The Academics Thread

[Cancer]

That may be intentional, and set up that way for pedagogical reasons.  "Pegagogical reasons" seems to be the rationale for lots of inexplicable things.

[Cancer]

Brainless beings capable of intelligent behavior

 

"All right, class, what's your excuse?"

[Lucius]

On ‎5‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 11:54 PM, Cancer said:

1.  Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem indicates that there must exist some formally undecidable propositions, that is, there exist true statements that cannot be proven true, and false statements that cannot be proven false.  Malaclypse the Younger in Principia Discordia wrote that all things are true, even false things, but he was not to blame for this.  Does the latter necessarily follow from the former?

1. Yes, provably
2. No, provably
3. Yes, but not provably
4. No, but not provably
5. The proposition is tautological.
6. Can I go get a beer now?

 

Both 1 and 2 are correct.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says that answer is contingent on understanding the question, which is not a sure thing...

[Badger]

I was going by the idea after reading the question I needed a beer (well, probably a shot of whiskey)

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

I was going by the idea after reading the question I needed a beer (well, probably a shot of whiskey)

 

D. All of the above.

[Pariah]

My phone just autocorrected 'Excellent' to 'Excrement'.

 

It must know I'm grading Final Exams.

[Ternaugh]

10 hours ago, Pariah said:

My phone just autocorrected 'Excellent' to 'Excrement'.

 

It must know I'm grading Final Exams.

 

My work phone's an iPhone, and it has the habit of converting words just as I send.

 

My personal phone is a Galaxy S7, and it has the habit of knowing me really well on the predictive text. At one point, I started the phrase, "I need to see if" and it helpfully suggested completing the sentence as "poodles can fly."

[Pariah]

Depends on how hard you kick 'em.

[Cancer]

I turn off autocorrect as soon as I can find where to do so.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Autocorrect certainly fouls things up. I tried to text my mother with "I'm going to be late" but it autocorrected to "You bitch, you ruined my life!"

 

[Cancer]

Wow, language translation and clarification technology is much further along than I had guessed.

[Cancer]

My senior colleague (she'll start the three-year phased retirement process next year) took her students in the Nuclear & Particle Physics course and had them write things (and explain what they were writing) with sidewalk chalk out on the Quad (cement pavement).  The Meson nonet, proton structure, Feyman diagrams for weak and electromagnetic interactions, and so on.  Unfortunately it happened the weekend after (not before) the annual rock concert on the Quad.

 

Probably just about all gone by now, since it started drizzling since I got in an hour and a half ago.  Pity.

[Badger]

16 hours ago, Logan.1179 said:

Autocorrect certainly fouls things up. I tried to text my mother with "I'm going to be late" but it autocorrected to "You bitch, you ruined my life!"

 

 

Some may say  Autocorrect Freudian slipped you.  

[Badger]

14 hours ago, Cancer said:

My senior colleague (she'll start the three-year phased retirement process next year) took her students in the Nuclear & Particle Physics course and had them write things (and explain what they were writing) with sidewalk chalk out on the Quad (cement pavement).  The Meson nonet, proton structure, Feyman diagrams for weak and electromagnetic interactions, and so on.  Unfortunately it happened the weekend after (not before) the annual rock concert on the Quad.

 

Probably just about all gone by now, since it started drizzling since I got in an hour and a half ago.  Pity.

 

Probably for the best, some things are best for mortal man not to know.

[Cancer]

Hey, you gotta do the Cthulhu fthagn thing in public every once in a while to keep the populace properly cowed.

[Badger]

Admitting that the topic of your profession is Cthulhian in nature?

[Cancer]

Large segments of the population probably cannot distinguish particle physics from what's in the Necronomicron, even after both were explained to them.

[Badger]

And I am probably one of them.

 

 

 

What?

[Old Man]

Particle was relatively easy.  Quantum was hard, especially 3D quantum.  Thermo was truly chthonic.  Equations made of differential equations?  I can't even.

[Badger]

No idea what the conversation is about, again.   I stopped at Chemistry.

 

 

[Old Man]

Chemistry was mainly hard because the labs were poorly written and the equipment was trashed.

[Cancer]

Never took chemistry, after my junior year of high school.  The Chem Dept at UW was infamous for yanking people around, and the way to get an A was to be the same ethnicity as the TA, invariably from somewhere on the East Pacific rim.  Since I was gong to go into astrophysics, chemistry as taught was irrelevant ... everywhere Out There is either at densities less than 1000 atoms per cc, or at temperatures upwards of 3000 K.  I was the envy of my peers as an undergrad.

[Pariah]

It's unfortunate that the chemistry department at your school was so poorly managed. I had exactly the opposite experience. The chemistry department at the U of U is recognized as one of the best in the western U.S., and they're serious about all of their students learning as much chemistry as they can. I still have contact with several of the professors (due partly to the fact that I participate in some of the University's high school outreach programs).

[Pariah]

And with the completion of Commencement ceremonies yesterday, that's another year in the books. I'll be honest, I'm not sad to see this particular year in the rear view. It was a hard year, for a lot of reasons. There are some students I'll miss, of course. A lot of others, not so much. No longer my problem, I suppose.

 

Next year is going to be very interesting. Two completely new preps, one prep that I haven't taught in a year, and a fourth prep that I've taught for several years, but will be teaching in an almost completely different way. I have a lot of work ahead of me this sumner.

 

Part of which, unfortunately, involves switching classrooms. I suppose I could stay in the classroom I've been in for the last 5 years, but it doesn't make sense for me not to be in the classroom where all the physics stuff is if I'm going to be teaching primarily physics. And it certainly doesn't make sense for our new chemistry teacher, fresh out of college, not to be in the room where all the chemistry stuff is.

 

So, somewhere in the next few days, I need to finish the process of moving from my current classroom to the one recently vacated by my colleague's retirement.

 

Oh, and I'm taking Astronomy and Geology classes this summer. Seven credit hours and over eighty hours of class time in four weeks. Should be fun, though.

 

Wish me luck!

[Cancer]

I took one geology class, sort of; it was Planetary Surfaces, and it was cross-listed (so it both Astronomy 556 and Geology 556).  I observed a simple way to tell geology students from astronomy students: Write an equation on the board.  The astronomers lean forward with interest.  The geologists reach down to pull their silver crosses out of their backpacks.