Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
We thought the roll out of Common Core was hard. Heck, we’ve always thought choosing to teach a roomful of kids in general is a heroic task…
Here’s a great article from USA Today – Teacher Appreciation Week: They wanted respect. It only took a coronavirus pandemic and worldwide economic collapse
Thank you for all you do to keep our kids learning!
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We know these are just a few of our neighbors who’ve been giving it their best to be of service with their Social Media time. We love to hear about more! The Mastic Beach Ambulance company has been sharing all sorts of great stuff, including their own efforts to keep Long Islanders fed, as well as tended to in emergencies. We thought it was them generating these great profiles of local EMTs. They’re still probably the easiest place to find them, but we’ve realized it was the William Floyd School District that was soliciting and sharing them. Now, they’ve turned to highlighting their Class of 2020. Meanwhile, the Northport Village and Local Business Community is a model we think every downtown should follow! This group lets small businesses post their wares and how they’re offering them, as well as all sorts of information critical to the community. Finally, WE LOVE LIBRARIES! While missing their visitors dearly, they are continuing to do wonderful things for the community. Last time, we mentioned the 3D Printer Army helping make shields for first responders. Lately, we’ve simply been loving the Facebook Feeds. While we highly recommend following all of Long Island’s libraries, the Northport-East Northport Public Library seems to really be on a roll lately. Follow their Facebook page, scroll down through the past few weeks — it’s wonderful… |
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First, Long Island’s Best: Share these amazing High School artists far and wide, would you? These kids are amazing. We at The Firefly Artists in Northport were honored to be among those giving a few of them scholarships. These kids should have gallery receptions and award ceremonies. At the very least, we can plaster them all over the internet. Follow the Heckscher Museum to see the awards ceremony and find more great stuff to share.
Meanwhile, as a Managing Partner of the Firefly, Katie has crafted a “Firefly Lights“ newsletter to send our love and care, assist our dear fellow Fireflies in marketing their wares, and share some of the ways our amazing artists have been lighting up our lives lately….Please enjoy and let us know what you think!
If you wish to receive these, please let us know – folks on our regular newsletter list are NOT automatically receiving them!
We look forward to crafting another soon — can’t fit all our amazing artists into just one!!! Do check out our page: The Firefly Artists and our brand new group, The Firefly Artists Gallery & Community Square, where our artists can speak for themselves and post art for sale!
It’s not the same as getting to gather in our beautiful gallery, but it’s something we hope continues to grow!
The Kids are Here! by Katheryn Laible
We are grateful schools are working to provide digital education on the fly, and wish everyone the best in figuring that out. We are also grateful that they are endeavoring mightily to keep those who count on them fed.
Meanwhile, the kids are home, we really shouldn’t be taking them around other people and we need good ways to keep everyone thoughtfully enriched:
Here’s a great roundup of resources from Huntington NOW
Entertainkidsonadime.com offers 100 Activities to do at home with Kids
Funinfirst.com offers Free Online Resources for Learning at Home
Some wonderful Mrs. Fahrney offers 30 Virtual Field Trips with Links
AdventuresinFamilyHood.com has 20 Virtual Field Trips to Take with Your Kids
NESCA (Neuropsychology & Education Services for Children & Adolescents) had guidance on Making the most of school-closures
Meanwhile, freecodecamp.org has 450 Ivy League Courses You Can Take for Free.
Here are even more ideas from the New York Times
We are grateful the rain held off as we traipsed about the site of Nikola Tesla’s last and only surviving laboratory, “Wardenclyffe.” There, board member Neil Baggett talked about the great scientist and his time on Long Island, and plans to advance his legacy. While nothing can replace an in-person tour – we highly recommend taking one if you can! — here is a bit of what we learned:
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For some, curiosity is enough. To others, these questions sound frivolous. However, we don’t always know what rewards we will reap when we empower thoughtful individuals to follow their noses and give them the freedom to explore.
History has shown that the rewards can be numerous, and sometimes fundamental. The transistor, the cornerstone of modern technology, would make no sense were it not for our understanding of quantum mechanics. The foundation of quantum mechanics was laid by scientists who were puzzled by the colors that objects glow when they get really hot (from red to white to blue). The eureka moment that solved that riddle changed everything about how we see the world at the smallest scales, and produced one of the most important technological revolutions of all time.
This is the foundation of science; dues that must be paid if we intend to advance. While the development of the transistor paid great dividends, it wasn’t remotely obvious that the specific color a hot poker glows would ever be understood as anything more than a novelty. Another example, we don’t study fruit flies because we want to develop medicine for fruit flies. We study fruit flies because their genetics are simple and easy to probe. As we improve our understanding of genetics in the abstract, we improve our capacity to provide treatments for people.
It is concerning that the US government share of basic research funding has fallen below 50% for the first time in the post-World War II era. While some of this is due to an increase in corporate investment, particularly on the part of the pharmaceutical industry, a significant part of it is because we as a nation are increasingly declining to contribute budget dollars. While the increase in private investment since 2012 is helpful, the findings of private and corporate investment are not as openly shared as public endeavors, including even basic data as to whether the research being conducted is actually basic or applied.
Basic research is not really conducive to business, at least not at the early stages that can have the greatest impact. The outcomes are too uncertain, desirable tangents are too frequent, and the timelines are too long. The risky and meandering path of basic research is often not good for business. It’s not just unrealistic to expect captains of industry to conduct this kind of research; it’s not really a fair expectation because people depend on them to ensure the bottom line and provide safe investments.
It’s not just unrealistic to expect captains of industry to conduct this kind of research; it’s not really a fair expectation because people depend on them to ensure the bottom line and provide safe investments.
Occasionally, a singular individual arises like Elon Musk, who seems to regard profit as a means to innovation rather than the other way around. However, the ability, desire, and charisma required to make that work and bring people along is rare. People like him are important, but we cannot rely on them alone to address the issues that we face. Not only is his combination of qualities rare, we must also acknowledge that he’s still very limited in what he alone will champion. The kinds of things he is trying to develop are still technologies with immediate practical application and relatively short-term monetary benefit.
This is not the pursuit for those who want to take advantage of the opportunities in the marketplace. This is the pursuit that creates those opportunities. We have to decide, as a society, if we wish to pursue them and how much we will invest. Philanthropists are important, but the truly altruistic are rare and, quite frankly, can’t do everything we need alone. We still need public funding that supports the kinds of basic research that are only really feasible in universities and national labs.
This is not the pursuit for those who want to take advantage of the opportunities in the marketplace. This is the pursuit that creates those opportunities. We have to decide, as a society, if we wish to pursue them and how much we will invest. Philanthropists are important, but the truly altruistic are rare and, quite frankly, can’t do everything we need alone. We still need public funding that supports the kinds of basic research that are only really feasible in universities and national labs.
MIT released a report in 2015 highlighting 15 research opportunities that could boost the US Economy. It also noted that while other nations are boasting great discoveries, our commitment has fallen from 10% of the national budget in 1968 to less than 4% in 2015. A 2014 article illustrated some of the extraordinary yields our past commitment enabled, from GPS, to the discovery of cancer cells and other medical breakthroughs, to LiquiGlide, which was named by TIME magazine as among the best inventions of 2012. From the article:
For more than 60 years, MIT and other American research universities have led the world in discovery and innovation—with benefits to the entire country—due to federal funding. This vital support, however, is now on the decline. In 1960, for example, 55 percent of MIT’s campus revenue came from federal research dollars. By 2013, it fell to 22 percent. Chisholm says the decline is disrupting the research process.
‘Researchers are focusing on projects with a high probability of results, because these projects have a better chance of getting funded. What’s happening is faculty are doing safe things because they know they’ll work. They take fewer risks, but then the probability of discovering something really new and exciting goes down.”
The challenges we face are great, and we will not meet them by hoping that great men will resolve them on the way to seeking their own fortunes. There are some endeavors that require us to come together and make investments into the pursuit of knowledge for the common good. Basic scientific research is one of them. From dominoes to rockets, from a quirk of light to the computer, we don’t always know what we will find when we veer off the beaten path. It may seem like we’re merely taking the scenic route. However, we rarely find something truly new when we stick to the main road; the innovations that touch billions of lives lie in yet-undiscovered country.
The challenges we face are great, and we will not meet them by hoping that great men will resolve them on the way to seeking their own fortunes. There are some endeavors that require us to come together and make investments into the pursuit of knowledge for the common good. Basic scientific research is one of them.
Spencer Thomas is a PhD candidate in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He also happens to be Katie’s brother. He studies metals at the atomic level; the way atoms are arranged in a material can change its properties. There are ways to take an ordinary metal and make it 10-100x stronger, but they return to normal over time by a process called grain growth. In his recent publication in Nature Communications, he develops a rudimentary theory, backed by simulations, for understanding the fundamental mechanisms of grain growth and what they mean for attempts to stabilize these materials. While we and many involved in the study of very small things are excited about that, here we look forward to sharing with you other things that stimulate his very sharp mind.