Something to Know - 24 June

1.  Putting events of today, and recalling events of the past, this article by Robin Wright (not the same Robin Wright who plays Frank Underwood's wife on TV's House of Cards) is where we are right now.  Iraq is in need of new governance, but not one that is based on the same sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites as in other sectors of the region.   The House of Cards needs to be reassembled using the same factors that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Bremmer blasted apart in their failed "mission accomplished" debacle:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/06/political-and-military-challenges-in-iraq.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_Daily%20(203)

2.  Intransigent and crotchety institutions usually fail to keep up with the times.   Their lack of vision usually prevents the evolution necessary to meet the needs of the present, and certainly the future.  Failure to adapt will almost certainly guarantee irrelevance and extinction.  Case in point:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/us/Kate-Kelly-Mormon-Church-Excommunicates-Ordain-Women-Founder.html?emc=eta1

3.  Okay...  The average person can perhaps understand the above #1, and #2 issues.  This entry completely ignores that stuff and goes right to science, and does not give a hoot about politics, wars, theology, or moral values.   If you can recall the original ENIAC ($500,000 and the size of an average CVS pharmacy), to what it has evolved to now - a couple hundred dollars and fits in the palm of your hand, you then knew what binary code was, and that everything translated into a distinct series of ones and zeros.   Where does this go now, you may ask?  Quantum Computing, which assigns an algorithm of meaning to an arrangement of the coding.   If you can understand any of this, you are on the wrong planet.  If you don't understand, you might give this a shot and then you can always say that you've heard about it.   Because, in several years, the average 12-year old will be writing the code that we will all live by:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/technology/microsoft-makes-a-bet-on-quantum-computing-research.html?emc=eta1

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Juan
 

 

No computer is ever going to ask a new, reasonable question. It takes trained people to do that.

-- Grace Hopper