In the process of sorting through archives and old stuff, I found a collection of sticky notes that colleagues and I used five years ago to evaluate students at EPITA. These were oral examinations with no computer, only pen and paper or whiteboard. As I am recycling the paper, here …

1. surprise, curiousity: “oh, you can speak Dutch? How nice!” Hidden meaning: it’s surprising; unusual for foreigners to be interested in our language; but I really can’t understand a word of what you’re saying.
2. condescension: replying in English. Hidden meaning: ok, you’ve shown you can make yourself …

… as an annotation in issue #1845 of Irregular WebComic!.

As a fan of Hofstadter I recognize that this explanation work is truly a mastery of pedagogy. It introduces Gödel’s theorem and its impact smoothly and clearly, making it understandable to anyone with a basic understanding of science.

Instead of …

Quote:

Only inertia and prejudice, not economics nor the lack of good educational ideas, stand in the way of providing every child in the world with the kind of experience of which we have tried to give you some glimpse.

Seymour Papert (also on wikipedia) & Cynthia Solomon, Twenty things to …

Today the read box from irrepressible.info was quoting a paragraph from the Iranian Gay & Lesbian Healthcare Providers Association; this prompted me to discover more about this group, and I read some of their articles.

In one of them the following sentence rung a bell:

My family, like most Iranian …

Theory: command officers on a war ship often operate from their desk with no visibility on the outside of the ship.

I believe this theory is true. Otherwise I could not explain this:

Theory: people without education are perfect material for dictatorship.

Proof:

It is taking more than fifteen hours to my ears to recover from the trauma they experienced yesterday evening. That is already eight hours more than usual, although I stayed there for only three hours. I spent the whole morning brooding over whether I should attend Trance Energy next month …