[ExI] End of time?

[Darren Greer]

John wrote:

"I remember doing one in junior high school where my
self-assigned topic was asteroid mining! lol"

I did two projects, one year on the solar system and the next on wave
amplification.  I wrote a BASIC program on the former that asked some pretty
standard questions about the moons of Saturn, the great red spot, etc. You
type in the right answer and you get a little celebratory tune on the
Commodore 60 and an exuberant "You are correct!. One of the teacher's
judging the fair was a man who was like Spike. He taught physics and
chemistry and because he was fully dedicated to these subjects, he expected
the presenters not to just know the work by rote but to have some kind of
intellectual relationship with it, especially if you took the time to enter
the science fair. At first he was delighted with the BASIC program, until he
figured out if you answered wrong nothing happened. It just re-asked the
question ad infinitum.

Bastard did the same thing to me with wave amplification, by asking a
fundamental question during the fair I didn't know the answer to. Most of
the students in my school were deathly afraid of him and resented the amount
of work he expected them to do to just pass his academic science courses.
His philosophy was that if you registered for an advanced course you should
have an interest in it, and if you had an interest in it you should be
challenged on a number of levels.

Today I realize he was my first example of someone not just teaching a
subject, but illustrating a passionate involvement with a particular field
of study. In one of life's little twists, I find out in my first chemistry
class last week that my professor knows and admires him greatly. And still
talks to him, which means my performance in University chemistry will
possibly be silently graded by my old chem and physics teacher if he finds
out I'm in the class.

Darren

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:51 PM, John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Spike wrote:
> I was scared senseless that the Big Rip is 5 million years from now.  But
> when they clarified it is 5 billion years hence, I calmed a bit.
> >>>
>
> Spike, I don't blame you for being scared senseless!  If calorie
> restriction diets, Kurzweillian predictions, or cryonics pan out, five
> million years will just not be enough time to have fun!
>
> Oh, I very much enjoyed your post about the elementary school science
> fair.  I remember doing one in junior high school where my
> self-assigned topic was asteroid mining! lol  I realize, you are now
> wondering, did John build a space craft, make it out to the asteroid
> belt, and then bring a big rock back?  Well, actually, my "experiment"
> was more like me "daydreaming with paper, cardboard and models" about
> the asteroid mining of some future time (who would have ever guessed
> that years later I would love posting on the Extropy list and become
> very infatuated with transhumanism).
>
> I received a D minus for my effort, which I deserved because it was
> not a *science experiment!*  I wish that teacher had been at your
> school doling out grades, because she would not have shirked her duty.
>  Oh, and she could have passed for being Amara's sister! lol
>
> John  : )
>
>
> On 9/29/10, scerir <scerir at libero.it> wrote:
> > Spike writes:
> > I know that I can't tell a real inflation model paper from a fake one.
> > So I am one of the sixth graders as well, just a more humble one.
> >
> > --------------------------------
> >
> > There is a joke, rather a webpage for physicists who really think
> > that >> 50% of the published papers are crazy, or not even wrong,
> > or written by possible clones of Alan Sokal
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
> > http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/fool-88760-years-.html
> > http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-sokal-hoax.html
> >
> > for the records Alan Sokal is also a real physicist
> > http://arxiv.org/find/cond-mat/1/au:+Sokal_A/0/1/0/all/0/1
> >
> > So, the "snarXiv" is essentially a random generator of crazy
> > 'theoretical' papers, so crazy and so well written that it is not so
> > easy to guess whether they are ......
> > http://snarxiv.org/
> > the generator engine http://davidsd.org/2010/03/the-snarxiv/
> > _______________________________________________
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> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> >
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