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A journal of sorts to record Jonathan Sturm's (and others') thoughts and observations on things worth thinking about. Feedback welcome, but be aware that unless you prominently say you want your communication kept private, I may publish it. |
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| This week in: | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 |
Sorry about the delay on posting, but the first week of university is best described as mayhem. As happened last year, The Git enrolled for more classes than he has time for, so he has decided to defer one. The three courses he has decided to complete this semester are History and Heritage, Introduction to Logic, and Chance, Coincidence and Chaos.
History and Heritage "Explores ways of knowing and relating to the past, what historians can learn from related disciplines, how historians communicate historical knowledge beyond academe to the wider community, and the way the wider community identifies with history. The unit examines a range of popular contemporary practices such as oral history, social history, and local history; photographs as record and reminder; the history of buildings and landscapes; archives and the preservation of documents; heritage places, including convict sites; collecting historical artefacts; museums and their exhibitions; historical re-enactments and commemorations; media histories; and the writing of commissioned histories."
History and Heritage holds the promise of The Git being able to create a heritage "trail" for the township of Franklin. Basically, this will consist of a map of various sites of interest and an account of some aspect(s) of its history be available to be read, or listened to. Why is it a trail? Presumably because we are now all Americanised, or should that be Americanized? What Americans call a trail is here called a track. Presumably it's part of the new "Free" Trade Agreement between the US and Australia. Maps will in future have The Birdsville Trail instead of The Birdsville Track, butchers will sell ground beef instead of mincemeat, novels will be edited to transform our wonderful sheilas into chicks and our politicians will run for election instead of standing. Come to think of it, the latter sounds promising. The likes of Kim Beastly certainly need the exercise.
Chance, Coincidence and Chaos "Is a study of the "chance" world view and its implications for the way we think of ourselves and the universe in which we live. The unit examines the ideas of chance, coincidence and chaos; and the related ideas of reason, probability and purpose. Students study the relevance to these of some startling results of modern science, including Bell's Theorem, The Anthropic Principle and Chaos Theory; and the implications for the following: our place in the universe, human free will, everyday decision-making and metaphysical reasoning."
Introduction to Logic, as its title suggests, "Introduces students to symbolic logic, including proof theory, semantics and elementary metatheory of the propositional calculus and the first order predicate calculus, as well as the application of elementary logical techniques to the formalisation of natural language reasoning."
All in all, it looks to be a promising year for learning new stuff.
Much of the week was spent catching up with friends made last year, exchanging news, and making observations on the relative pulchritude of the passing parade. Last semester's Geology exam contained several questions the content of which The Git assumed had been covered only in lectures. Galen, the Geology Genius, informed me that the questions in question were not covered, either in lectures, or the textbook. One can only speculate on the reason for this. Galen won a well-deserved prize for his performance in the course and one of our lecturers, Andrew Tunks, won an equally well-deserved prize for his lecturing. Well done Galen and Tunksy!
The university intranet has been "improved". One of The Git's courses is on the old intranet and one on the new version. He just tried to download the PDFs for the course on the new intranet, but all that displays is the missing graphic icon. Attempting to Download Target through the right-click context menu generates an error message saying that this is not supported. <sigh>
In other news, SWMBO has taken Ricky the Wonderdog for a walk every morning for years. Earlier this week, he received a shock through his tail from the electric fence the neighbours had temporarily placed across the road to confine their cattle. Now when SWMBO says: "Ricky! Walkies!", instead of bouncing as he usually does, he cowers in abject terror, trembling so much that his teeth are chattering. It's not as though he has never received a shock from an electric fence before. SWMBO speculates that he thinks that it was some punishment meted out by her, though it's hard to imagine why.
Thought for the day:
And the nonconformists long ago exhausted the supply of stuff with which not to conform. They’ve been reduced to wearing tongue studs.
P. J. O’Rourke
Current Listening:
801 -- Live
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© Jonathan Sturm 2003
