The Haversian Canal

June's coming fast. Start thinking about getting Kaplan's 6-month Step 1 Qreview.

Can the paper metaphor that already exists on the desktop be extended to the book and from there to the shelf by making your desktop background an image of empty shelves? Would this improve your recollection of where things are on your desktop? You could certainly lump categories of things. Would this allow you to overlap icons on shelves, since, if you know they're all in the same category, maybe you don't need to see the entire icon with it's full name?

The challenge is finding pictures of shelves that aren't at rakish angles, have sufficient texture and detail at multiple levels, and sufficient shelf space. Other possibilities might include paned windows, architectural plan drawings, and small scale botanical garden scenes, but these fail to advance the metaphor. And everyone seems to like blue.

From an interview of New Delhi physicist Sugata Mitra by Paul Judge. The Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens. Below is an excerpt from the full story. I almost cried. This is what teachers need to understand about their students. Achieve curiosity and, with the Internet, they will learn with frightening speed.

I went to a middle-class school and chose some ninth graders, two girls and two boys. I called their physics teacher in and asked him, "What are you going to teach these children next year at this time?" He mentioned viscosity. I asked him to write down five possible exam questions on the subject. I then took the four children and said, "Look here guys. I have a little problem for you." They read the questions and said they didn't understand them, it was Greek to them. So I said, "Here's a terminal. I'll give you two hours to find the answers."

Then I did my usual thing: I closed the door and went off somewhere else.

They answered all five questions in two hours. The physics teacher checked the answers, and they were correct. That, of itself, doesn't mean much. But I said to him, "Talk to the children and find out if they really learned something about this subject." So he spent half an hour talking to them. He came out and said, "They don't know everything about this subject or everything I would teach them. But they do know one hell of a lot about it. And they know a couple of things about it I didn't know."

That's not a wow for the children, it's a wow for the Internet. It shows you what it's capable of. The slum children don't have physics teachers. But if I could make them curious enough, then all the content they need is out there. The greatest expert on earth on viscosity probably has his papers up there on the Web somewhere. Creating content is not what's important. What is important is infrastructure and access ... The teacher's job is very simple. It's to help the children ask the right questions.

This is from my friend, Frank Norcross. He's a submarine officer now stationed in Afghanistan. We raced bicycles together at the Naval Academy. Read on if you want to learn how to help about 4300 kids who live next door to him.

My regrets on the delay of this email…the focus of my free time in the past few months has been on the completion of graduate school applications, which are finally coming due. Fortunately, I’ve now had the time to sit down and compose my thoughts on what I’ve been up to...hopefully it proves to be sufficient fodder for impassioned Neapolitan café discussion. Then again, most anything does.

I arrived in Kabul in mid-September, and reported to Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan (CFC-A), Civil Affairs directorate. CFC-A is the hat for a US Army three star that up until the beginning of October ran operations in Afghanistan. As you might remember, these are the people I was to work with, supporting the efforts of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). As luck would have it, I was arriving at a time of transition, as CFC-A turned over authority to International Security Assistance Force Nine (ISAF IX), the ninth generation of the NATO force deployed to support operations in Afghanistan. For the those keeping score at home, this the first time that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (an organization formed to deter the spread of communist influence led by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations….a country NATO now engages in cooperative military efforts with) has deployed forces since deciding that an attack on any NATO nation constitutes an attack on NATO. ISAF IX is under the command of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, a mainly UK-populated NATO command based out of Rheindahlen, Germany. However, there are contributions from the 26 NATO member nations and 11 PfP (Partnership for Peace) nations.

I have been assigned to work with Joint Visits Bureau (JVB), which is responsible for arranging all the particulars (transport, lodging, security, meetings, social events) surrounding the visit of VIPs. As you might imagine, there is a healthy stream of folks who want to come out here to get an understanding of the current situation. Some of the higher profile folks have included Tony Blair, Princess Anne, Gen Jones (Supreme Allied Commander Europe…a post formerly held by Eisenhower), DEA Director, FBI Director, several Under Secretaries of Defense, and a gaggle of General/Admirals and other big wigs. My job involves interacting with the respective entourages to set schedules and arrange logistics (like coffee & tea…not kidding). I have very limited interaction with any of these folks.

I think my time in Italy taught me to immerse myself in and appreciate foreign cultures, and I came to Afghanistan with the expectation of doing that on a somewhat limited basis. Yet in reality there is almost a complete disconnect between ISAF HQ and Afghanistan….even though we are in the middle of Kabul. This excerpt from an article in UK paper does the best to describe the atmosphere:

Many of the rest-the ones who do the maintenance on equipment and aircraft, the catering, the administration-barely see the real Afghanistan. They fly in to bases, serve their six months behind the Hesco barriers, and fly back to Europe. Away from the badlands like Sangin, life can be tiresome, claustrophobic and hot, but not hard.

In the Gereshk camp, there is desert all around, but you can’t see it. Inside the ramparts, the troops live in roomy, well-lit, air-conditioned tents. There are hot showers and gleaming stainless-steel toilets, cleaned by imported south Asian labor. The scoff house serves freshly cooked food, up to steak and gateaux, three times a day. Birthday cakes on request. There’s a large gym. Premiership games on Sky, a shop, internet terminals and surprising absence of dust. Apart from the odd interpreter, and the sky, there is nothing Afghan there at all. ——The Guardian Weekend, 14 October 2006

Of course, this disconnect is driven by the security situation. This time last year, folks could eat out in town, stroll about the local markets on a limited basis…actually engage with the populace. Now every time I have to walk out in to the neighborhood which encompasses ISAF HQ, the Presidential Palace, and Camp Eggers (home to CFC-A)...a veritable warren of barriers, gates, concertina wire, and contracted guards with AK-47s…I have to carry a 9mm and wear body armor with my Kevlar helmet (you didn’t hear that Mom). It is a difficult balance, because this clearly creates tension with the local populace and reflects an inherent distrust which is difficult to surmount. You have to worry about force protection, but at the same time it is difficult to engage with the population and build trust when you hide behind barriers and only come out when armed, or all “kit-ed up” as the Brits would have it.

That doesn’t even begin to speak to the tribal and ethnic influences that still dominate this country, the poppy production (AF is back on top on that count), the abject poverty, or the resurgence of the Taliban. The Afghan people are like anyone else…they want stability, whoever it comes from. I remember the words of one officer in Civil Military Affairs out here: “The Afghans want us to win. But they want to be sure we will win.” To say it is a difficult job is a huge understatement.

Of course, with resources being allocated to another area of operations, this difficulty is compounded.

Alright, enough of the soapbox, just suffices to say the problem is an interesting one.

My life here on the compound is enjoyable enough. The JVB job, although mundane, is not difficult. I have time to work out (want to see how living at 6000’ will help my 10K time), read (still reading extensively about diet…as I’ve been a vegetarian since June), and stay in touch with loved ones.

My sincere thanks to those of you who have asked for my address with an eye to sending goodies out here. As you might now imagine, both the basics and comforts are in ready supply here (I drink tea every day in a garden that counts bunnies (not kidding…rabbits) among its population), and I am well stocked in cookies and candies to share with the other folks in my office (thanks Sara). However, the children of Kabul could use some items. Police District 10 (PD 10), the one right out my front door, is home to about 4300 children who attend school. They are lucky to have blackboards and desks, and are currently on hiatus from school for the next three months as they await the return of warmer weather. When they get back in the spring, they could use simple things like writing paper, pencils (maybe sharpeners and erasers too), and pens. Since there are 4300 of them, it’s tough to provide for all…but if we could add some simple school supplies to their stocks…that would be pretty cool. Anyway, if you do feel like sending along stuff, my address is:

Frank Norcross

HQ ISAF

US, NSE

APO-AE 09356

It’s just like shipping to NYC, so the shipping costs shouldn’t be exorbitant. Thank you for whatever support you can provide.

All in all, I’m a happy boy. I’m applying to several schools on the east coast with an eye on studying renewable energy policy…hopefully I’ll in one of those programs come this time next year. Anyway, that’s enough babble for the time being. I hope that this letter finds each of you well. Have yourself a merry little Christmas…

Cheers,

Frank

A classmate, Nicole, has been collecting bottles with those sports tops, you know, instead of just screwing off, they have a bite nipple that you pull up to allow water out? Like a lot of Gatorade bottles. She was collecting them for a science project at a school where she helps out. Today was the big day and she had an example in class. It's great. You cut off the bottom two thirds of the bottle, keeping the top third. Pull the mouth of a party balloon over the nipple, and drop the balloon through the mouth of the bottle top (the pink balloon in the example below). Tape the inverted nipple-top to the mouth of the bottle. Then take a second balloon, cut the neck of it off, and pull it over the bottom of your bottle (the green one below). You can then pull on the bottom one, like it's your diaphragm, and the pink balloon will inflate and deflate visibly inside the bottle. Just like your lungs.

Well, sort of. And it's probably the right way to do it when illustrating the principle for kids because they can visually appreciate that the force must be transmitted through the air, making the fluid, material nature of air more believable. But, hey, I'm a nerd! I can make this more anatomically correct! As a friend said, "Are you an engineer, because, man, if it ain't broke, you can always add a feature..." Anyway. So I took the green balloon off, turned the whole thing upside down, put a drop of hand soap and some water in the bottle, swished it around, dumped the excess water, and put the green balloon back on. (Simulating low-surface-tension pleural fluid.) Then I pulled the lip of the pink balloon over the mouth of the bottle to seal that end, and blew into the pink balloon, while pulling one bit of the green balloon away from the side, to vent the excess air in between the balloons. Releasing the green balloon, the two balloons now have a vacuum in between them, and a little bit of fluid in between the surfaces. Just like real lungs! And the lung is even pink! You'll note there is a fairly substantial concavity to the green balloon while at rest. This is because the forces all have to balance out. The pink balloon is pulling the green on in as much as the green one is pulling the pink one down.

This in turn makes me wonder to what extent the liver is really pushing the diaphragm up, as much as the rest of the guts and the hoop tension of the abdominal muscles keeps the liver up in the concave diaphragm. No, they didn't teach me that in school. So I can't believe it and it must not be true. I must now return to the Borg for retraining.

One minor point is that the bottle didn't have the inherent hoop strength to resist the fairly substantial tension brought to bear by my prestressed version, so reinforced it with a scrape of 12 gauge solid core wire coiled to a resting diameter greater than the diameter of the bottle, then tensed and released inside the base of the bottle. You can actually see the form of the wire through the green balloon on picture left.

Ronald Epstein has a good article in this week's New England Journal of Medicine on assessment in medical education, following on the heels of the Cooke and Irby's American Education 100 Years after Flexner. Both worth the read if you're interested in understanding what the 'higher ups' are looking for, and how they look for it. Intel.

Hopefully she won't sue me for copyright infringement later...

It's not going to be happy birthday for me any more: Mayor Nagin will be declaring January 27th Fats Domino Day!

You hear the radio news announcer reports there has been a toxic spill on the river and residents are advised to limit their squirrel intake to no more than one a day.

Check.

Councilman Vince Cox runs the Gretna City Park Observatory. The observatory is open on Mondays and Wednesdays, from dusk until everyone leaves. Saturn and Jupiter are in view late in the evening, a good time to take the kids. Come often and tell your friends.

The observatory is behind Gretna Middle School at the dead end of Huey P Long Avenue.

Check it out. This dance troupe of muslim students started during Tulane's exodus in Houston. This is a video of their most recent performance at the Med Art Gala, a charity fundraiser earlier this month. Justin Sterrett made this recording; they got new outfits for this show.