Triathlon and Abu Dhabi Race

Hopefully we are looking at a new way of competing format.  The bike was for good cyclists; this is a “real triathlon.”  The bicycle circuit was designed well to have a fair competition; they needed to know how to ride the bike if they wanted to be competitive.  It was not a matter of climber against sprinter or timetrialist.  It was about how to maneuver a bicycle in a peloton where the road was not straight; how to stay away from the wind and turn the corners.  It was a race for athletes able to plan ahead and execute according to the plan.

Planning and executing according to the plan is what we obtain with a “good education;” nothing else.  One should plan according to what one learned from experience: “learning to learn” is called.  One executes every fine detail from the plan if one has a “good education.”

“Learning to learn” is a phrase misused and abuse by psedopoliticians.  It is the first stage to reach if one wants to improve performance; we need to learn from our experience.  Unfortunately, the frames used by many do not help to learn from our experience, such frames are given at home, by family members or by society.  At least we should know where our frames of refence come from in order to learn.

Zuheir Altamimi

Reference Frames for science and society and the fundamental contribution of Satellite Laser Ranging to the ITRF.

Continuous Earth observation is fundamental to quantifying and understanding changes that affect our Earth system. Global space geodesy is the key science that measures and quantify the Earth changes in space and time, and the only science that provides the standard reference, or the global terrestrial reference frame, against which these changes are properly referenced and quantified. One of the key requirements of a reference frame is the stability overtime of its defining parameters, at a level at least two times higher than the uncertainty of the measured quantities. The International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF), developed over the past three decades, relies on the availability of continuous geodetic data and products of the four techniques (SLR, VLBI, GNSS, DORIS), but also core co-location sites where multiple geodetic instruments are operated. SLR is the unique technique that is used to define the long-term origin of the ITRF with respect to the Earth Center of Mass, and in combination with VLBI, its long-term scale. The long-term stability of these two ITRF defining parameters are highly critical for Earth science applications, so that any bias in these parameters would contaminate the geodetic observations that rely on the ITRF usage. After illustrating the importance of reference frames for science and society, the paper will critically address the fundamental contribution of satellite laser ranging to the ITRF, through the results of ITRF2014. 

https://cddis.nasa.gov/lw20/docs/2016/abstracts/04-Altamini_abstract.pdf

Our frames of reference limit our ability to learn from our experience.  Thanks to our encyclopedea (our knowledege of concepts) we can improve our frames of reference knowing that everything is relative; except that we can improve performance in triathlon by improving our frames of reference.