We all need it, just like Daniel did. 2. Know that the kingdom of God is a present reality. What Daniel declares to Nebuchadnezzar in this text, namely that there's a day when God is going to establish his kingdom, has already happened in Jesus Christ. Through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, we friends, belong to this kingdom. We are citizens of this kingdom. And the kingdom that might not seem like it possesses power and wisdom that supplants the rest of the world. It may seem like it's a kingdom rather than expanding, it's being pressed in on all sides. But this kingdom is a kingdom ruled over by our Lord and this kingdom is a kingdom in which the subjects of this king are really and truly nourish and fed by better food than what Nebuchadnezzar serves in his courts because we are nourished by word and sacrament by the Spirit of God. Now then that the kingdom of God is a present reality. Also pray, as we're called to pray regularly in the Lord's Prayer; thy kingdom come. In the Heidelberg Catechism, another reformed confession, one of the questions that the Heidelberg Catechism asked is explicitly on that, “What do we mean when we say “thy kingdom come”?” It answers this, “that is so govern us by your word and Spirit so that we submit ourselves to you always more and more. Preserve and increase your church. Destroy the works of the devil, every power that exalts itself against you, and all wicked devices formed against your holy word until the full coming of your kingdom wherein you shall be all and all.” Pray that the kingdom of God would come. Know that the kingdom of God has come in one sense and pray that it would come. Trust that one day in the words of Revelation, the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. 3. Know who God is. As I was reading and studying this passage this week, I was surprised by just how many attributes of God and works with God are identified by Daniel throughout this passage. Especially in that four verse block of worship that we looked at earlier and verses twenty through twenty-three. In that text Daniel praises God for his wisdom, he praises God for his power, and his omnipotence, he praises God for his providence and for his goodness. Daniel is a servant who knows the God that he worships. So, one of the questions for us to ask as we engage in God's word regularly throughout the week, and as we rest in the promises of God as we should, do we also pause to ask the question, not just how does this text apply to my life but what is this text say about the God who gives? One of the things that we're doing it our men's small group right now is that we're working through a devotional on the attributes of God. We are trying to be trained what it looks like to pause regularly and meditate upon who God is. In the words of Anselm, we believe God is a being in which nothing greater can be conceived. So like Daniel, as you look to God's word and as you are fed by God's word, I would encourage you to also be enriched simply by seeing what the word of God has to say about the God we worship. The God who gives. After all, that is our hope in our exile.

A space orbiter which failed to enter in its orbit… This episode discusses the case of the Mars Climate Orbiter, a spacecraft that was lost in space as it approached its final orbit around Mars. Sources: Investigation Report: https://llis.nasa.gov/llis_lib/pdf/1009464main1_0641-mr.pdf NASA System Failures Case Studies (August 2009): https://sma.nasa.gov/docs/default-source/safety-messages/safetymessage-2009-08-01-themarsclimateorbitermishap.pdf?sfvrsn=eaa1ef8_4 IEEE Spectrum: https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/why-the-mars-probe-went-off-course Music from https://filmmusic.io "Deadly Roulette" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) "Covert Affair" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) "Lobby Time" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) "Cool Vibes" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

This is a MarketScale Software & Technology Podcast Series, hosted by Daniel Litwin. This is the first episode of a three part series titled Bringing AI to Businesses with Ben Taylor, Chief AI Officer & Co-founder of ZIFF Inc. In each episode, we'll explore different aspects of AI's push into business-operations ubiquity, from its most useful applications to the surprising business ethics that come with implementation. Each episode will also feature a short article from Taylor, which you can read below. How Do You Deliver on an AI Project, Both As an Executive and a Data Scientist? Many executives are naive when it comes to AI capabilities and navigating where AI might provide value to their business. The data scientists aren't helping either, where most struggle to communicate value to the business representatives. Most data scientists also lack urgency; they have no pressure to last-mile AI into production. Funding science projects will accomplish one thing: covering the tuition of your data science team so they can land better jobs at Facebook or Google. So, once the trigger is pulled and you have a team prepped and passionate about bringing AI to your business...how do you make sure everyone delivers so you avoid wasted time and money? Avoiding The Science Project Landmines If you are an internal advocate for AI, do everything you can to constrain the timeline. Ask yourself: Is there anyway to do an internal proof of concept in 60 days instead of 12 months? What can I do to reduce internal budget? What can I do to reduce the number of people required? The more you reduce these variables, the more likely you are to get buy-in from the internal business units. I've always been a fan of leveraging outside hardware companies, consulting groups, or AI platforms to shorten do-ability tests. Crawl, Walk, Run Some AI projects fail because they are too ambitious. They don't have a short-term proof-point, and the complexity comes tumbling down like a house of cards, revealing a project that had no clear goals, tangible value or structure. This flaw can come from inexperienced data science teams that are too "academic," where they are more interested in a challenging thought experiment than a Bayesian method in production. If you can carve your project up into bite size milestones, your chances of success are higher. It shouldn't be ignored that AI projects aren't a one-and-done either; you have the advantage of improving on your algorithms. Just look at the evolution between AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero, and how they would've never achieved such a grand level of "reinforcement learning" without trying a few, more tangible methods first. Get some novice wins into production and then level up on subsequent versions. It Is Harder Than It Looks Getting a successful AI project to value is much harder than it looks. Most major wins for AI are behind six to 10 iterations on the same problem. We see successful companies solving the same problem multiple times, where each time they solve it they understand the data set and problem a little better. Once a project has crossed a predefined criteria for success, taking that AI project into production can create additional problems. Supporting AI in production requires quality monitoring (e.g. did your incoming features drift) to ensure models are behaving as designed. This requires an involved data science team. And yes, I said team. Collaborate, get multiple eyes on the project, and make sure everyone is on the same page before launching something into production. You don't want your AI project to end up like the Mars Climate Orbiter: dead in the air because of a unit conversion mistake. Double check, triple check, and then check again that the final product is in line with the initial vision you set up for success. Feels a lot like simple project management, huh? Highlights from the Episode [transcription] For the latest news, videos, and podcasts in the Software & Electronics Industry, be sure to subscribe to our industry publication. Follow us on social media for the latest updates

Why are we as a human race so fascinated with Mars? Where did this desire come from? What have we sent there already and what are we sending now? Find out in this episode of Space, But Messier!   News: UPDATE: Chinese Space Station Tiangong-1 still falling, but China has been monitoring Tiangong-1 and has determined that the space lab will burn up after entering the atmosphere and the remaining wreckage will fall into a designated area in the sea, without endangering the earth. NASA is building a HAMMER Not a hammer like one in your toolbox at home, instead, they’re building a Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER). The plan is to protect our planet from asteroids before they can reach Earth. This project is headed up by NASA, the US National Security Administration and a weapons lab from the US Energy Department. There are two ways the system could prevent an asteroid from slamming into Earth. Firstly, it would hit an asteroid to knock it off course and miss our planet. The second, and infinitely more dangerous, is that HAMMER would detonate an on-board nuclear warhead to splinter or destroy it altogether. Part of the reason for the development of HAMMER is NASA's monitoring of an asteroid named Bennu. (Ben-noo) Bennu can be seen every six years from Earth – but in 2135 it is expected to pass between us and the Moon. That could tweak its orbit and set it on a direct course for our planet. This year, NASA’s Osiris-Rex probe will arrive and spend a year surveying Bennu, which orbits the sun at 63,000mph. (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer || God of Ancient Egypt)  Mars Pt.1 | Past & Present Why Mars? Why not Venus, Mercury, the Moon? Mars may be our closest planetary neighbor, close in size and the length our days. We may even be able to survive there for a bit. But why does everybody want to go to the red planet? What is Mars? Mars is much colder than Earth, with an average temperature of -80F or -60C 38% Earth’s gravity. (Moon is 16% of Earth’s gravity) The atmosphere of Mars is also almost 100 times thinner than Earth's, but it is still thick enough to support weather, clouds and winds. However, if you’ve seen the Martian, you may be wondering how accurate the storm seen is. For those who haven’t seen it… Giant dust devils often kick up oxidized iron dust that covers the surface  and every 5 1/2 Earth years, Mars has a global dust storm. That being said, It is unlikely that even these dust storms could strand an astronaut on Mars. Even the wind in the largest dust storms would not knock over or rip apart mechanical equipment. The winds in the strongest Martian storms top out at about 60 miles per hour, less than half the speed of some hurricane-force winds on Earth. Lastly, IT SNOWS ON MARS, instead of water, it’s made of carbon dioxide and looks more like fog than snow. History - Canali In the 1800s, telescopes were rapidly growing in size and in Milan, Italy, 1877, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, began mapping and naming areas on Mars. He named the dark and light areas as "seas" and "continents". He also saw channels on Mars and called them "canali." Canali translates to channels, but it was mistranslated into "canals" in English implying intelligent life on Mars. Because of the then recent completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, people assumed that Mars must have intelligent life. Then in 1894 in Flagstaff, Arizona, Percival Lowel observed Mars himself. Knowling of the recent discovery of canals on Mars, his observations confirmed this these straight lines on the planet and mapped hundreds of them. Lowell believed that the straight lines were Martian-made canals built to transport water from the polar caps to the equator. In 1895, he published his first book on Mars with many illustrations and it was game over. 1897 - Kurd Lasswitz - Two Planets 1898 - H.G. Wells - War of the Worlds 1949 - Robert Heinline - Red Planet 1950 - Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles 1951 - Arthur C. Clarke - The Sands of Mars 1961 - Robert Heinline - Stranger in a Strange Land … leading to today 2011 - Andy Weir - The Martian Satellites (Past) Mariner Spacecraft (1964-1971) were designed to be our first glimpses of Mars, being sent to Mars on a fly-by mission with MAriner 4 sending back our first ever images of another planet and Mariner 9 being the first ever satellite to enter Mars’ orbit. Mars Observer (1992) and Mars Climate Orbiter (1998) lost contact upon arrival Mars Global Surveyor arrived (1997)  and orbited Mars for 4 times longer than expected. (Present) Mars Odyssey (2001) studies the composition of the planet's surface, water and ice detection, as well as radiation. Mars Express (2003) - with ESA- studies MArs’s atmosphere and surface from a polar orbit NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006) carries the most powerful telescopic camera ever to another planet.  The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft will provide information about Mars’s atmosphere, climate history and potential habitability of the planet Rovers (Past) In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 & 2 became the first spacecraft to safely land on another planet.  The Mars Pathfinder mission (1997) was meant to be a demonstration of technology. With the Carl sagan Memorial Station as it’s lander and the Sojourner Rover. However, they ended up sending back 2.3 billion bits of information, 17,000 images, and more than 15 chemical analyses from rocks and soil. Mars Polar Lander (1999) was meant to land on the frozen terrain near the edge of Mars' south polar cap and dig for water ice with a robotic arm, but unfortunately lost upon arrival The Phoenix Mars Lander  (2008) successfully landed on the north polar region of Mars and it successfully dug up and analyzed icy soil. (Present) Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) (2004) search for evidence of liquid water that may have been present in the planet's past. The rovers are identical to each other, but are exploring different regions of Mars. Mars Science Laboratory (2012) is twice as long and three times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity mission is to tell us if Mars is habitable, can we live there.

What causes clients to keep coming back? Is it information? Or could it be entertainment? For too long we've treated teaching and learning as an activity that needs endless slides, pages and work. But what if clients get better results having fun? And what if you had a ton of fun as well? Let's find out how to speed up client learning with some pretty minor tweaks in your e-books, courses, presentations and webinars. Click here to read the transcript on the website:  #166: How To Speed Up Client-Learning With The Incredible Power of Infotainment ===================== When my mother-in-law, Preta, was in her twenties, she was teaching at Sunday school. Like most Sunday schools, the kids were there to learn about the Bible. However, my mother-in-law decided to teach the girls how to sew tiny dresses for their dolls. Within weeks of her starting up, all the girls wanted to be part of her class. Ironically, this made the other Sunday school teachers jealous. They complained to the “higher authorities”, and Preta was called in to explain herself. “We've heard you're not teaching them about the Bible, and instead only involving them in play”, said the person in charge. “You can come in and test the knowledge of the kids,” retorted my mother-in-law, “and you'll find they know they're well-versed in their Bible studies”. You can clearly see the wisdom of play in this story, can't you? You can also see how people in charge resist it a lot, even though it's apparent that we all have a maddening streak of playfulness we can't seem to shake. That when learning something, we want the trainer to bring a sense of joy into our learning. Instead, most education is soulless, incredibly dull and it's not surprising that clients drop out. The problem is that we're pretty sure we're guilty of this callous training and teaching as well. But what if we were to make fun the core of our system? What if we postponed designing the information-based section and thought about the fun elements, instead? What if fun wasn't an afterthought but part of the entire structure of learning? How would we do things differently, if this were the case? In this series, let's look at:
In this series, let's look at: 1) How to create Infotainment 2) Why we need to understand the goal 3) How to place the fun elements in your training 1) How to create Infotainment If you were in charge of getting a kid to write, would you start with “slimy, oozy eyeballs?” Here is a story of Jen Jackson from Seattle. She'd started a small English tutoring business aimed at kids that were being homeschooled. One of her students was Michael, Michael clearly despised writing, despite being able to read well. His mother tried “everything”, but her methods weren't working, so she called Jen to help Michael write. Except for the fact, that Jen didn't make Michael write at all. The two of them read joke books, challenged each other to tongue twisters and did everything but write. The second meeting involved fun drawing games and drawing a monster. Still, no writing was included. It was only the third session where a Monster Cafe was created, apparently to accommodate Michael's monster. That's when Michael wrote out a short menu that included slimy, oozy eyeballs. In the sessions to follow, Michael went on to create many menus for different monsters. Today, Michael is not exactly prolific, but he willingly writes short paragraphs and is eager to keep improving. When we read this story, we can see how entertainment has led to information success, can't we? Yet, as an educator it somehow feels scary. Even if you embrace the power of entertainment as the doorway to learning, how are you supposed to implement it? If you did what Jen did, wouldn't Michael's parent look at you funnily, wondering if you were just wasting their time and money? What are you supposed to do when you're not dealing with kids, but adults instead—and in serious fields like marketing or finance? The core of entertainment is to take the pressure off, completely Let's say you wanted to learn Photoshop. If you've never looked at Photoshop before, that sounds a bit intimidating, doesn't it? So how do you make it fun? You look at the what causes people to freeze. Incredibly, it's the computer and Photoshop itself. When I'm showing clients how to use Photoshop for the first time, I usually take them to a cafe—without the computer. We sit down and work our way through some core shortcuts. If the client wants to learn to draw, what alternatives would they need? Wait, you're reading this, so you can easily play along. Let's say you want to get the brush tool. Which letter on your keyboard would you press? Yes, you're right, it's the letter B. What if you wanted to change the opacity of the brush to 30%? What number would you press? Some clients say 30, but of course, the answer is 3. What about 50%. Yes, it's 5. And 70%? I'm teasing. Of course, you know the answer. Let's move on to the brush size. If you wanted to increase the brush size and you had to choose between the left and right square bracket, which one would you choose? Most of us correctly select the right square bracket, which means that the left one will reduce the brush size. Imagine you're sipping a cup of coffee, there's no computer in sight, and you're told to create a theoretical drawing in Photoshop. You have to get to the brush, get the opacity to 90% and then reduce the brush size? Notice how much fun that whole exercise turned out? The first way of taking the pressure off a person or a group is merely to get them as far as you can from the activity. When you put yourself (and the student or client) in a different setting, the pressure is instantly off and a sense of play sets in. However, not everyone can waltz their way into a cafe or garden Some teaching needs to be done at the venue itself. What do you do, then? One of the best and most effective ways to get the pressure off is to get the clients to do something wrong. Let's take an example. Of the many workshops we've had over the years, one of the more intimidating ones is the uniqueness workshop. The fact that we were going to take three days to get to uniqueness didn't help. How do you take the pressure off? You get the uniqueness wrong, that's what you do. Within minutes of starting the workshop, I gave each client an advertisement for a local business. They all had the same ad, and they had to figure out the uniqueness of the company in under 10 minutes. However, before they started, I informed them, that all of them, no matter how hard they tried, would get the assignment wrong. Imagine you're in the room right at this very moment You can hear the hush, can't you? You have an assignment, but you're going to get it wrong. But that quiet lasts only for a few seconds. Everyone has a big smile on their face as they take on the assignment that they just can't get right. The pressure to get it all correct is gone, and they can have a jolly good time. They start the assignment, complete their version of it, and then they're all chattering away and having a great time. After which everyone is called upon to give their answers, and a logical explanation follows. They've been entertained as well as informed! Tah, dah, infotainment! Good teachers know the value of play. Good workshop trainers will take the pressure off as quickly as they can. Excellent writers and speakers will use the power of stories to get their audience smiling, long before the main guts of the information comes along. The more pressure you put on a student, client or audience, the more the brain goes into shut down mode. Which is why we have to release the tension. But more importantly, it's because you need to understand the real goal. But what's the purpose? Ah, that's easy. You want the client to want to go forward of their own accord. You want them to beg you to continue. They must enjoy themselves so much that what you're teaching them must feel like a bowl of warm, chocolate muffins. Understanding the goal is what makes the client—or student come back repeatedly. Let's find out how we can get this goal going, shall we? 2) Why we need to understand the goal “‘Better, faster, cheaper.’ That was NASA's mantra around the year 1999. And it was in this very year that the Mars Climate Orbiter was destroyed. On Nov 10, 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter, a $125 million satellite was supposed to become the the first weather observer orbiting over another world. For the orbiter to do its job, it needed to get into a stable orbit around the red planet. But something had gone wrong. The software was required to control the Orbiter's thrusters, and it did so, using the system of measurement of “pounds”. However, a separate software was processing data in the metric unit—”newtons”. The two systems of measurement threw the entire mission entirely out of whack, and atmospheric friction likely tore the fragile satellite apart. From the outside, it might look like a doofus-plan: that sophisticated scientists didn't notice that the software was calculating in two completely different units. And just like that, the mission—the $125 million mission—was no more. When training clients, the burnout rate is consistently like the Mars Orbiter That's because we're using completely different systems of measurement in our teaching methods. The goal isn't necessarily to get the ideas or learning across. Yes, that's the final goal, but not the primary goal. The primary goal of any training system is to get the client back. Remember the story about Jen Jackson and how she tackled Michael's writing problem?
Remember how my mother-in-law got her students to get all excited about Sunday school? When you think about education in an objective sense, you may feel that it's your job to get the information across. But knowledge is tiring. It's frustrating. It's the wrong system of measurement. And it's most often what causes the client to burn up before the mission so much as gets underway. Instead, think of how you can get the client back using fun and a factor of entertainment. Entertainment doesn't just mean you're rolling out tacos and a Mariachi band
But then again, who says learning has to be all work, work and more work? In the headlines course, for example, we start off with an assignment that goes like this: Day 1: Introduce yourself Day 2: Watch three videos—and these videos are from the movie, Karate Kid Day 3: List five topics and many sub-topics

And what does their list look like? Ice Cream •   Cup •   Cone •   Scoops •   Buckets •   Sprinkles •   Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup •   Brown Cow •   Whipped cream By Day 5, clients are clearly having fun Mermaids, dinosaurs, deep sea aliens (yes, deep sea aliens exist, you know)—they all make a list. And everyone is having a blast. They're getting to know the members of their tiny group; they're coming up with all of these crazy topics and sub-topics. And it's a lot like what happens at our place every Friday. On Fridays, for the past four years, we've taken our niece Marsha to the food market The assignments could involve walking to the veggie section, weighing an object and writing down the weight. Or we might have to skip—no walking, just skipping—to the dairy section to find out how pricing works, and how Swedish rounding of prices works. In short, Marsha (and I) have been running, jumping and skipping through our learning exercise. She's learned about frozen, dried and fresh foods. She's learn about weights and measures, about addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Then when we get home, we do spellings in the garden or walking around the car (yes, I get sneaky steps on my Fitbit when I do that activity). However, let's make this really boring. Let's hunch over a desk or dining table and you get the idea why most kids detest having to study. There's zero entertainment and a lot of screaming and do this, do that, involved, instead. So what would Marsha want to do the following week? And the week after? Doesn't take much imagination, does it? If our goal is to educate, to train, to impart knowledge, you and I are sure going about it the wrong way. A workshop doesn't need your audience to reverentially worship you as you show them slide after slide. At Psychotactics workshops, clients go for walks and do their assignments. They sit by the pool. We have games, we have soft toys like Jordan the otter, and of course, Elmo comes along wherever we go. At one workshop, two our clients, Jessica and Alia, who happened to be belly dancers, taught one part of the group to dance, and the other to clap along and create the mood. Would you want to go to another dull, reverential note-taking-workshop or come to a Psychotactics workshop, instead? If it sounds like too much fun, and no work, that's not the case at all Every course online, every workshop, every book you write needs to be result-oriented. If the client buys your product or service to get a result, a result needs to be the finale. But why does it have to be boring? The only reasons why any learning is boring is because the trainer doesn't realise that fun is possible, or they take the easy route and do what they've already done a million times before. To create a fun-based situation takes a lot of work on your part. It's not as if to suggest that a serious training session isn't a lot of work. It's just that you need to do so much more planning when fun is involved. Entertainment is great for the learner or the audience, but it's a hard grind for you to put into place. However, the results of information + entertainment are incredibly predictable Clients come back repeatedly. If you were to attend a Psychotactics workshop, you'd find close to 50% of the audience are back for a second, third, fourth helping. Clients travel long distances just to be at the workshop. And they sign up even before we have time to put up a sales page. For instance, if you take the Singapore Landing Page workshop, ¼ of the seats are already gone. With the Brussels workshop, ¾ of the seats were taken before we completed the sales page. A similar trend plays out when we're conducting courses online. There's the Article Writing Course—yes, the live course online—in July 2018 The seats would go on sale by early March. And before you know it, and often within 24 hours, that course is filled to the brim. If you look at a presentation, there are compelling videos, loads of cartoons, a touch of animation—all designed to give the audience respite, even though the presentation may be under 40 minutes long. And if you've read a book from Psychotactics, you know that once again there are cartoons, a recipe in the middle of the book and an epilogue at the end of the book telling you the process of how the book was made. What's the goal of education? To come back, that's what the goal should be, shouldn't it? Imagine you as a kid wanting to race to school every day, because, hey, school was so much fun. Imagine desperately wanting to continue a video series on a topic like Photoshop, because the presenter is so amusing. Now make no mistake. It's not about pure entertainment. You're there for the information as well, but why on Earth does the process of imparting information have to be so boring? “Better, faster, cheaper” That was the mantra, the chant that caused the Mars Polar Lander to fry just 23 days after the Mars Climate Orbiter. According to an article in Wired Magazine, vibrations in that craft’s legs may have convinced the craft’s on-board computer it had already landed when it was still 100 feet in the air.“The specific reasons [for that failure] were different, but the underlying parts, this overly ambitious appetite, were the same.” “NASA made some “big-time” changes after that,” said NASA engineer Richard Cook, who was project manager for Mars exploration projects. They got rid of several other missions, including one that involved bringing rocks back to Earth. NASA, it seems, reevaluated what they were doing, based on strategies and concepts that had stood the test of time. When teaching, what stands the test of time better than entertainment? Would you rather go back to a place that is boring, or one that is a fun-learning experience? Which one are you most eager to go back to, time and time again? Well, since we're on the same page, let's go to the third part. Now that we're pretty sure that fun is part of learning, let's move to the third part and find out just where we can put fun parts in the learning. 3) How to place fun elements in your training Rob Walling has an unusual video in the middle of his presentation that takes the audience by surprise. In May 2017, I spoke at the Double Your Freelancing conference in Sweden. Rob was one of the speakers, and his topic was about the topic of “how to launch a startup.” Rob's a pretty easy-going speaker, with well-thought-out slides and a gentle progression. Until midway, when the entire presentation seems to stop for an intermission of sorts. Walling decides to show the audience a video of how his son solves a problem progressively. It's a home video, nothing flashy, yet the audience laughs as they watch the story unfold. How did the video show up in Rob's presentation? It's the same question that could be asked when you attend a Psychotactics and go off scampering for a scavenger hunt. Right in the middle of the workshop, there's a peculiar assignment. The pre-assigned groups are given 30 minutes to go out and find a whole bunch of items, return and then upload the pictures to the blog. The next day each group makes a presentation; the best entry is chosen by popular vote, and there's a tiny little prize ceremony. You noticed the fun element in both the examples, didn't you? The question is: how did they get there? And the answer becomes pretty apparent even as the question is being asked. Someone has to put it there, because yes, it may show up quite by chance. However, in most cases, the creator of the product or service has to be proactive enough to put in the fun elements. Your product or service needs this break as well Why should it be? When I went to school, we had a short break of 15 minutes, then a lunch break of an hour. We'd race out of the class at break time, so we could get onto the playground. Was the play connected in any way to our biology or physics class? Of course not, but the fact that someone decided to have the short and long break enabled us to study and play on every given day. Your product or service needs this break as well The way to go about creating the entertainment factor is to sit down with the book you're about to write. If you could make it fun, more interesting, what would you do? If you're about to conduct a course online, what do the assignments look like? Is there any space for play? What about your workshops or seminars? Are the participants like prisoners listening to you drone on forever? Or is there some factor of entertainment and play? If you remember picking up a copy of the Reader's Digest, you have this example with “The Lighter Side of” and “Laughter the Best Medicine” in the middle of some pretty serious articles. Someone sat down and said: “Ooh, all of this stuff is intense. We need to lighten up”. Not everyone appreciates the entertainment, of course A scavenger hunt may not go down well with 100% of the participants. Cartoons in a marketing book sound a bit crazy, doesn't it? A door that creaks open on a website (it's going to be on our new website) may seem outlandish. And there are always going to be naysayers. However, by and large, those are the people who wanted to stay in and do their homework while we ran out during school breaks. If they're unhappy with the entertainment factor, don't go around chaining the rest of your group to ol' grumps. Instead, design the event, the book, the product or service with a bunch of fun elements. Look through other books or situations to find inspiration Esquire Magazine may have a joke section—just one joke told by a supermodel. Could you be that supermodel in your book? If you've got a video course, why do you have to be Ms.Serious or Mr.Let's-Get-To-The-End? Have a couple of videos that tell a joke, or show something funny around your neighbourhood. Maybe take a leaf from Rob Walling's book and put in a video about your kid's crazy jokes. The fun part doesn't always have to be disconnected. It can connect quite easily as well. In The Brain Audit, there are sections where there's a whole page of cartoons, and they connect quite precisely. There's also a total disconnect with a butter chicken recipe. Do what you please: connect or disconnect at will. • Crossword puzzles • Recipes • Funny home videos • Cartoons • Stories • Case studies These are just some ways to entertain your audience while educating them As this article demonstrates, entertainment isn't just a nice-to-have. Instead, it's a necessity. Sometimes it is the reason why people show up. Sometimes it's the reason why they stay and continue. And sometimes the entertainment may be right at the end, like when David Attenborough and his crew put in the “how we made this documentary” as an epilogue of their film. When you see an idea you like, make sure you borrow it and use it well. We've used ideas from video and used it our books. We've been to a Sting concert and used some of the concepts in our podcasts. You can get ideas from everywhere if you look out for them—and more importantly—implement them. My mother-in-law's Sunday school story didn't end well. She managed to get the kids interested, but jealousy worked against her. She was told to stop the fun bits and focus only on the serious religious teaching, instead. You, on the other hand, aren't going to be pulled up if you add entertainment to your work. However, you have to plan in advance. The entertainment isn't likely to just work its way into your syllabus. Sit down, create the entertainment. Start small and build from there. Work is fun. But play is just as educational, if not more so. Next Up: The Secret of How To Get Clients To Keep Coming Back Repeatedly  

Esto es HistoCast. No es Esparta pero casi. Iniciamos la quinta temporada con nuestro tradicional cagadas, en este caso de la aventura espacial y para ello nos disponemos para el lanzamiento en nuestros asientos @alejandrohdzlun, @DeividNagan y @goyix_salduero.Secciones Historia: - Laika (1957) - 06:50 - Proyecto A119 o Estudio sobre los vuelos científicos a la Luna (1958) - 13:24 - Valentin Bondarenko (1961) - 21:37 - Apolo 1 (1967) - 26:51 - Soyuz 1: Vladímir Mijáilovich Komarov (1967) - 36:44 - Soyuz 11 (1971) - 1:08:55 - Challenger (1986) - 1:31:24 - Hubble (1990) - 1:50:36 - Mars Climate Orbiter (1998) - 2:00:59 - Columbia (2003) - 2:09:57 - Astronautas fantasma - 2:24:10 - Bibliografía - 2:33:40

Earl is the guest host tonight.Next week Patrick will be hosting.No Mail Bag, so on with the show:1) Republicans and Democrats.2) Killing in Chicago.3) Economics: The Bail-out.4) Free Markets.5) The Metric System.6) Mars Climate Orbiter.7) Nuclear Power/Isotopes/Manhattan Project/Uranium hexafluoride/Nuclear waste.Recommended books:1) The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.2) Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson.3) Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes.8) Evolution and Creationism.9) Charles Robert Darwin.