Today the new tv show, "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" suggested that the physicists behind the a-bomb should have been shot through the head. The rest of the episode was viciously anti-intellectual and exalted trendy dumb-guy catch words and phrases, and portrayed school conformity as normal and good. But it will have a following because ( Read more... )

We need chemists, electricians, physicists, botanists... for the Port Watson Colony on Antares 8.

In the military when you are learning a skill, such as speaking a language, you get right to the nitty gritty, what is important, what you need to know to get started and doing it right now. Learning a foreign language means going away to a camp and living that language 6 hours a day for 6 months (or a year, I fergit) and attaining fluency. Just ( Read more... )

You know what I hate? Gorillas. I know that they're admired, but what I hate is their faces. Even bovine faces aren't that ugly. There's just something about the ape face that strikes me as more horrifically ugly than anything you could have a nightmare about. The ape face is obnoxiously ugly. No wonder our ancestors evolved. Nothing wants to look ( Read more... )

The idea is to tell he story of the candle.

It's so easy to forget not to revise while writing.

It's extra cold out.

Gort is returning.

The decision was made to avoid any contrivance that can be construed as an attempt to, "make learning fun". Copacetic ( Read more... )

On the other hand, Marge Simpson believed that you could give piano lessons by staying one lesson ahead of the student, and the student wouldn't know the difference. Robert Millikan reports a similar experience, to wit:

"At the close of my sophomore year [...] my Greek professor [...] asked me to teach the course in elementary physics in the ( Read more... )

A grandfather character seemed enchanting, at first. Mulled it over perhaps too much. Then there's what to do with the grandmother, who shouldn't be confined to a world of dish cloths. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

How this grandfather knows so much can be left to mystery. Who cares, really. He's just been around.  Yeah. Yeah!

Unseasonably warm weather today. 60 degrees Fahrenheit... so, umm, 1.8 F degrees for every Celsius degree, plus 32, so, err,  first minus 32, 28, if we know how many 1.8s will fit in there, we'll have Celsius, so 28 degrees divided up into groups of 1.8 each is around 15 and a half groups/degrees Celsius today.

Rain man schmain man.