That’s right, Stargate is back on tonight. In fact, the wife and I went out last night for dinner and then groceries so we wouldn’t have to go out tonight and could stay in. I’m tempted to install LotRO on my laptop so I can ply LotRO while watching SG, but I may have to forgo LotRO entirely.
Time to put something up. I think the neutrality of the Internet issue has had enough time as the most recent post. I still haven’t reached anything that can be considered a conclusion about it, except that I do not know enough about the telecom industry and law.
What should I talk about?
Dinosaurs
Dinosaur Shocker – I came across this article today.
It was big news indeed last year when Schweitzer announced she had discovered blood vessels and structures that looked like whole cells inside that T. rex bone – the first observation of its kind. The finding amazed colleagues, who had never imagined that even a trace of still-soft dinosaur tissue could survive.
This was an article worth reading.
Too much or not enough?
From the monthly message section of Dan Simmons’s website came an interesting article about the author being confronted by a time traveler about the future of his children and grandchildren because of something he wrote. It is, it should be noted, a way for Dan to give an opinion on our current involvement in the Middle East, and the war on terror which could be, if it got out of hand, a war against Islam. I suggest everyone read it here.
Richard Dean Anderson
My friend Brent had the following up on his Xanga (shudder) page:
Men are from Stargate. Women are from McGyver.I’m fully convinced now. Who knew that Richard Dean Anderson could create such an amazing gender litmus test. Though I must admit, the latter could do amazing things with chewing gum and wire.
Not to be unfair, let me give a shout-out to all the lady Stargate fans out there. I know you are numerous, though I think the genders really start to blur with the new Battlestar Galactica. Talk about your action drama. Something for the lords and ladies to cuddle up together and appreciate. That and I think we get equal amounts of eye candy from the cast. I should keep a tally of when Seven and Apollo toss out a body shot.
It is very true, especially when you look at my marriage. While I don’t care about television shows too much, I’m more likely to watch Stargate than MacGyver, but Meghan is throughly excited when she finds out MacGyver is on.
My iPod
A couple weeks ago, my iPod stopped working, and by “stopped working”, I mean that sometimes, it would go through the menu and let me select songs to play, but it would then not play anything and then skip to the next song, at which point it would repeat the process. That is when it would turn on. I also was getting the exclamation-folder and dead iPod screens. I tried all the reset techniques that I could, but to no avail. Throughout this, the iPod’s hard drive would make a wonderful “clunking” sound which you could feel if you were holding the iPod and even hear if the iPod was 3 feet from your ears.
I eventually took it to BestBuy, as that is where I purchased it and I had a 4 year plan through BestBuy to cover it. I was directed to the Geek Squad counter, and the Geek Squad-er who assisted me turned it on and did the exact same thing I had been trying to do for the last week. He said that if it got sent into to Apple (or where ever) to be repaired, and the tech turned it on like he did, the warranty wouldn’t cover it and I’d be charged. He said I should try a handful of things, like reseting the iPod after a freeze and restoring/updating the iPod. Fine. So, as luck would have it, I was listening to it on the way home, and, lo and behold, the iPod started skipping in the middle of songs and skip entire songs. It then died. I then got home and tried reseting/updating.restoring the iPod. That was a thrill, tell you what. I tried multiple times, but while the computer could occasionally detect the iPod, iTunes and the iPod updater had issues acknowledging its existence. I read through some Macintosh forums regarding the iPod, and I actually found some where, in frustration, people would through their iPod across the room or slam it on the table and it would suddenly begin working. I picked up the iPod with my right hand, much like primitive man may have picked up a piece of flint, and held it with the screen covered by my thumb and the wheel covered by my palm. I then slammed it against my left palm, which was held perpendicular to my left arm. Four times I did this, and afterwards, my palm stung a bit, but I was able to connect my iPod to my computer and the updater saw it! I then spent the next hour trying to get quantum particles to hit the iPod at the same time I attempted a format/update/restore. At either the sixth or seventh time, I managed to it working.
Category: Things made of people
The question: The new green flavor was preceded by red and yellow. The answer: soylent green.
This came up when talking to Danielle and John within the last week. Despite never having seen the movie, I know what the comment means. Danielle, John, and Meghan did not, so I had to explain it. At this point, I realized that there are quite a few things that I know of, despite not having watched, read, or otherwise been in contact with the information first hand. Once I described soylent green, it made some references the three knew make a bit more sense, such as from Futurama (Fry and the Slurm Factory – a Willy Wonka parody), where the following takes place:
Fry: What if the secret ingredient is… people!?
Leela: Oh, there’s already a soda like that. Soylent Cola.
Fry: Really? How is it?
Leela: Eh, It varies from person to person.
All this helped to do was prove that much of the information I know is useless in some manner. That, or I’m ready to become a Pop Culture major and I don’t know it.
Wikipedia / looking things up
I occasionally find myself following tangents of articles through Wikipedia. The other day, I was looking at the featured articles for Wikipedia, and recalled speaking with an online acquaintance many years ago in yahoo chat; her saying she had spoken with her brother about stuff like the Philadelphia Experiment. So, I read through that article, from which I came across a list of conspiracy theories. They were all interesting, especially the Montauk Project and the Nazi moon base, just to name a few.
Oh Wikipedia, what won’t you have information about?
Sand game
A minor site to note is the falling sand game. It’s a nice java applet game where pixels with different properties fall from the ceiling. once you get it to the point where the fire stays burning at the top and the screen fills with water and oil and the plant grows into the water and it all burns away periodically, it is mesmerizing to say the least. Andy called me a “berk jird” for sending him the link.
Berk Jird
In Donkey Kong Country for the SNES, there were these stupid condor/buzzards that would sometimes kill Donkey or Diddy Kong. We started to refer to these enemies as “jerk birds”, and we (Andy, Pete, and I) have since referred to each other as such when we are being pains to the other(s). Recently, for whatever reason, we have changed it to “berk jird”, and for Andy and I, it has stuck. This is meaningless to probably everyone, but I mentioned it above so I figured I should explain it.
I think that’s it for now. If I think of anything else I meant to add here, I’ll update it.
Ok, nobody knows my truest name. Bet you yours is the same.
A short post about the act of learning versus the act of being taught.
I was driving on my way back from lunch, and I had caught the beginning of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine before I left the apartment. They had recently encountered an alien of an unknown race whose ship was beginning to fall apart after exiting the nearby wormhole. Using the tractor beam, they targeted and enveloped the sip and started to bring it in, as the tractor beam added stability to the failing ship’s hull. Dax suggested skipping normal first contact procedure, which Sisko agreed with, but he sent O’Brien to the docking bay to greet the alien, as O’Brien did something (I missed this part) that probably saved the alien’s live and would make everything seem less dangerous. As Deep Space Nine is next to a wormhole, it’s not too surprising that an alien of an unknown race would randomly appear. Right before the opening credits began, Sisko wondered out loud what it was that the alien seemed so afraid of.
I considered this on the way out the door. The alien was afraid, so he could be fleeing any number of things, including a repressive government, another hostile of some sort, of participated in an experiment and was surprised to have lived. He could also have banished himself because he carried a sickness and no was going to possibly harm others, or he comes from a culture where they have found themselves to be the only creatures in their galaxy, and encountering someone else was a deep shock.
However, I thought of how this could work as a type of subterfuge. An alien race comes pretending to be on the run from some thing, and in appearing weak, the alien gains the confidence of those who rescued him. The rescuers help him out, and he is able to observe and tell them information in exchange for the help. The information could be offered with no promise of help even. The alien is in reality an operative who is sowing the seeds for a later invasion. This is the way a race of human descendants in an episode of Stargate managed to control earth in an alternate future: we met them, they promised wonderful things, and before the people of Earth knew it, they were headed down a path that they could not leave. These “friends” had extended the life span of the average Earthling to 200 years, but unnoticed went the fact that the people of Earth were becoming sterile. As the health of the Earthlings was being monitored by the aliens because of their advanced medicine, no Earthling was aware. Using the magic of the Stargate, they sent a message into the past to prevent the meeting of the this alien race.
Being given something for free. The alien could lead to it, and the human descended race did it to conquer other races. I’m sure I was aware of the concept when watching the plot unfold in Stargate, or when reading similar scifi stories, such as the farcasters and cruciform in the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. Despite that, I did not give the concept much thought until now.
It’s like the old saying “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” While that’s true, you need to consider that phrase, as I think it should read differently. This puts the burden of responsibility on the teacher, whereas it should probably be split evenly between the teacher and the student. So, if you consider assisting someone with a problem, remember the above quote, but if you are the one who needs the help, perhaps “Ask for a fish, you eat for one day. Ask to be taught how to fish, you can feed yourself for a lifetime.”
Placing the responsibility of learning a skill on the teacher allows for the teacher (i.e., the educated) to repress or control those they do not feel deserve the knowledge, as well as makes the teacher/educated feel better than the students. A student would then possibly not understand some of the fundamental basics, but simply accept them as fact.
This is the difference between going into any experience and expecting to learn something and expecting to be taught something. If you are learning something, you are taking an active role in the process, possibly forcing the teacher to give you what you want, whereas if you are being taught something, you expect that everything you need to know will be given to you and that is all you need. What you won’t get from being taught something are the heuristics you might otherwise develop which you would need to solve problems when they occur later. By being taught, you aren’t building an understanding of the subject, but you are simply acquiring the results of someone else’s learning.
I think that’s why it’s called the “learning process” and not the “being taught process”. The sooner you realize that, the better.
I know when I first had to go on a malware appointment for work, I had went out and found things I would need to look for and talked to people who had done them to get an understanding of what they saw and did. However, I was actively searching for the information, and then I applied that and saw why others had done certain things. From this, I also learned tricks for dealing with malware threats that I encountered later. Now, here is the issue. For work, I’ve had to try and pass this information down to our student staff, typically through a training session. Not everyone that was there was attempting to learn what they needed to do; they were there to be taught, and I believe that the ones who were there to learn got more out of it. One staff member, after training, felt that she needed assistance with making sure she understood everything, and I went with her on some appointments to go over what needed to be done and why. I feel that following this, she preformed much better than she otherwise would have. The reason for this increase in performance: she wanted to learn.
So, what am I getting at, what’s the point of this? I thought about it, and I realized that I want to learn things, but I also want others to appreciate the act of learning and not expect the act of being taught. I think this is something that people need to consider. Look out into the future; that great unknown that awaits us. If the majority of our people are being taught and are not learning, we are heading for trouble. By “our people”, I don’t mean those of the United States, but the people of the world.