Cyberpunk got the future exactly wrong. In the 1980s, being into computer technology meant being into hardware. You could scrounge it and tinker with it, and had to be clever and highly motivated to do that. Cyberpunk took the computer geek themes of cleverness, effort, and hardware and added heavy antiestablishmentism.
I've been in education all through the rise of digital culture and am now dealing with the first ChatGPT generation. What I see is the inverse of cyberpunk culture. Computers are ubiquitous and dead simple to use. Kids spend their time doomscrolling and let ChatGPT do their thinking for them.
It's funny how controversial this subject has been. From reading the more recent books on lightning physics, I'm convinced of the reality of it. From that perspective, I'm amused by the entry on ball lightning in the Encyclopedic Dictionary Of Physics (Thewlis, 1962). I don' have it here, but I recall he says something like, "Reports of ball lightning have generally come from unreliable characters, so we can assume it doesn't really exist."
> Combustion or pyrolysis is expected due to aerodynamic heating.
My naive impression is that this would not be possible. I would expect that a very light object with large sail area would be driven so easily by air flow that it would experience negligible heating from friction. What is the physical reasoning behind thinking it could burn up?
I feel sorry for people who want to watch the movie without reading the book first, because there are surprises and I think the movie would be best enjoyed that way. It's probably impossible to avoid learning spoilers, since the book is so well known and even the trailer has some.
Doesn't surprise me that PDX is number one. I used to travel to Asia through Portland, but now have to go either through Los Angeles or Seattle-Tacoma. They both make me really miss PDX.
This reminds me of Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
> this obviously aging little structure doesn’t feel ugly or rundown.
That made me cringe a bit. The whole look of the place is deliberate. I mean, somebody put in a lot of effort to make it look just that way. Notice how every inch of it is spotless and nothing could be said to be out of place.
I once needed to seriously investigate a setup for one-handed typing. My conclusion at the time was that after a learning period, one-hand typing on a regular keyboard was just as productive as using a special keyboard, and had the advantage of not needing special facilities. I think the only special feature needed was the addition of a "sticky" key facility.
I've been urging this kind of adaptation for the past couple years, with very little success. Switching to evaluation by only on-site work was simple to do, but creating new work forms has been largely a non-starter. Young professors are focused on their publication count and most old codgers (like me) have their eyes on retirement and hoping to escape before accountability hits the fan. When I offer to help explore restructuring their teaching materials, the typical response is glazed eyes and sudden awareness of the need to be elsewhere.
Division on this topic reminds me of the division between those who prefer light vs heavy development tools. Some enjoy mastering and wielding powerful tools, but others see them as a distraction.
"Most important tool" depends on what you mean by "important". For TFA, it means the environment where most of the thinking is done. So it's a legitimate claim. If you want to restrict "important" to the most critical link in the development chain, I suppose you would have to choose the compiler.
> I learned very early on in my career that I’m not very good at thinking when I’m at a computer.
Before personal computers, I had the same experience at the typewriter. I find it very inhibiting to have a machine staring me in the face, waiting, while I try to be creative.
I was a slow handwriter, too. I always did badly on in-class essay exams because I didn't have time to write all that I knew needed to be said. What saved my grade in those classes was good term papers.
Having had much occasion to consider this issue, I would suggest moving away from the essay format. Most of the typical essay is fluff that serves to provide narrative cohesion. If knowledge of facts and manipulation of principles are what is being evaluated, presentation by bullet points should be sufficient.
The Open University in the UK started in 1969. Their staff have a reputation for good interaction with students, and I have seen very high quality teaching materials produced there. I believe they have always operated on the basis of remote teaching but on-site evaluation. The Open University sounds like an all-round success story and I'm surprised it isn't mentioned more in discussions of remote education.
TFA indulges in a type of fallacious reasoning I see way too much of in philosophical discussion. The general trend of the argument goes:
1. "A" proposed theory "X".
2. "B" interpreted "X" as "Y" and used that as a guide to action.
3. Since "X" and "Y" are different, the actions of "B" are somehow illegitimate.
If the actions of "B" are of interest, the proper focus of study is what "Y" really consists of and how it relates to the actions and outcomes of "B". What "A" did or did not propose really is of no interest unless you are specifically studying "A" instead of "B".
I remember that from the 1970s, too. I think photo gear might have been a unique case because the market was big enough to support those huge mailorder shops in NYC, and most items were expensive enough that the markup of buying at a local shop really hurt. As a young, cash-strapped, photography enthusiast, I felt guilty about buying all my major gear online, but I could bring myself to purchase only small accessories from the (really nice) people at the local camera shop.
"Technology can do X more conveniently than people, so why should children practice X?" has been a point of controversy in education at least since pocket calculators became available.
I try to explain by shifting the focus from neurological to musculoskeletal development. It's easy to see that physical activity promotes development of children's bodies. So although machines can aid in many physical tasks, nobody is suggesting we introduce robots to augment PE classes. People need to recognize that complex tasks also induce brain development. This is hard to demonstrate but has been measured in extensive tasks like learning languages and music performance. Of course, this argument is about child development, and much of the discussion here is around adult education, which has some different considerations.
Any advice on how to shop for older jeans? I have >10-year old Lee jeans that are much better quality than what I can buy now. I didn't think it was possible to find such old stock of clothes but I'm willing to try.
Visa was revoked because of undisclosed frog embryo samples in her luggage.
Petrova was initially given two options after being stopped by CBP: return to France and reapply for a visa, or face deportation and a five-year entry ban. She chose to return to France, but when she informed a CBP officer that she feared political persecution if sent back to Russia, the agency opted to detain her instead, according to a petition filed by her attorney, Gregory Romanovsky.
I highly recommend the books by Mark Glassy, The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema and Biology Run Amok!: The Life Science Lessons of Science Fiction Cinema.
I was raised among scientists whose attitude was that reality was so interesting, delving into fantasy was a poor substitute. To be honest, I still rather feel this way, but I see that for so many people, the demands of knowledge, effort, and time required for positive outcomes in their corner of reality are too great for most people to experience much of significance. So I've become less critical of fantasy as an absorbing interest. Furthermore, in a world where the bulk of published research is non-replicable, I've become bothered by doubts about how much of my mental models of scientific reality are actually fantasy.