Sensory Strides #52 Hans Rosling, Factfulness, Elon Musk, Starlink Satellites, Frances Clark

Quote “There wouldn’t be a sky full of stars if we were all meant to wish on the same one.”– Frances Clark

Welcome to the Sensory Strides podcast. Observations of the world through activity, reading, listening, and everything else.

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For book club last month, I read Factfulness by Hans Rosling. As most people, I failed the quiz terribly. The piece of information that I will remember from the book is that we often see things in black and white, either or, rather than as a range. The examples throughout the book group many things into four categories, the main one being income. Rather than rich or poor, the levels are 1 where people make less than $2 per day; level 2 where they make between $2 and $8 per day, level 3 $8 to $32 per day, and level 4 where they make more than $32 per day. When you look at the world in these divisions, the opportunities for change and improvement are much more evident. I’ve always known you can make numbers say whatever you want them to say depending on your presentation. This book helped me think about how I listen to the news, look at statistics, and find the real story in numbers.

Quiz: http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1586713628&sr=1-1

The other night I was asleep and my husband came in and got me out of bed to go outside and look at the sky. By the time I got out there, what he wanted to show me was gone. He had seen a string of ‘lights’ in the sky. We often watch for satellites or the International Space Station, but hadn’t seen a string of lights like he described. I remember when I first moved to Wisconsin from a suburb of Chicago, laying out on the lawn ‘spotting’ satellites. It was a favorite pastime. Nowadays you can look up online what is heading over and when. I googled string of lights and immediately figured out what my husband had seen – Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites. Since then we’ve seen another series of the satellites, but he says they weren’t as bright as the ones he had seen. So we will be monitoring the Starlink tracker and watch for the newer set of satellites (which are lower and thus brighter) so I can see them as the ‘string of pearls’ that some have described.

https://findstarlink.com/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/04/23/is-spacex-fixing-bright-starlink-satellites-elon-musk-says-yes-as-europe-sees-string-of-pearls/#39ea7f84721b

Thanks for joining me. Be sure to check our show notes for links to inspiration items and … don't forget to stop and smell the roses.

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