There are a lot of people that teach. I want to illustrate two. I'll call one the "Confounding Genius" and the other "Mr. Elementary." (Or CG and ME respectively)
The CG is a teacher/professor who isn't all that organized. Regardless, s/he is a genius. Lectures are given orally and are hard to follow because they are so brilliant and full of insight, or in other words, have a high idea density. ME is a teacher who, on the other hand, has a low idea density. S/He makes up for it by using nice powerpoint slides and extricating every ounce of meaning from what s/he says.
Which one is better? Well, if a student is struggling, the latter is better. If a student is advanced or bored, the former is better. We might prefer that all our teachers gave elegant overhead/powerpoint slides to all that they do, but it simply isn't the case to find a teacher who does everything the best. Furthermore, it is contradictory to cover course material both slower and faster simultaneously.
April 25, 2007
Human Psychology
Human psychology is so weird. Normally I am happy to reduce our thought patterns to "One of these things is not like the other," and our social relations to "iterated prisoner's dilemna."
On this occasion, neither of these psychological theories (oooh, complex ones at that) can explain how we go through lives as associated monads. As we travel from pond to pond, sometimes we are the big fish and sometimes we are the little fish. Wherever we are, as humans we need to connect with other humans, which we do. These connections may be managed through prisoner's dilemna logic (ie. Tit for Tat), but the connections themselves aren't explained by such reasoning.
If you take a person and ignore how long they live, or how extroverted they are, and you add up all the social relation(ing) that they do, it adds up to 100%. How a person divides all the time they spend in relationships to others varies. Some spend a little time with a lot of people, some spend a lot of time with a few people. Other distinctions can be made, such as the friend I have for one semester while enrolled in the same class, or the friend that I have had for neigh 20 years. (I'm a geezer, what can I say?)
Eventually, we all come to a time in our life when we hop from one pond to another, which means we have to alter in some way our time spent relating to our fellow man. It's easier to say goodbye to some fellow students or coworkers than others. Sometimes departures from the latter are tearful and filled with great intentions to not lose touch, yet somehow for all these great intentions this takes place anyway.
What can we say about this, logically? Well, who gives a rat's ass about logic? Okay, someone might, so here goes.... If you only have so much time to spend relating, you either have to not add new people (ie. never go anywhere new), give some people up, or spend increasingly less time with everyone you've previously known in order to spend time with everyone you know. Well it is obviously impractical to spend 10 seconds per week with everyone you've ever met. Clearly it is impractical to not meet -any- new people because your life is already full. That leaves with departing from people that you have met, and probably ones you care about. In other words, it's unavoidable.
What psychology explains this? "You can't have your cake and eat it too," "life isn't fair," and "out of sight, out of mind."
Or, in other words, "the integral of d%/dt is 100%."
On this occasion, neither of these psychological theories (oooh, complex ones at that) can explain how we go through lives as associated monads. As we travel from pond to pond, sometimes we are the big fish and sometimes we are the little fish. Wherever we are, as humans we need to connect with other humans, which we do. These connections may be managed through prisoner's dilemna logic (ie. Tit for Tat), but the connections themselves aren't explained by such reasoning.
If you take a person and ignore how long they live, or how extroverted they are, and you add up all the social relation(ing) that they do, it adds up to 100%. How a person divides all the time they spend in relationships to others varies. Some spend a little time with a lot of people, some spend a lot of time with a few people. Other distinctions can be made, such as the friend I have for one semester while enrolled in the same class, or the friend that I have had for neigh 20 years. (I'm a geezer, what can I say?)
Eventually, we all come to a time in our life when we hop from one pond to another, which means we have to alter in some way our time spent relating to our fellow man. It's easier to say goodbye to some fellow students or coworkers than others. Sometimes departures from the latter are tearful and filled with great intentions to not lose touch, yet somehow for all these great intentions this takes place anyway.
What can we say about this, logically? Well, who gives a rat's ass about logic? Okay, someone might, so here goes.... If you only have so much time to spend relating, you either have to not add new people (ie. never go anywhere new), give some people up, or spend increasingly less time with everyone you've previously known in order to spend time with everyone you know. Well it is obviously impractical to spend 10 seconds per week with everyone you've ever met. Clearly it is impractical to not meet -any- new people because your life is already full. That leaves with departing from people that you have met, and probably ones you care about. In other words, it's unavoidable.
What psychology explains this? "You can't have your cake and eat it too," "life isn't fair," and "out of sight, out of mind."
Or, in other words, "the integral of d%/dt is 100%."
March 29, 2007
Articulated Rollerblades
Alright, so Rollerblades are actually a brand name like Kleenex or Band-Aid. Call them inline skates if you prefer. Mine actually are rollerblades so I don't hesitate to call them that.
Medieval armour was well articulated. It is a myth that armoured knights were clumsy and could not move properly. Their armour was articulated to give them the full range of motion so that they would not be hindered in combat -- the difference between life and death.
In a similar fashion, the way that inline skates are made now are a hindrance. The boots are stiff and solid, preventing certain types of motion. In particular, it is quite hard to jump on skates -- the boot does not flex to allow flexion of the ankle. Instead, I propose that we make inline skates articulated to allow different ankle movements and allow us to jump and do better tricks and whatnot. Naturally it would be harder to skate with articulation because your balance would have to be better, but I feel it could be done. (Besides which, if I can skate without doing my skates up, and just balancing on the bottoms, then I can skate with more freedom than currently and more support than nothing.)
Medieval armour was well articulated. It is a myth that armoured knights were clumsy and could not move properly. Their armour was articulated to give them the full range of motion so that they would not be hindered in combat -- the difference between life and death.
In a similar fashion, the way that inline skates are made now are a hindrance. The boots are stiff and solid, preventing certain types of motion. In particular, it is quite hard to jump on skates -- the boot does not flex to allow flexion of the ankle. Instead, I propose that we make inline skates articulated to allow different ankle movements and allow us to jump and do better tricks and whatnot. Naturally it would be harder to skate with articulation because your balance would have to be better, but I feel it could be done. (Besides which, if I can skate without doing my skates up, and just balancing on the bottoms, then I can skate with more freedom than currently and more support than nothing.)