The Secret Origin of Windows; The real story behind Microsoft’s biggest money-maker. Link.

Why bubbles happen; From the fantastic new blog, Wired Reread, comes a great explanation of why market bubbles are driven by mediocrity. Link.

Better Than Apollo: The Space Program We Almost Had; How do you get engineers to work for your company in the early space age? Promise them the universe. Link.

Apple’s iPhone 4.0 software to deliver multitasking support; So, I may have been mistaken about that one. Should be out this Summer. Link.

What Movie is That?; Great behind-the-scenes photos from less popular films. Link.

If you haven’t seen the original Story of Stuff video check it out at StoryofStuff.org.

Major League Baseball to the rescue!

This is a nearly perfect example of smart developers working out new and better ways to get things done. The current incarnation of the MLB At Bat app (2010) solves the problem with a very clever use of Mobile Safari and embedded Quicktime. Basically, in order to run background audio At Bat gives the option of loading the audio stream in Safari via the Quicktime plugin. The only downside is that you lose the ability to run any other Safari windows (as far as I can tell) but all of your other apps are available by just exiting Safari via the Home button after the quicktime stream starts playing. And I think a little tweaking of Mobile Safari by Apple (perhaps not until more apps use this — looking at YOU, Pandora) would allow multiple Safari windows even with one streaming Quicktime.

Take that Flash. Now if Pandora is smart they’ll find some way — it will be more difficult to do given that the stream as it is now is user-alterable — to run the audio stream through Mobile Safari. Perhaps it merely requires the end user to forego the ability to change channels or skip (or rate) songs. But it seems reasonable that this is the solution. And its another sign that Flash is coughing up blood.

Update: Looks like iPhone OS may have multitasking after all. At least that’s what Apple Insider and Gruber think. [03/11/2010]

This just isn’t the case with many teachers in our education system. If a new teacher is incredibly lucky he or she may have had a good mentor during a few months of student teaching — hopefully in the same subject area that the student teacher will be employed in — and a good department (supportive dept. head, mentoring teachers…) at their first school. Only very rarely does the instruction of new teachers go beyond the theory and get into the real nuts and bolts of how to actually teach children anything.

This article from the New York Times Magazine profiles an educator who is trying to do just that. Doug Lemov is videotaping successful teachers and trying to codify their techniques to eventually find ways to better train teachers. He found some eye-opening things.

When researchers ran the numbers in dozens of different studies, every factor under a school’s control produced just a tiny impact, except for one: which teacher the student had been assigned to. Some teachers could regularly lift their students’ test scores above the average for children of the same race, class and ability level. Others’ students left with below-average results year after year. William Sanders, a statistician studying Tennessee teachers with a colleague, found that a student with a weak teacher for three straight years would score, on average, 50 percentile points behind a similar student with a strong teacher for those years. Teachers working in the same building, teaching the same grade, produced very different outcomes. And the gaps were huge.

This begs the question why we don’t actually train teachers to teach. It seems that has a lot to do with the Industrial Revolution and the exploding need for teachers to educate the emerging working class.

Between 1870 and 1900, as the country’s population surged and school became compulsory, the number of public schoolteachers [sic] in America shot from 200,000 to 400,000. Normal schools had to turn out graduates quickly; teaching students how to teach was an afterthought to getting them out the door.

So, we found ourselves in a situation where we had to have workers, so we needed lots of teachers to give them the rudiments of an education. Most of them weren’t college-bound so the demands were low on the teachers. Also, teaching was one of a relatively small number of career paths for American women. Things have changed drastically since the early- to mid-20th century. Now a much higher percentage of American children are at least trying to get into a college or university. The demand for teachers to perform well (read: get their students prepared for college) is higher than ever. At the same time many potential teachers find more attractive prospects in other, more lucrative careers. Add this to the fact that we still aren’t truly teaching the techniques of successful teaching the end result is lower quality teaching expected to rise to higher performance. It simply will not work.

Part of the answer is to decrease somewhat the expectation that every child be tracked into a college prep course of work. Not every child needs to go to college and not every child has the aptitude. That is not to say that we should discourage any child from trying, but that we should provide other opportunities as well. Why does every child have to have a high school diploma? Wouldn’t a diploma from a trade school be sufficient to start a successful career?

A larger part of the answer is that we need to teach our teachers more successful ways of teaching. Any teacher, of any subject, should be completely comfortable and in total control of the classroom on day one of his or her first year teaching. That may be an unrealistic pipe dream, but it is a noble thing to strive for.

Books in the Age of the iPad; Craig Mod has a really good look at how books are changing. Link.

Thomas Prescher’s Mysterious Automatic Double Axis Tourbillon; The most elegantly designed watch, ever. Link.

Illustrated Celebrity Tweets; Equal parts funny and disturbing. Link.

How to take portraits; A look at the art of photographic portraiture from the 1930s. Link.

iPad Application Design; Good look at IU and how apps should work on the iPad. Also, you can pre-order your iPad on March 14 for delivery on April 3! Link.

As a bit of background — which I think I gave around this time last year — I used to be a casual Dodgers fan. My brother, and Dram contributor, Randy is a rabid Dodgers fan. It’s easy to root for a team when your big brother does. And it certainly didn’t hurt that the first year I actually sat and watched the World Series was 1988. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Orel Hershiser.

Then I kind of fell away from baseball for a little while. I went from casual fan to a very lazy fan. It just wasn’t that important to me. The Dodgers did little in the interim to help the situation.

As you may already know I then married into a die-hard New England family (on both sides of my wife’s family!) that love the Sawx. It was the Summer of 2004. And you know what happened that Fall. The Sox reversed the Curse. They won it all and thus solidified my fandom. I was meant to be a Sox fan if they won their first series since 1918 the year I started following them. It was fate! I am set as a fan with the Sox. I don’t even mind the crap years too much… It helps get rid of the fair-weather fans. I’m sticking with Boston. But, I’m adding another team as well.

I have never felt any particular need to root for a home team that was based 2 hours North (meaning Washington). I root for the Bears over the Skins. The Sox over the O’s. And I don’t follow basketball or hockey (Though I hear the Caps are good. I really have no idea.). But having been to a Nationals game at Nats Park (they lost) and seeing what great underdogs this horrifically bad team make, I was smitten.

The Nationals are the perfect second team for me. Being the home team I can watch every single game, every pitch — in HD — and actually get to know the players. And it’s not too much of a hassle or too high a cost to actually go to the park and see a game. Nats Park really is a great ball park, too. It is the polar opposite of Fenway in just about every aspect but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to see a game there.

Rooting for the Nats is just a different experience from rooting for the Sox. The Sox have wicked bats and a young, talented pitching staff. The Nats are by most metrics the worst team in baseball. The Sox push the 100 game threshold just about every year. So do the Nats, on the other end of the spectrum. Every game is a new struggle for the Nats. Each win is that much sweeter for being the more rare occurrance.

Starting this Opening Day, I’ll root just as hard as ever for my Sox. I think they’ve got a real good shot at the AL East title and the Series. The Nats have a decent shot at 60 wins! So, I’ll be pulling for the underdog home team, too, because they’re just fun to cheer on. Let’s Go Sox and Let’s Go Nats!