.. the first point comes from a university professor, who has probably developed an expertise in little-known fields (or at least poorly popularised) over years of study in academia. for him, relevant professional information typically arrives through academic channels and processing the information is a careful, length process of some depth. (think of the peer review process: ouch!)there are also tacit yet important questions here:
the second point comes from a editor/journalist who has developed a different expertise in a widely-recognised occupation, probably by way of on the job training and less formal study [1]. relevant professional information probably comes through many diverse channels and rapidly so; the process of response probably requires similar speed (in order to remain relevant).
for example, it seems that there is a lack of available workers in the skilled trades, and the current infrastructure of civilization relies crucially on the fruits of their labor.
on the other hand, what if 3-D printing becomes robust enough, and available through a sufficiently diverse selection of materials, so that plumbing, welding, and soldering no longer require the work of human hands?
this sounds like science fiction, of course. i'll not discuss the likelihoods of certain events occurring .. mostly because i cannot even guess, much less quantify the time-dependent sample space of modern civilisation.
on the other hand, i would like to point out that they are real possibilities: take, for example, the history of the Luddites or how human computers were replaced by digital ones. now that i think about it, i wonder how many more travel agents there are nowadays, with the popularity of flight search engines and all ..? [2]
"Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who took his own life after being convicted of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation, is to be given a posthumous pardon.then again, i don't know how sure of a bet this is. anyone know what a third reading is?
The government signalled on Friday that it is prepared to support a backbench bill that would pardon Turing, who died from cyanide poisoning at the age of 41 in 1954 after he was subjected to "chemical castration".
~ from "Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing to be given posthumous pardon" @guardian
"Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, a government whip, told peers that the government would table the third reading of the Alan Turing (statutory pardon) bill at the end of October if no amendments are made. "If nobody tables an amendment to this bill, its supporters can be assured that it will have speedy passage to the House of Commons," Ahmad said."
.. that i should take a sequence, perhaps a bounded one,
and choose a convergent subsequence ..? (-;
"A unique aspect of the Cooper Union case is that several of the students fighting for the cause have already graduated, and remaining undergraduates still won’t have to pay tuition while they’re students. The reason the students have been sleeping in the president’s office for the past two months is because they fear what will happen to the school after they leave, how a decision to charge tuition might affect the character of the incoming classes and the direction of their alma mater."now, the faculty: when i was in the middle of my ph.d. i recalled a fellow student say the worse the teacher, the more students have to work and the more they have to learn. this was in response to seeing how neurotically i was writing my lectures, so that my students could learn in the most effective way possible.
~from "Can Cooper Union Find A Way To Continue Free Tuition And Its Social Mission?" @fastco
"I had a teacher in college whose lectures were so incredibly clear that it made me think physics was the easiest thing in the world. Until I went home and tried to do the problem set. He was truly amazing, but sometimes I think he was TOO good. I didn't struggle to understand his lectures--but maybe I should have."there's more:
~ from "Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings?" @psytoday
"When you measure performance in the courses the professors taught (i.e., how intro students did in intro), the less experienced and less qualified professors produced the best performance. They also got the highest student evaluation scores. But more experienced and qualified professors' students did best in follow-on courses (i.e., their intro students did best in advanced classes).on a related note: over the course of my career thus far, i've learned from various occasions to be wary of those instructors whose evaluation scores are too high, almost perfect.
..
To summarize the findings: because they didn't teach to the test, the professors who instilled the deepest learning in their students came out looking the worst in terms of student evaluations and initial exam performance."
