Texas Citizens for Science, new Facebook page

One more way to connect with Texas Citizens for Science, the defenders especially of good science in public school classrooms:

Are you a member?

Hello, Friends of Texas Citizens for Science,

If you haven’t done so yet, please visit the new TCS Facebook Page at <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Texas-Citizens-for-Science/220812611277400?sk=wall> and become a Friend. TCS is only four Friends short of reaching the number to use a shortened URL.

Also, please make a note of our new TCS email address.

The July State Board of Education meeting will be important for us. I will attend and live blog the important parts.

Thank you all very much.

Steven Schafersman, President
Texas Citizens for Science

Michigan governor’s office continues practice honoring fallen soldiers

Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder chose to continue the practice of his predecessor, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, in ordering flags to be flown at half-staff throughout the state to honor a Michigan soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Good on him.

Flags to be lowered Monday, June 27
for Private First Class Brian J. Backus

LANSING, Mich. – Gov. Rick Snyder ordered U.S. flags throughout the state to be lowered to half-staff in honor of Private First Class Brian J. Backus on Monday, June 27. Flags should be returned to full-staff on Tuesday, June 28.

Backus, 21, of Harbor Beach, died June 18 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with small arms fire.

“Pfc. Backus served our country with bravery and courage.  My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends at this time of great sorrow,” Snyder said.

Backus was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division of Fort Drum, New York. His awards include the National Defense Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon and the Combat Medical Badge. Backus deployed with his unit in March 2011 to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

The funeral service and arrangements are pending.

When flown at half-staff or half-mast, the U.S. flag should be hoisted first to the peak for an instant and then lowered to the half-staff or half-mast position. The flag should again be raised to the peak before it is lowered for the day.

This message was sent on Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 12:28 p.m.

 

A century of IBM

IBM turned 100 years old last week, on June 16.

An "element" from an IBM Selectric typewriter, incorporated into a logo celebrating IBM's 100th year

In our studies of the effects of technology in the 20th century, do we give enough information and deference about IBM?  The company surely is not familiar to high school students — seniors for the class of 2012 having been born circa 1994, long after the heyday of the IBM System 360, the once-ubiquitous data punch cards, and the astonishingly advanced Selectric typewriters.  IBM retired the Selectric in 1986, a year before our older son was born, nearly a decade before today’s high school seniors bounced into the world.  The IBM punch cards, introduced in 1928, became difficult to find by the time I was coaching debate at the University of Arizona (we used the cards for debate evidence because they were larger and lighter than index cards, as did many other people in other walks of life).  Computing power of the S/360 paled in comparison to minicomputers available by 1985, and especially in comparison to the desktop microcomputers that dominate our working world today.

I wonder what today’s high school students really understand of the computer revolution?  Do they understand the fundamental roles IBM played in inventing the 21st century?

Caption from IBM: "IBM System/360 at NASA The System/360 Model 75 processed data for the first lunar landing 240,000 miles away from the moon, at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. It was one of five System/360 machines used by NASA for the Apollo 11 mission and the same computer that later calculated liftoff data needed by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin for the flight back to Earth."

IBM occupies a particular fond spot in my heart.  Through the National Merit Scholarship program, I had my college paid for in great measure by a four-year grant from IBM, a Thomas J. Watson, Jr., Scholarship.  As I recall it was for about $5,000, much more than adequate for tuition and fees at the University of Utah at under $400/quarter.  Coupled with a more modest scholarship from Utah and my 40 hours/week job in a laboratory, my undergraduate years were financially easy compared to our sons’ studies today.

As a sort of thank-you, I was expected to make an annual trek to the IBM offices in Salt Lake City to report on my progress.  IBMers at the time were still very much on the white-shirt/blue-shirt plan, and the contrast between campus and the IBM office could scarcely have been more stark.  Despite their sponsoring my education, I could not convince IBM to give me a price break on my first IBM Correcting Selectric II; it was a major scrape to come up with the $740, full list price of the beast.

But what a great investment!  My apartment became term-paper central.  At the end of the quarter, I could go without  paying for a meal for two or three weeks.  I did have one apartment manager complain about women spending the night in my apartment, and I don’t think he believed me when I said they were working on term papers.  I had not expected the academic benefits of the machine:  My grades in broadcast classes rose with scripts submitted in easy-to-read Orator typeface; I’m convinced the lack of pencil-corrected errors added a full half-grade to other papers, too.

That typewriter finally succumbed to my unwillingness to pay for the annual servicing from IBM.  I think Kathryn donated it to the Salvation Army sometime after we got to Texas, after two decades of service.  I found another at a garage sale in about 2000, for $10, with six elements and a slew of ribbons and correctapes.  It also succumbed to a lack of service, though, and joined its predecessor at the Salvation Army five years ago.  I’d love to have a good working version today, still, though I can do almost everything it could do with a wordprocessor and a laser printer.

Caption from IBM: "The System/360 Model 75 processed data for the first lunar landing 240,000 miles away from the moon, at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. It was one of five System/360 machines used by NASA for the Apollo 11 mission and the same computer that later calculated liftoff data needed by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin for the flight back to Earth. Two men standing on truck w/System/360 logo magnifying-glass IBM System/360 in Japan At Tokai Bank in Japan, all operations were performed manually, forcing employees to run calculations on abacuses into the late hours of the night. The arrival of the System/360 enabled the company to do away with abacuses and, in doing so, send employees home to spend more time with their families, drastically improving morale. Meanwhile, more work was completed in a shorter time frame, and customer satisfaction soared."

IBM’s leadership as a company runs much deeper than simply as an innovator in technology.  IBM for years had the best corporate training available — at American Airlines we benchmarked our training against IBM, when benchmarking was a tool of corporate improvement.  IBM’s people had the good sense to sit us down and explain they had benchmarked their own training against American’s pilot training, which they explained was the model for outstanding training:  Hire people who already know how to do the job, have a lot of experience, and love the work; train them intensively in the company ways and systems, and especially the machines they will use; use simulators to offer much more practice than can safely be had on the job; provide a mentor to monitor closely that the student (pilot) is doing the job right; require extensive refresher courses at least once a year.

At one point IBM had 20% growth in revenues for 20 consecutive years. IBM even figures in one of the great urban legends of the 20th century.  For the film of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, 2001:  A Space Odyssey, director Stanley Kubrick used a  computer as a central character.  The computer becomes the bad guy in the movie, however; the urban legend is that the company refused to let Kubrick use their logo.  So, the legend claims, Kubrick simply backed up one letter in the alphabet for each letter, and the nefarious HAL computer was born. Both Kubrick and Clarke denied that was the case, noting that HAL was a form of acronym for “Heuristic Algorithmic.”  They also note that IBM computers are pictured in the movie.  The story merely adds to the understanding that IBM was everywhere that technology or good management was found on the planet.

Despite having been eclipsed by its two partners in micro computers, Microsoft and Intel, IBM today offers yet another reinvention of itself, larger than it was when its fortunes were said to have collapsed, a few years before our high school students were born.

CBS Sunday Morning offered a short version of the company’s history on June 12 — fortunately, one of the items CBS posted on YouTube (they don’t put enough of the Sunday Morning stuff there, if you ask me).

More: 

• IBM’s website page on the 100th anniversary; a wealth of information, grist for student papers on technology in the 20th century, corporate histories, and automation in general
• 100 IBM icons of innovation, from the IBM 100th anniversary page