I always took pride in sharing a lot with my kids, including watching together everything from TeleTubbies to Pokemon to Dragon Ball to Power Puff Girls to ....
I also laughed at most of them, but my aging braincells never could keep up with the 150 variations and evolutions of Pokemon ... which soon grew to 250 ... yet they knew all of them by heart and made NO mistakes on that complicated matrix .... I am using matrix in the Mathematical meaning, go figure, and they clearly showed mental superiority over me, at least on some areas.
Fast forward 25 years and now I am repeating that with my grand daughter, who turned 5 just 1 week ago.
I am happy that her current favourites, Paw Patrol and Masha and Bear are way more complex (in a good way) and even "kiddie level" Peppa Pig shows (and is indirectly educating her) a very happy and functional "conventional family".
Who would have thought so in woke SJW ridden 21st Century?
I am happily amazed, and again have hope on the Future.
We are surrounded by lots of junk, but maybe the next Generation is starting afresh.
I also laughed at most of them, but my aging braincells never could keep up with the 150 variations and evolutions of Pokemon ... which soon grew to 250 ... yet they knew all of them by heart and made NO mistakes on that complicated matrix .... I am using matrix in the Mathematical meaning, go figure, and they clearly showed mental superiority over me, at least on some areas.
Fast forward 25 years and now I am repeating that with my grand daughter, who turned 5 just 1 week ago.
I am happy that her current favourites, Paw Patrol and Masha and Bear are way more complex (in a good way) and even "kiddie level" Peppa Pig shows (and is indirectly educating her) a very happy and functional "conventional family".
Who would have thought so in woke SJW ridden 21st Century?
I am happily amazed, and again have hope on the Future.
We are surrounded by lots of junk, but maybe the next Generation is starting afresh.
I recently looked into the choices leading to the elimination of cursive from the curriculum. If I understood it correctly it stemmed from adoption of Common Core. The justification was it opened up time for students to develop expertise in more useful skills like software usage and Internet searches. One of the leading advocates was a lawyer associated with, wait for it, Bill Gates who spent $200 million promoting it.
Maybe it's not that hard to understand.
What exhausted my patience was that it would have been much simpler for all those who wanted to teach me English (very bad, by the way) write directly in your correct English what I did not know how to transmit in post 181 .....
For me, that would have been much, much more useful than blah blah blah .....
I have in my possession a very old book of the Appleton dictionary, which originally belonged to my paternal grandmother, incorporates an ingenious method to learn the phonetics of the English language, for example by pronouncing the letter a with the e, you get a correct pronunciation of many words . (British English, not Americanized English)
GT was a breakthrough, I could not have participated here if it did not exist.
By the way, many years ago an attempt was made to implement (in all schools of the world) a universal language. It's called Esperanto. GT would not have been necessary...
Esperanto - Wikipedia
There seem to me to be many very important converging aspects of societal change alluded to, or even discussec here.
Fundamental to self development is ontological security, and one can look at the work of Solomon Asch to see some disturbing aspects of our species.
My personal worry is about how capitalism has changed from the idea that a company can provide a service for a customer, and receive a reward for so doing, this being a profit, to that of a predatory monster out only to achieve a maximum profit, with a minimum of I/P.
This latter seems exemplified in the IT avalanche, in which 'mind takeovers' are the norm.
The Victorians used to talk about 'self possession', 'knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing' and 'chasing the shadow and losing the substance'.
This requires an ability to restrain from immediate responses to external stimuli, and evaluate things, which itself requires analysis. Many do not want to do this, and seem to go around like a conditioned response 'machine', like the Stepford Wives.
Tools are there for us to pursue our life's objectives, and this is derived from having a internally directed self, but we are encouraged to 'lose the plot', and become externally directed in our own lives, and to become commodity consumers seeking the latest item whether or not it is relevant to our own inner selves, destroying any sense of ontological security.
To develop the latter a good parent monitors the child and aids its development during the child's formative years, giving it functional autonomy.
This surely is parallel to keeping 'the signal', and excluding the 'noise'.
As an indulgent aside, I was regarded as 'being heavy' by other BBC employees in about '71 because of my serious attitude to life, and I had a Parker pen with a revolving ink cartridge and with a transparent window on its side showing revolving unit conversion charts.
I stuck a label on it with, on each of the four exposed faces; Get High, On some, Truth, Man.
We now see that many of the concerns of that period are argument fodder within societies, and we can only deal with these issues by conscious analysis and reasoning. Try listening to Steve Miller's "Journey From Eden".
Fundamental to self development is ontological security, and one can look at the work of Solomon Asch to see some disturbing aspects of our species.
My personal worry is about how capitalism has changed from the idea that a company can provide a service for a customer, and receive a reward for so doing, this being a profit, to that of a predatory monster out only to achieve a maximum profit, with a minimum of I/P.
This latter seems exemplified in the IT avalanche, in which 'mind takeovers' are the norm.
The Victorians used to talk about 'self possession', 'knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing' and 'chasing the shadow and losing the substance'.
This requires an ability to restrain from immediate responses to external stimuli, and evaluate things, which itself requires analysis. Many do not want to do this, and seem to go around like a conditioned response 'machine', like the Stepford Wives.
Tools are there for us to pursue our life's objectives, and this is derived from having a internally directed self, but we are encouraged to 'lose the plot', and become externally directed in our own lives, and to become commodity consumers seeking the latest item whether or not it is relevant to our own inner selves, destroying any sense of ontological security.
To develop the latter a good parent monitors the child and aids its development during the child's formative years, giving it functional autonomy.
This surely is parallel to keeping 'the signal', and excluding the 'noise'.
As an indulgent aside, I was regarded as 'being heavy' by other BBC employees in about '71 because of my serious attitude to life, and I had a Parker pen with a revolving ink cartridge and with a transparent window on its side showing revolving unit conversion charts.
I stuck a label on it with, on each of the four exposed faces; Get High, On some, Truth, Man.
We now see that many of the concerns of that period are argument fodder within societies, and we can only deal with these issues by conscious analysis and reasoning. Try listening to Steve Miller's "Journey From Eden".
One of my favorites since it first appeared in 1972:
Listen to the blackbird sadly sing
For you, for me
Look at all the pointless suffering
Humanity
I am dreaming of a garden
And I see the midnight flight
Of a blackbird, through my vision
To the light
To the light
She is standing in the doorway
With the love light in her eye
And she beckons me to journey
Through the night
Through the night
Listen to the blackbird sadly sing
For you, for me
Look at all the pointless suffering
Humanity
To the people, who are naked
As they breathe in amber haze
Wandering endlessly narcotic
Through the maze
Through the maze
To the leaders, who are timeless
As they flaunt their warlike ways
Flying endlessly o'er the wasteland
Seeking praise
Seeking praise
Listen to the blackbird sadly sing
For you, for me
Look at all the pointless suffering
Humanity
Ignored is fine. The only reason it was raised is targets, particularly the young, without the experience to catch the semantic twist risk feeling 'stupid' for no valid reason. A corrected version of this exercise is a valuable lesson about cognitive blind spots and shortcuts. In the current form it's a different valuable lesson.
Indeed, youngers are stupider.
Not exactly because they are young, that is because of our modern world.
Google a major contributor.
Add to the stupids, olders that do not see how deep they are infested by Google, Zuck, JB,,,merchandising, politics.
Not exactly because they are young, that is because of our modern world.
Google a major contributor.
Add to the stupids, olders that do not see how deep they are infested by Google, Zuck, JB,,,merchandising, politics.
I recall the second world war pilot Antoine DE St Exuberie, who, in his book "The Little Prince" wrote; "That which is essential, is invisible to the eye".
I compare this with the work of Edward Bernays, the nephew of Freud, and how seductively cigarette smoking was portrayed, and how many women were killed by it, and see confirmation of the small part immediate appearance is as a part of the overall reality.
Politically I worry because it only requires that 51% of the population is fooled, and the rest, however analytical they are, are tsunami-ed into complicity.
The inertia of the mass overrides the freedom of the individual, that is, unless the pressures of group conformity have not already achieved capitulation/acquiescence.
I compare this with the work of Edward Bernays, the nephew of Freud, and how seductively cigarette smoking was portrayed, and how many women were killed by it, and see confirmation of the small part immediate appearance is as a part of the overall reality.
Politically I worry because it only requires that 51% of the population is fooled, and the rest, however analytical they are, are tsunami-ed into complicity.
The inertia of the mass overrides the freedom of the individual, that is, unless the pressures of group conformity have not already achieved capitulation/acquiescence.
Yes. Both versions are equally valuable.
I was quite proud last evening when I posed the question about the fish to my daughter. She immediately asked "Wait, you want me to remove the 10% I added, or remove 10% of the fish?".
I simply said, "What did I ask? ... why are you asking me to repeat it?" (So she tuned right in on the fact that the words mattered, but she didn't have the confidence to simply answer right away. I suspect, in fact, that she was questioning my ability to ask the question correctly in the first place).
She answered "10 fish, I would remove 10 fish and there would be 100 remaining." (she was correct - I had asked her to remove the 10% that she added)
We discussed the various ways of wording the question, and why each way results in a different answer. We also discussed how teachers sometimes ask questions with broken semantics and then say the student is "wrong" when, in fact, the student answered 100% correctly based on the way the question was worded.
I was the student who would argue at length about these issues in front of the class. There were very few teachers who had both the intelligence and humility to admit that I was correct. Not many teachers liked me.
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I am glad you were not one of my students.
Did you understand you made a fool of yourself ?
It was obvious to my classmates (especially those with sharp intellect) that the teachers were the fools, not I.
A true story and very recent actually.
You can buy postage stamps at many of the the local supermarket tills and I asked for a book of a dozen 1st class stamps. That met with a puzzled look... so I said twelve stamps, a dozen. Oh is that a dozen came the reply. I never knew that.
The till drawer was opened and I was told that they were very sorry but there didn't appear to be any books of twelve left, all they had were books of six. I then had to suggest that two books of six would be quite acceptable...
All true 😉
You can buy postage stamps at many of the the local supermarket tills and I asked for a book of a dozen 1st class stamps. That met with a puzzled look... so I said twelve stamps, a dozen. Oh is that a dozen came the reply. I never knew that.
The till drawer was opened and I was told that they were very sorry but there didn't appear to be any books of twelve left, all they had were books of six. I then had to suggest that two books of six would be quite acceptable...
All true 😉
I don't know whether to be glad, or sad that this occurrence is not just in the USA.
Idiocracy is well on the way.
Idiocracy (2006) - IMDb
Idiocracy is well on the way.
Idiocracy (2006) - IMDb
I cannot see any evidence for cogitech making a fool of himself, and I have experienced much erroneous behaviour from teachers, and five separate sets of incompetence intellectually by academics at universities..
You have reminded me of my situation at the age of about 10 in which my primary school was in contest with another to win the 1957 "Road Safety Quiz".
We had been instructed by our headmaster to, if we were unsure about an answer, to ask for the question to be repeated, and we had reached, as the last two primary schools fighting for winner, the final question.
I was asked what a sign with above it a red ring, was meant to convey. Ironically on the way to the venue I had glanced back as we travelled down a dual carriageway in the coach, and seen a sigh saying "Dual Carriageway" which was to inform traffic coming from the opposite direction. It had a red ring above it, 'jewel studded' with reflectors.
During our studies using the Highway Code, we had never encountered signs with a red ring above, and, perplexed, I asked for a repeat of the question. It was repeated and I stated that I though it was for information rather than instruction for conformity.
This was judged as wrong, and we lost, coming now only second in the country.
Actually the asker should have said "Disc", this being what was meant, and a sign to which conformity was required, and with which we were all well versed and familiar. Pure intellectual muppetry.
More recently, in 1978 at South Bank Polytechnic, whilst studying Engineering Product Design, I was in a lecture on Cybernetics, in which the lecturer, and avionics engineer, was trying to illustrate the principles of cybernetics.
He said, "We would hardly suspect that somebody's eyes were at fault if he was complaining of stomach ache would we? I thought a little and replied;
"Unless his eyes were so bad that he had eaten housebricks".
Angrily, he went red faced and threw a tomb at me, it hitting my desk in front of me, and he stormed out of the room.
Thereafter he cajoled me to give in work earlier than required, and did so so that he could give me low marks, the first he gave me nought for, after 'forcing' me to give a verbal answer to a question whilst he angrily asked it.
There have been five similar experiences within academia at universities, and I regard the lower echelons of academia as very poor quality, and more interested in status than truth.
You have reminded me of my situation at the age of about 10 in which my primary school was in contest with another to win the 1957 "Road Safety Quiz".
We had been instructed by our headmaster to, if we were unsure about an answer, to ask for the question to be repeated, and we had reached, as the last two primary schools fighting for winner, the final question.
I was asked what a sign with above it a red ring, was meant to convey. Ironically on the way to the venue I had glanced back as we travelled down a dual carriageway in the coach, and seen a sigh saying "Dual Carriageway" which was to inform traffic coming from the opposite direction. It had a red ring above it, 'jewel studded' with reflectors.
During our studies using the Highway Code, we had never encountered signs with a red ring above, and, perplexed, I asked for a repeat of the question. It was repeated and I stated that I though it was for information rather than instruction for conformity.
This was judged as wrong, and we lost, coming now only second in the country.
Actually the asker should have said "Disc", this being what was meant, and a sign to which conformity was required, and with which we were all well versed and familiar. Pure intellectual muppetry.
More recently, in 1978 at South Bank Polytechnic, whilst studying Engineering Product Design, I was in a lecture on Cybernetics, in which the lecturer, and avionics engineer, was trying to illustrate the principles of cybernetics.
He said, "We would hardly suspect that somebody's eyes were at fault if he was complaining of stomach ache would we? I thought a little and replied;
"Unless his eyes were so bad that he had eaten housebricks".
Angrily, he went red faced and threw a tomb at me, it hitting my desk in front of me, and he stormed out of the room.
Thereafter he cajoled me to give in work earlier than required, and did so so that he could give me low marks, the first he gave me nought for, after 'forcing' me to give a verbal answer to a question whilst he angrily asked it.
There have been five similar experiences within academia at universities, and I regard the lower echelons of academia as very poor quality, and more interested in status than truth.
Although new, com'on guys, there is too much nastiness in the world, and AFAICS this forum is potentially a real oasis from all that. We can air views without Ad Hominem comments and arrive at truth in life in the same way we strive for it in audio.
I need criticism to grow, but not insults, and because we all have internal belief systems which form a comfort zone; this is I think a natural response to stress.
But we need to be able in repose to evaluate our beliefs, and even to air them for others to question.
I need criticism to grow, but not insults, and because we all have internal belief systems which form a comfort zone; this is I think a natural response to stress.
But we need to be able in repose to evaluate our beliefs, and even to air them for others to question.