Some random comments:

• I am spending a lot of time this summer learning Statistics. I have never taken a statistics course, nor taught more than the very basics in Honors Algebra 2, but I need to be proficient in A.P. Statistics by September. So I’m spending 1-2 hours per day learning it, and my overall thoughts about it are (1) it is considerably easier than AP Calculus, and (2) most of it consists of one topic reiterated in different terminology over and over.

• Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first people to walk on the moon. At that time we assumed America would have a permanent presence on both the moon and Mars by now. So what happened? I think America has been more pre-occupied with the short-term goal of building its military arsenal to incredibly high levels rather than the long-term goal of planning a way to escape Earth before we make it uninhabitable through environmental damage and gross overpopulation.

• I am disgusted at the reviews of I, Robot which indicate that the producers merely used Asimov’s title to create an action thriller which is the antithesis of a typical Asimovian story in two blatant ways: (a) his works never had action scenes in them, but were plot-oriented and cerebral, and (2) his works studied the ramifications of robots being totally-subservient to humans, while the movie treats them as potential enemies of humanity. It is amazing how movie producers continually defy the spirit of true science fiction in favor of stupid, juvenile, special-effects ridden thrillers. Bah!