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BOSTON (AP) -- Moshe Kai Cavalin has two college degrees, but he's too young to vote. He flies airplanes, but he's too young to drive a car alone.
Life is filled with contrasts for Cavalin, a 17-year-old from San Gabriel, California, who has dashed by major milestones as his age seems to lag behind. He graduated from community college at age 11. Four years later, he had a bachelor's in math from the University of California, Los Angeles.
This year, he started online classes to get a master's in cybersecurity through the Boston area's Brandeis University. He decided to postpone that pursuit for a couple of terms, though, while he helps NASA develop surveillance technology for airplanes and drones.
Between all that, he's racked up an exhausting list of extracurricular feats. He just published his second book, drawing on his experience being bullied and stories he's heard from others. He plans to have his airplane pilot's license by the year's end. At his family's home near Los Angeles, he has a trove of trophies from martial arts tournaments.
Still, Cavalin insists that he's more ordinary than people think. He credits his parents for years of focused instruction balanced by the freedom to pick his after-school activities. His eclectic interests stem from his cultural heritage, he said, with a mother from Taiwan and a father from Brazil.
"My case isn't that special. It's just a combination of parenting and motivation and inspiration," he says after a recent shift at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. "I tend to not compare myself that often to other people. I just try to do the best I can."
His parents say he was always a quick study. At 4 months, he pointed to a jet in the sky and said the Chinese word for airplane, his first word. Cavalin hit the limits of his home schooling after studying trigonometry at age 7. Then his mom started driving him to community college.
"I think most people just think he's a genius, they believe it just comes naturally," said Daniel Judge, a professor of mathematics who taught Cavalin for two years at East Los Angeles College. "He actually worked harder than, I think, any other student I've ever had."
But his rapid rise hasn't been without twists. Early in college, he dreamed of being an astrophysicist. When he started taking advanced physics classes, though, his interest waned. His fascination in cryptography led him toward computer science.
That has been a better fit, Cavalin said. He was surprised when NASA called to offer work after rejecting him in the past because of his age. Ricardo Arteaga, his boss and mentor at NASA, says Cavalin was perfect for a project that combines math, computers and aircraft technology.
"I needed an intern who knew software and knew mathematical algorithms," Arteaga says. "And I also needed a pilot who could fly it on a Cessna."
In the office, Cavalin is a quiet worker with a subtle sense of humor, Arteaga says. They laugh about the stuff scientists laugh about. His daily work at NASA has included running simulations of airplanes and drones that are headed for collision, and then finding ways to route them to safety.
"He's really sharp in mathematics," Arteaga says. "What we're trying to bring out more is his intuitive skills."
In conversation, Cavalin speaks with the even cadence and diction of someone who chooses his words with care. He's unflappable, at least until he discusses his distaste for being called a certain word: "One word I don't take too kindly is genius," he said. "Genius is just kind of taking it too far."
After he finishes his master's from Brandeis, Cavalin hopes to get a master's in business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later, he wants to start his own cybersecurity company.
For now, though, he's counting down the days until his 18th birthday, when he'll be able to get a full driver's license under California law. Living away from home to work at NASA, he relies on his landlord for rides to the grocery store, or he takes a taxi. His older colleagues drive him to work every day.
As for the other teenage stuff, Cavalin says he'll wait until he gets his doctorate degree to find a girlfriend. He's only half-joking.
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Monday, November 2, 2015
2 degrees, flies planes, author, works at NASA.
Not Quite Meaningless
 The Labour Party in Scotland, partly in response to needing to differentiate themselves from the UK party in the context of devolution, adopted a position against the renewal of Trident and in favour of nuclear disarmament.
In 1999.
Yes indeed. And there have been no debates on Trident in particular or nukes in general at any Labour party conference, Scottish or otherwise, since. Even the reflex of declaring a degree of “independence “ from the Westminster party line is nothing new in and of itself. We've already had the “New” Clause Four earlier this year...though that seems an aeon ago now...
So while there was nothing new in principle in the party effectively confirming what was already “policy” in principle, there was a good deal of difference in the context of the debate, and maybe even the meaning of its result. And again, a reflex that has been exercised with an immediate electoral objective has a historical significance, perhaps, that is the opposite of the intention of its shakers and movers.
First of all, as things stand, the number of elected representatives from the party in Scotland who will have a vote on the matter when it comes up for actual debate in yer actual Parliament is...well..one. Secondly, although his vote is welcome, as things stand Jeremy Corbyn is in no position to whip the rest of UK Labour Party into the No lobby with anything more substantial than Ken Dodd's Tickling Stick. There is simply no doubt that when the renewal of Trident is voted on, the vote will be an overwhelming majority “Aye” including within the Parliamentary Labour Party.
So why does it matter? Why is there any difference between a heavily symbolic vote in 1999 and a similar vote now? Well, first of all, there is actually going to be a bill in the parliament of what I'm increasingly coming to think of as The Continuity UK. Second, the SNP were in nothing like the position they are now in either legislature in 1999. Third, the CUK Labour Party is now (sort of) lead by a sincere unilateralist for the first time since Michael Foot. (Though the Scottish Party, which is about to become Unilateralist, isn't ...Confused? You won't be after the latest episode of SLAB!)
It would be easy, under the circumstances, to dismiss this weekends vote as an empty gesture. I don't quite think that's true. I don't think the labour Party (both branches) are now in the traditional policy making position of the Liberal Democrats..that is, confident in the expectation of never actually being able to do anything about making their high-minded policy into actual...well...policy with actual...well...consequences, some of which are going to be hideously complicated.
And this is partly because the SNP are themselves going to have to get themselves beyond symbolism when it comes to “reserved” matters like welfare and taxation as well as defence. Let's be honest, the SNP, who are never going to be in a position to run the UK are not untainted with empty symbolism possible with no prospect of power or responsibility. For one thing, there are going to a package of powers, and Iain Duncan Smith telling Mhairi Black this week that the Holyrood can always raise taxes to offset UK cuts..is not the first or last to come up with that particular game of “Call My Bluff.”
And he's not entirely wrong, either. The SNP government in Holyrood are nothing if not cushioned both by the ineptitude of their local opposition and their doubt very irritating posture of moral superiority on questions of little reserved matters like taxation, welfare, immigration, foreign policy, war etc etc etc all of which would become much more tricky and much more live issues were there to actually be a credible left-wing opposition in either polity, Not-Quite-Scotland
or the Continuity UK.
Like everything else right now, however, I think the real meaning of the event of the Labour Vote this morning is historic rather than immediate, of tectonic rather than “political” significance. Little by little, the UK as we have known it is ceasing to exist. And it is the emergence of a Scottish left opposition that will bring something like the Scotland most Bella readers voted for last year, slowly, messily, unpredictably...through a form "independence" ...into being.
There is nothing about this morning, however, that alters my conviction that in one shape or another "independence" is the predicate and not the consequence of change. And that, unfortunately, it almost certainly has to come first
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