Preparing for the Future

Teachers should prepare the student for the student's future, not the teacher's past. Most teachers rarely discuss the important topic of the future of their field, and when this is pointed out they usually reply: "No one can know the future." It seems to me the difficulty of knowing the future does not absolve the teacher from seriously trying to help the student to be ready for it when it comes. It is obvious the experience of an individual is not necessarily that of a class of individuals; therefore, any one person's projection into the future is apt to be somewhat personal and will not be universally accepted. This does not justify reverting to impersonal surveys and losing the impact of the personal story.

- From The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard W. Hamming

Films About Totalitarianism: A Series

 

First Paragraph

 Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o'clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed. The morning was so damp and misty that it was only with great difficulty that the day succeeded in breaking; and it was impossible to distinguish anything more than a few yards away from the carriage windows.

- From The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"Against Human Resources"

 From The Lamp Magazine in 2024: Helen Andrews analyzes the changes in HR. 

An excerpt:

"The result has been the feminization of the American workplace, the inevitable effect of giving H.R. ladies veto power over everything that happens there. This feminization has happened even in the most unlikely workplaces. Astrophysics is a predominantly male profession. Yet Dr. Matt Taylor found himself in the middle of an international scandal in 2014 when, during a press conference to announce that his team had become the first to land a spacecraft on a comet, he showed up wearing a rockabilly-style shirt with busty pinup girls on it. The shirt was denounced as disrespectful to women. His tearful forced apology was a conspicuous triumph for H.R. ladies everywhere."

Posters with Punch

 

Films About Totalitarianism: A Series

 

In His "Leaf Period"

 An early work of The Artist Rhone.

Three Authors Who Should Be Better Known

Three examples of how fame does not always follow excellence:

Weil - Manning - Berry.

[Photo by Ronald Crow at Unsplash]

Cozy Place in the Woods

 

Stoicism Break: Be Thankful for Those Who Show Up

 

[HT: Rick Miller]