Displacement: unique interests
Jul. 17th, 2003 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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rysmiel posted a meme about explaining one's unique entries in the interests section. So here's my version, cos I'm displacing.chevruta: Traditional Jewish approach to text study, where you work with a partner and basically argue until you get some personal meaning out of whatever you're reading. It's a very effective way to understand a subject (I've found that a chevruta-type approach works for a wide range of things other than Jewish texts), and at best it can be incredibly intimate and exhilarating. My first boyfriend had been my chevra for a while before we got together, and as far as I was concerned sex had nothing on chevruta in the intimacy stakes.
I don't know anything else that comes close to good chevruta in terms of sheer fun (though obviously that's a matter of personal taste), and mediocre chevruta is also analogous to sex in that it's better than none. I had some really good chevruta going in Oxford, with various combinations of Old A, J and new A and occasional others. (Hey, let's drop the metaphor now before this gets dodgy, hmm?) And I miss it tremendously. At the moment I'm getting by on the occasional session with RB or preparing a supposed shiur for Prof S which isn't quite the same, but at least it's something.
Everett Fox: The coolest Biblical translator I've ever come across. Sadly he's only up to Samuel so far, but his translation is absolutely amazing. It's incredibly close to the Hebrew, to the extent that he makes subtle textual allusions and assonnances transparent, but his English is very readable. It's not exactly standard English, but it's poetic and inspiring rather than clumsy. His amazing translation is published by Schocken Books, and it's totally changed my life. (He also acted as the religious adviser for Prince of Egypt, which is how the obscure Jewish mythological references got in there...)
GB Edwards: The author of one of my favourite books of all time, unfortunately terribly obscure. Edwards was a sort of recluse from Guernsey, but was also an autodidact and spent some time as a professor of English in an English university. He was absolutely miserable and regretted ever leaving Guernsey, so he wrote a sort of alternate history autobiography about his alter ego who didn't. The first volume of this is The Book of Ebenezer le Page; it took him about 40 years to write and he died with the remaining two volumes only in note form. It's an amazing piece of social history, describing Guernsey over the whole span of the 20th century, and it has a cast of characters like nothing else I've ever read. I shall post a proper review of it at some point.
Jewish-Christian dialogue: I've been deeply involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue since I was a young teenager; now I'm branching out into more general interfaith work, but Jewish-Christian will always be my first love. At least partly because I know Judaism and Christianity far better than any other religions, so it's easier to get into a profound level.
Through dialogue, I've met some of my dearest friends, and learnt an amazing amount about myself and maybe even the nature of truth. I also think it's a worthwhile enterprise in terms of promoting goodwill and multiculturalism and all those other sorts of things. It's perfectly possible to be cynical about it, and indeed, sometimes it's little more than mutual congratulation by liberals being fluffy at eachother. But I honestly believe that in some circumstances it can be a genuine force for social change.
Microphotography: Taking (artistic) photos of microscopic things, particularly cells, in my case.
When I first checked with the intention of writing this post, I had BBC micros and Weizmann Institute as unique interests, but it turns out that other users were interested in BBC computers and Weizmann, so I've altered mine to match. And there is one other lj user who is interested in p53 (my professional speciality, which deserves a post in its own right, but this isn't going to be it).
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-18 06:57 am (UTC)It was several years later when I actually owned my first computer (I think I was around 15) - a Dragon 32, which was about to be thrown away. Again I spent most of my time on it writing programs, initially in the very buggy BASIC interpreter, and later 6809 assembler.
I have always considered it sad that kids at school nowadays are not exposed to programming at all, and despite "IT initiatives", computers are just running pre-packed software where children click randomly while being presented dubious claims of learning outcomes. I feel that IT in schools has moved backwards and that programming can be taught to everyone. Also I think that it is a useful and rewarding skill to learn, even if the child is not going to continue in computing.
Teaching programming
Date: 2003-07-22 10:10 pm (UTC)That's an interesting thought (and ties in to things I've heard about recent versions of Windows deliberately making it different for the user at home to get into the operating system and do stuff themself, where the earlier versions and DOS made it easy), but can you back it up? I.e., was programming a part of the mainstream syllabus in this country at some point in the past? You say yourself you did not pick up your programming skills from school.
In my case, I did start by being taught Spectrum BASIC at the age of 9 in my school's Computer Club in 1982, but that was extra-curricular, and I was pretty much left to fend for myself in the Senior School's Computer Club. The only computing I ever got in the formal curriculum was the AS-Level I took at the age of 17, and that was very much optional. Though I do get the impression that my school was a bit behind the times as regards the microcomputer revolution.
(Damn, I will not get sucked into this blog thing, )
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-23 11:15 am (UTC)However by the time I got to school this had all but stopped and children used pre-written programs, and as you say, now with Windows and MacOS much of the internals of the computer is hidden from the user (though MacOS X improves things slightly). This is fine if the user wants to achieve some task not associated to the computer, but is a bad thing if the user wants to learn what is really happening.
Re: Teaching programming
Date: 2003-07-23 12:07 pm (UTC)That suggests it's not only a girls' school problem.
I was taught a little Logo (yay!) at primary school, and a very little BASIC (which happened to be too elementary for me at the time, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing in principle). Nothing after the age of 7, though.
Re: Teaching programming
Date: 2003-07-23 06:05 pm (UTC)Oh yes, Logo, I'd forgotten about that. Someone in my school's computer club reimplemented that in BBC BASIC. He called it, appropriately enough, Slogo.
As for being left to fend for myself in the Senior School, that was because of the teacher in charge of Computer Club's leave-them-to-it attitude. This was the same teacher who refused to teach us what a nucleophile was and expected we'd pick up the concept from examples.
Re: Teaching programming
Date: 2003-07-23 12:15 pm (UTC)Oh, but you so will! Granted you have better self-discipline than I do, but even so, you're well on the trajectory that leads to capitulation.
It goes like this:
- you come across LiveJournal, think, hmm, cute, but no way do I have time for that kind of thing
- you discover you have a close friend with a journal (two, in your case)
- you want to read and comment on their journal
- you discover by browsing outwards or reading others' comments that there are a bunch of your other acquaintances on LJ
- you get into interesting discussions with random strangers
Sound familiar? Well, it's only a small step to:Re: Teaching programming
Date: 2003-07-23 06:18 pm (UTC)Oh, but I so won't. You know I'm in a slack period now immediately after posting to my writers group. In another day or few I'll commit myself to my next project, and definitely won't have time for this any more.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-23 12:04 pm (UTC)Hear hear!
I think it is a relatively useful life skill to get kids comfortable with your standard GUI, but basically the whole point of such things is that they're pretty intuitive. I can think of much better uses for hours and hours of teaching time (not to mention the money spent on computers which have to be the latest model because of Microsoft sales policies...)
But I agree that random clicking and pretty picture software is worse than pointless. And even good Windows-centric teaching should certainly not be to the exclusion of programming.