No one uses them all
Digital cameras, like calculators, have an immense menu of features. It’s certainly rare, and possibly unknown, for anyone to use them all. Why have them, then?
A surfeit of features
Why a forecast discussion?
More than numbers
Weather forecasts are much more reliable than they used to be, mostly thanks to more powerful computers. Input from people is still important, though.
The lovers’ lodestone
A prehistory of wireless telegraphy
It was much more difficult to stay in touch 300 years ago. A literary magazine from that era has a suggestion for a surprisingly modern way to do it.
Reading the manuscript
Why handwriting?
Communication in writing nowadays is almost exclusively done in type. Why, then, should anyone care about being able to write legibly?
Science fiction and verb conjugations
Past, present and future are not enough
Science fiction writers imagine whole new universes and explore their possibilities, as we’ve mentioned before. Perhaps they need to think about the changes in language that go along with them.
The John Henry moment
Old technology triumphant
A mathematics teacher is not much like a nineteenth-century railroad worker–but there are parallels. Our consultant who tutors High School math and science continues to learn from it; sometimes, his students do also.
Smartphones by campfire light
An incongruity of technologies
One of our consultants has an interesting device for camping or possibly a disaster situation. On closer examination it appeared to us that it hadn’t been quite thought through. Then we examined it more closely still.
Science and social science
Differences among the PhDs
Methods and results differ among the various sciences. This comes from differences in their subject matter and is not always understood, even by scientists.
Classes of classes
What is the aim of school?
A recent comment on one of our posts raises the question of what teachers are trying to achieve in school. The answer varies.
Tools shape the artist
A choice of camera is unexpectedly important
Our photographic consultant finds that the camera he uses can have an unsubtle effect on the pictures he takes.