245 karma · joined October 9, 2011
Is it possible that only poor lecturers give hugely inefficient and ineffective lectures?
It seems to me the point of lectures isn't to transmit information - that can be done using a book. Rather it is, or ought to be, a demonstration of how a master deals with a problem or answers a question.
I disagree. Writing is part of the process of determining what you want to say. It's an imaginary conversation with your reader and with your conscience.
We all have vast quantities of ideas bouncing around in our heads, like those animated gifs of Brownian motion. Writing is a way of coralling them.
It's useful to cultivate an inner voice that asks "is that true?". Every time you write a word, get your voice to ask if that word is true. Which actually sounds very like insanity, but seems to work.
"Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades. The role in this greening of the “CO2 fertilization” effect—the enhancement of photosynthesis due to rising CO2 levels—is yet to be established. The direct CO2 effect on vegetation should be most clearly expressed in warm, arid environments where water is the dominant limit to vegetation growth. Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 (1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments. Satellite observations, analyzed to remove the effect of variations in precipitation, show that cover across these environments has increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2 fertilization effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle and that the fertilization effect is now a significant land surface process."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstrac...
Are the advocates of "right to be forgotten" supporting this?
It's not copy-pastable, but Chevron's argument starts on page 8.
It might result in a few confused travellers, but hey.
Does this not assume that Bitcoin remains the only currency of its kind?
I've been assuming that there's an incentive for anybody capable to design a new currency and make sure they're in on the ground floor as it appreciates.
So in x years time there may be dozens (hundreds?) of competing currencies, giving arbitraging and carry opportunities that will contribute to volatility.
And a possible end result (though I can't see it happening outside science fiction) is that somebody designs a way for you to make your own currency, backed by your own labour, potential value, or assets. So everybody has their own currency, and it's priced according to how clever you are, or how many horses you own, or some other fundamental.
The reasons given in this article are interesting but they strike me as rather technical embellishments to the fundamental variable: the desire for money.
I make no moral judgement about that desire; I simply recognise that some people have it more than others.
The idea was that you ask people what would most change their lives. One wanted a caravan to live in. Another wanted a pair of new trainers and a television.
I'm unable to detect from Broadway's website whether or not they're still running this scheme.
The idea has merit. Poverty is a trap, and you need a chunk of money just to get normal life running. You can't type a CV and check your email responses from a doorway. Let alone think clearly.
The Fabians floated the idea way back. E M Forster: "Give them a chance. Give them money. Don't dole them out poetry-books and railway-tickets like babies. Give them the wherewithal to buy these things. When your socialism comes it may be different, and we may think in terms of commodities instead of cash. Till it comes give people cash, for it is the warp of civilisation, whatever the woof may be. The imagination ought to play upon money and realise it vividly, for it's the -- the second most important thing in the world. It is so sluffed over and hushed up, there is so little clear thinking -- oh political economy, of course, but so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means. Money: give Mr Bast money, and don't bother about his ideals. He'll pick those up for himself".
It's such a liberating thing to be able to say.
I tutor kids, and sometimes they ask stuff I can't answer. I tell them I don't know but will find out, then move heaven and earth to find out. A week later, when I tell them, the look of surprise on their faces can be funny: an adult actually admitted to not knowing, and then kept a promise to find out!
love watching people do the Harlem shake
I really really really want a snake
How does it work? I'm guessing it 1) scans tweets for pentameters using a large corpus annotated by syllables, then 2) looks up a rhyming dictionary to check the tweet is likely to be fruitful (i.e. doesn't end with the word orange or similar) and 3) waits...
Meanwhile German agents in England were also observing the success or failure of the V2s, and in particular where they'd landed.
However, in an effort to deceive the Germans, the British started reporting the correct time of successful attacks, while mentioning an incorrect location.
Moreover, a double agent called Eddie Chapman also fed false information back to the Germans.
As a result, the aimers never really got a grip on ranging accurately. The bombs started landing to the south east of London.
There's considerably more detail about this in Most Secret War by R V Jones, who was involved in all sorts of ruses to confuse the enemy. Well worth a read.
Eddie Chapman (Agent ZigZag) was played by Christopher Plummer in the film Triple Cross. It seems to be on YouTube.
As somebody who once did work experience here: http://tinyurl.com/d28gxz4, I was a bit puzzled to be in an almost bookless library.
I suspect "coffee shop rules" are the future of libraries.
I think we've made progress since it was written. Eye-tracking shows how we read and which words or letter combinations trip us up.
By the way, wouldn't that table naturally have time in the left hand column, considering it's probably an independent variable, while temperature is dependent?
Analytical writing is a method for achieving greater intellectual honesty. It includes the habit of giving evidence for assertions, of clearing up ambiguity, of putting causes before consequences, of replacing hand-waving with concrete facts. And so on.
But it's not failsafe. "The Xorbians are foreign interlopers, so we must hunt them down and kill them" is analytical writing. I think it would pass some of the more basic tests described in the Atlantic article. But it doesn't necessarily tell the truth, and this failing may be down to a want of ethics.
By contrast, "What do I think about the Xorbian issue? Live and let live" is not analytical writing. But it may be truer and more valuable.
Judicial and deliberative rhetoric in Greece demanded a backbone of analysis. But it wasn't by any means the whole of rhetoric.
Well, as stated, it's complex. One could write books...
It's interesting (and frustrating) when this phenomenon appears across different languages. The French 'pas terrible' means not very good rather than not terrible.
But it should be borne in mind that stuff is getting cheaper, thanks to automation. The proportion of income spent on food has fallen from 33% to 15% in fifty years.
In any case, I think we have little option. It's possible that current employment problems are a blip, but annual hours worked per person have fallen by around 25% since 1950. And halved since the 19th century. It looks like a trend to me.
If you're a poorly educated westerner, there isn't much for you to do even now. OECD countries all complain about households in which nobody has ever worked. Given the falling relative and absolute standards of education, it's hard to see opportunities for them.
To my mind, automation and low wages elsewhere in the world have had a big impact on the labour pool. This may be difficult for highly employable folk reading this board to grasp, but consider what folk are doing as they leave college. Sure, lots of them are getting well-paid jobs, but a heck of a lot are interning and struggling along with 10-dollar jobs on the freelance auction sites.
But why is there a general panic when the possibility of the end of work arises? For billions of people it would mean freedom from drudgery and the prospect of doing more fulfilling things instead - looking after families, creating things, learning new stuff and so on.