A returning student
We face the question of the future, and try to avoid it.
Articles Tagged with employment
Students return (II)
Unintended consequences
We find, again, that the message we thought we sent is not always what was received.
Students return
Consider construction
How it’s done
Telescopes and databases
Astronomy changes. So do the kind of people who become astronomers.
Surveys and telephones
Several things at once
Multiplexed astronomy
An example of answering several questions at once, by doing several kinds of observation at once.
Business books
A different form of literature
Our consultants encounter a type of writing that seems terribly strange, until they realize what it’s for.
Brass, glass and verniers
Scientists of yesterday were different
Our astronomer and our navigator are away from headquarters at the moment, showing a Professor of Physics how to use his sextant. This style of instrument was the mainstay of nineteenth-century astronomy: made of brass and glass, with precise scales engraved on them for careful measurements. The people who used them had to work in a different way from current astronomers and must have had a different approach to life.
Don’t know much geometry
Why are we forced to learn what we’ll only forget?
While attending to his regular workout in the Five Colors S&T exercise room, our astronomer was reminded of his High School geometry class. (We’ll explain the connection later; it has nothing to do with the angles at which his various muscles were applying force.) Everyone was required to take geometry (and pass it), and most were required to do the same with algebra. Yet it’s a truism that very few people actually use those subjects later on, and most forget them immediately. Why, then, do we bother with teaching and learning them? There are several possible answers, to which we’ll add one of our own.