2008.01.23
Posted in Education at 23:45 by requiem
This weekend I was introduced to an essay by Edgar Allen Poe, titled The Philosophy of Composition. The essay itself is mildly interesting; the comparatively less well-written Wikipedia entry conjectures the essay may have been intended as satire and in the alternative quotes a biographer of Poe describing it as “a rather highly ingenious exercise in the art of rationalization than literary criticism”. Content aside, the writing itself is worthy of note both for stylistic as well as historical reasons.
Most of the text I encounter can be easily skimmed, assimilated, and comprehended with a pittance of effort. The sentences are short, the words mundane. In Composition Poe has constructed, like an ancient cathedral-builder, clauses that build one upon the other, mortared with m-dash and comma alike. To place it beside modern literature is to expose current authorship as little more than a rudimentary scraping of foundations, topped in the best of cases by a mean mud hut.
Permalink
2006.10.30
Posted in Education at 12:19 by requiem
I turned off a movie (”Wrong Turn”) today because the level of stupidity exceeded my tolerance with a speed that surprised even myself. The last movie I recall doing that to was “The Ring 2″. Fortunately I was spending the time with much more interesting reading material.
I will admit to watching bad movies. Just because the movie is bad, does not mean it can’t be enjoyable; MST3K proved that. However, there is a difference between watching a video of a cat discovering how to flush a toilet (and now earnestly engaged in driving up its humans’ water bill), and watching a human displaying roughly the same level of reasoning ability. Especially over two hours.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
2006.09.11
Posted in Education, Personal at 18:10 by requiem
I was walking home from Saturday’s Cal game when I had the strangest idea. I’ve always assumed that I would go back to school, but even when I was in school I had a general idea of what direction I would go. My strange idea came from the realization that I hadn’t taken much in the way of science classes. Sure, there was one or two, but for the most part my work involved writing papers or programs.
This is why I’ve been browsing the biology offerings in the UC Berkeley Extension catalog. While typing this, I’ve signed up for an introductory biology course. I’ll try it out, and if all goes well, follow up with the offerings in chemistry, o-chem, and human physiology. In case you’re wondering, no, I have absolutely no idea what I’ll do with the classes. This is for fun!
Permalink
2006.09.06
Posted in Education at 15:51 by requiem
I’ve long felt that much was wrong with Hungarian Notation, but would still find myself using something similar from time to time. Since I couldn’t decide if this was right behavior that felt wrong, or wrong behavior that felt right, it was satisfying to discover that the usual culprits were to blame. Sure enough, someone had taken a good idea and run with it in entirely the wrong direction.
The Wikipedia article mentions some of this, but this article by Joel Spolsky is worth reading: “Making Wrong Code Look Wrong” Actually, many of Joel’s articles are worth reading, but this one covers the details of why Hungarian isn’t evil when you understand what Charles Simonyi actually had in mind.
Permalink
2006.04.07
Posted in Education at 00:04 by requiem
One of the projects I would eventually like to attempt is a general computer literacy program. It is unfortunate that few exist, creating a situation similar to that of literacy in the Middle Ages. This article is an attempt to identify the failings of existing courses, and to create a curriculum that can produce literate individuals.
There are cultures that maintain high levels of technical literacy, and it is perhaps unfair to hold all users to such high standards. Your average person would not be expected to sit down and churn out text in the style of Tolkien, much less be able to advance to Saramago’s creative disregard for punctuation. One would, however, expect them to be able to read such texts with a decent degree of comprehension.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink