Quote of the Week...from Kurt Cobain

Won't you believe it, it's just my luck (repeat)

No recess (repeat)

You"re in high school again (repeat)           ---Kurt Cobain, from the Nirvana song School

So go the brief, but memory-provoking lyrics, to Kurt Cobain's song School off Nirvana's Bleach album.  Although the late king of grunge rock reportedly had intended to vent his animosity toward high school in general with this piece, which happens to be one of my favorite Nirvana songs, I had a slightly different reaction to it...especially that part about "no recess".  When I was in elementary school, we actually did have recess, which was the break from our academic classes in which we would go outside and play games and sports, more or less informally.  But when I began going to junior high school (for my era in the seventh grade) and on throughout my "senior" years there, recess abruptly transformed itself into something they called "physical education", or phys-ed.  The instructors tended to run their classes...at least for the boys...like military basic training, and the kids would have to smartly shout out during roll call the exact words "Here, Sir, dressed out!"...otherwise they'd better have a note ready to explain why not. Although I was generally athletically inclined and typically competitive, in no way did I see any of it as recess, so Kurt's song rang true in a special way to me.  I remember that in the first grade...probably since we got out of school earlier in the day than the others...we didn't have recess.  But then it occurred to me that from my seventh through twelfth years we didn't either...  

Podcaster Spells Out Ten Mistakes Language Learners Make

Although I've only recently been listening to Steve Kaufmann's podcast, I have access to many he's done in the months before I heard of him.  Kaufmann is a polyglot...he speaks some 20 languages at last count...who founded a subscription-driven website, LingQ, that uses his techniques of language learning and offers it to others: I recently signed up and like it.  One of his earlier podcasts, from a couple of months ago, dealt with mistakes that language learners make.  Listed, they are:

(1) Expecting you can learn fast (don't have unrealistic expectations).

(2) Expecting to never forget words or grammar patterns you have learned (but learning is itself a process of forgetting and relearning).

(3) Trying to master the grammar rules in detail up front (nothing wrong in looking them up from time to time, though).

(4) Expecting the language to become clear too soon (patience, patience).

(5) Sticking with learning content that is too easy (good for review but need to challenge with more difficult material).

(6) Thinking you can get by with just a few words (once a native speaker starts to talk back to you then you'll realize you need to learn a lot more).

(7) Thinking you should speak well even if you don't speak often (it takes a lot of practice).

(8) Being afraid of making mistakes when you speak (Kaufmann just came back from Poland where he gave two interviews IN POLISH and laughed about all the mistakes he made).

(9) Speaking with only non-native speakers (non-native speakers tend to limit the range of their vocabulary).

(10) Dealing with the challenge from native speakers when they want to practice their English on you (either find some willing to speak in your target language or make an arrangement to alternate languages with those wanting to speak English).

Steve Kaufmann impressed me by his emphasis on the gradual assimilation of large amounts of words by reading and listening.  From time to time, I'll let you know how I'm doing on the LingQ site...

Steve Kaufmann Weighs In on Passive vs. Active Vocabulary in Languages

Steve Kaufmann, whose LingQ website I use as a subscribing member, speaks some twenty languages to varying degrees and has his own ideas about how to learn languages.  He strongly emphasizes the building of a large passive (listening and reading) vocabulary as the foundation upon which a smaller subset of active vocabulary (speaking and writing) can grow.  His philosophy is that communication is the main function of language and that making mistakes (and learning from them) is a necessary element of the learning process.  I understand his take, for during my own limited excursions in trying to converse with native speakers in their own languages, I would usually start it out by saying something simple I just learned.  Then, the other speaker would come back at me with words I've never learned...of course, since I was going at it without first developing a substantive passive vocabulary to draw upon.  Some of these language learning businesses get on TV and show somebody going to a foreign country ordering food or giving the taxi driver their destination with flawless pronunciation...as if that somehow proves they can now fluently speak their target language.  I've been using Steve's LingQ and am very satisfied with it and hopeful that my progress will lead, in a reasonable period of time, to passive near-fluency in the languages I'm studying.  He also has his own self-titled YouTube channel...check it out and see if he doesn't make a lot of sense...

Subscribed to Steve Kaufmann's LingQ Language Learning Site

Steve Kaufmann, as I have written in a recent article, is a polyglot (speaker of several languages) whose views about language learning pretty much line up with those I've embraced over the years.  He strongly stresses passive vocabulary amassment through reading and listening over the traditionally taught emphasis on perfect pronunciation and grammar, areas that are also worth studying but are secondary to the main goal: comprehension.  He has a company, LingQ (pronounced "link") whose website offers detailed instruction and practice in many languages.  After discovering that its free version gave few benefits, yesterday I finally decided to sign up for the premium, which provides all of Steve's touted advantages to language learning that appeals to me...it's only about nine bucks a month.  Last night I started out with basic lessons in six different languages...but the user can skip around to any level so desired.  There's also a feature in which I can import material from outside the site...I'll get around to figuring that out, I'm sure.  In any event, I needed something like this that offered quick, effective translation to what I'm reading and/hearing so that I can learn new words faster without slowing down my studying.  From time to time, I plan to write about how I'm doing here...should be an adventure of sorts...

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

I find television very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.   

     ---Groucho Marx

Facebook is a peculiar social media website, but like others it employs AI algorithms to guess and then present unsolicited material that supposedly resonates with my interests. One result is that I'm getting a lot of stuff about the Beatles...no problem with that.  I also like another site, called Goodwill Librarian, that promotes books and reading and has all sorts of funny and pithy posts.  The other day they showed the above quote by comedy legend Groucho Marx, who also said, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" and "Why, a four-year child could understand this report.  Run out and find me a four-year-old child.  I can't make head nor tail of it." In his day, though, television gave its viewers few options beyond the three major networks, public television and an occasional independent channel.  Now, though, although you can still get brain-wasted sitting in a stupor watching inane programming, television offers a variety of opportunities for educational experiences...especially if you use Roku or something similar to access YouTube.  That channel can teach you just about anything on Earth...just do a search on your topic and see what happens.  Earlier this year...although I've gotten away from it more recently...I was learning college mathematics in different on-line lectures on YouTube.  Nowadays I've been stuck on the Kendra listening practice in the five languages I'm studying...it's a great way to both get used to the spoken language and fill in my vocabulary with new words.  There's also a lot of "how-to" maintenance and repair stuff there...go ahead, give it a try.  You can even run a virtual marathon if you like...or follow a number of great classical music pieces with the written music on screen tracing the audio.  And on and on...yep, I wonder what kind of savvy, hilarious quip my old friend Groucho would have to say about all that... 

Three Good Teachers on Teacher Appreciation Day

Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day...I discovered that this morning while watching The Weather Channel...my main source of news this days.  Although I've been critical in general of the educational system I lived through during my childhood and early adult years, there were three teachers who stood out at different stages.  When I first went to school in September, 1962 at Boulevard Heights Elementary School in West Hollywood, Florida, I had skipped the kindergarten year that seems to be such a heavily-stressed requirement for kids nowadays. No problem, for Mrs. Parsons, my first-grade teacher, made sure that we kids covered the basics of reading, writing, counting and elementary arithmetic.  There's no doubt in my mind that I was fortunate to be blessed with this great teacher who got everyone on the right track in their educational "careers".  Years later, in my senior year of high school at Nova in 1973-74, I had what in retrospect was my only truly effective math teacher since the early elementary school years, Mr. Buttles, who introduced us to calculus.  For some reason, schools...at least the ones I went to...had a major problem with teaching mathematics on any level.  In some classes they just sat you down and you went through the textbooks on your own with teachers present only if you needed special help with a problem or concepts while others had the teacher standing up front...not actually teaching anything...letting the students pretty much run the class: these were the so-called "advance level" math classes I regret ever having taken.  But Mr. Buttles stuck to the good old traditional way of teaching, going chapter by chapter and writing on the chalkboard each new concept and patiently explaining them to us...sometimes good teaching is being simple and plain with the presentation.  Finally, in my first year at Broward Community College the very next year, Mr. Hill was the teacher lecturing in general chemistry.  Much of the material we covered there I had already studied in high school, but he presented things in such an organized, deliberate manner that I was able to pick up things that I missed in the previous years.  He was very respectful of the students, pausing several times each lecture to allow for students' questions, which he strongly encouraged.  To this day I hold Mr. Hill as the supreme model of how a teacher should conduct a class and relate to the students...

Parsons, Buttles, and Hill...I appreciate you and remember you for standing out high above the often-mediocre teachers I had to suffer throughout my school years.  I know, that doesn't sound very much like a ringing endorsement of teachers in general, but I do know a good teacher when I see one.  By the way, I never saw any teacher as a replacement for my own parents...even in the first grade...and in turn they never acted like they were personally involved in my welfare (nor did I ever expect them to).  Yet the best of the best conducted themselves in a professional manner and actually taught...

Quote of the Week...from Abraham Maslow

Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.      ---Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow...today is his birthday (he'd be 124 if still alive) was a twentieth-century American psychologist who created the "Pyramid of Needs", the base of which represents people's physical needs and the very top comprising self-actualization.  He also emphasized that self-actualizing people tend to have more of the "peak experiences" in life that many long for, as well as develop an outlook leading to the longer-lasting "plateau experiences" of inner well-being.  I found his above quote about learning "in and of itself" to be an affirmation of how I also have regarded it over the years...and frees education from the tyranny of ego-based, hierarchical judgment that formalized school training tends to foist upon hapless students compelled to endure it, first through compulsory education in the K-12 years and then on to college for career preparation.  I have also tended to be something of a renegade with education, and this did not carry over well into the much more rigid structure imposed by teachers and curricula in school settings...but after leaving school I've experienced great joy at learning different things, without someone standing above poised to beat me down should I stumble in my exploration or diverge from a topic they were promoting.  When I was young, information was available but difficult to come by...nowadays the Internet has opened the door wide to knowledge, and with platforms like YouTube it is possible to learn to do just about anything and even attend virtual classrooms.  Sadly, there are lots of folks who only see the value of learning anything in how they can make money from it...I've been confronted in the past when such a person would spy me studying something that, to them, had no discernible "value".  The problem with their perspective is that they tend to see their own self-worth in terms of increasing wealth and social prestige...should they one day find themselves unable to continue that way, I'm afraid the whole house of cards that sustains their ego-based self-image could collapse.  But let's just skip over some of the psychological jargon I've brought up and cut to the chase: learning, simply put, is fun! 

Three Ways to Learn and Read Faster, According to Rob Dial

On a recent The Mind Mentor podcast, motivational guru Rob Dial listed and discussed three ways he believes folks can learn and read faster.  The first I already do...kind of.  He recommends Kindle for reading and then purchasing the Audible version option when obtaining books...still cheaper in his opinion than buying the paper hardcopy, and then the reader can simultaneously employ their eyes and ears (through Whispersync), helping them to better retain the material they cover.  He also advocates using the Highlighter function that enables readers to filter out the most significant areas of the books they read. Along with this he points out that public libraries offer the Overdrive (or Libby) app that enables one to check out, for free, audiobooks to listen to on their computers or smartphones.  Dial's second tip for learning and reading is to employ the Pomodoro technique of time management whereby one engages in intense, focused activity for 25 minutes and then fully rests from it for 5...and then returning to the cycle: he maintains that this resonates better with people's peaking during prolonged directed learning activity: I usually do something like this without the formality of the 25:5 time ratio.  And finally, the Mindset Mentor suggests that whenever we learn something we immediately turn around and teach it to someone else...this is an old Stephen Covey point that runs counterintuitive to a lot of us.  After all, knowledge and skill are often regarded as commodities that set us competitively above others and give us an edge over them...but sharing what we learned will greatly reinforce and strengthen it within us, making us even more knowledgeable and skillful.  At the end of the podcast, Dial touts the use of YouTube as a great source of teaching...I know what he's talking about as you can learn just about anything on it.  This was a good podcast, although I still see some use in good old-fashioned paper books even in this age of Kindle and Audible, especially since many of them are older and not yet offered in those formats...

An Upcoming Personal Project for 2022

I've been watching the Beatles' Get Back movie on Disney+, which depicts its members going through a series of grueling all-day sessions of song creation, rehearsing and jamming. My initial reaction was to question why anyone would subject themselves to this kind of regimen. Then it occurred to me that for Paul, John, George and Ringo this was their great love, where their skills and interests coincided and they were the most accomplished and recognized: that's why it worked for them (although they still quarreled).  The question I ask is for myself is what in my life is comparable to that which the Beatles experienced back in January, 1969 when they embarked on that project?  And I think I got the answer...

Engaging in cognitive reverie...which is what Russell Crowe's character, mathematician John Nash, often does in the movie A Beautiful Mind...is something I often find myself doing as well.  Sometimes it takes the form of regretful, retroactive daydreaming when I think of times in my distant past and wish that I had adopted different priorities and habits.  One of these areas involves my studying in high school...my attention to homework assignments was atrocious, especially with regard to mathematics.  This is lamentable since every standardized test I ever took showed an exceptional ability in the area...I even scored a perfect 800 in it on my SAT.  Well, they say folks shouldn't bury themselves in their pasts, and I agree...but with an important caveat.  If what I'm regretting can neither be resurrected or made relevant to the present, then I should let it go.  But if there is a way in which I can learn from my past experiences and apply those lessons to the current setting, then this kind of cognitive reverie can be useful and a positive force in my life, here and now.  To this extent I've decided to make the upcoming year 2022 as one themed with intense study of mathematics...I can definitely think of an application or two for the years to come. Much will be simple review and much will be a reexamination in greater depth of what I have earlier covered, but only shallowly.  I have to credit a birthday present I received a few weeks ago: The Great Courses DVD pack of The Joy of Mathematics, authored and presented by Arthur Benjamin...wish I'd had him as a teacher!  Of course, I'll keep all ya'll updated on my progress with my upcoming math adventures...to that end I think it's time to load up my computer with some basic mathematics software...

Thinking of Teaching Self a Musical Instrument (or Two)

My father was an excellent country-style guitar player and also played clarinet earlier in his life...his singing sounded a lot like that of Hank Williams.  My mother was also adept at guitar to the point of mastering the basic chords necessary to accompany folk songs that as children me and my sister Anita, a very good singer, would sing along with her while she played.  My son Will became a very good piano player and my daughter Rebecca has a talent for hearing tunes and readily transferring them to instrument as well as for her beautiful singing voice. And my wife Melissa played flute in her high school band.  Me?  I'm very good at listening to music and not much more.  I took some private piano lessons a few years ago but didn't progress very far, although I managed to survive a recital playing a short classical piece.  Musical ability for most of us is something that works best when we start it very early in life...a lot of classical composers started out learning music and playing instruments as toddlers and Mozart wrote most of his officially-credited symphonies by the age at which I graduated from high school.  So in stating that I'd be interested in my later years taking on learning a musical instrument may sound like a lost cause...but I think I'll try it anyway, focusing on  teaching myself basic guitar and reviewing and surpassing my previous instruction level on the keyboard.  There are even apps that help with this sort of thing and I plan to make full use of them.  Should be interesting, everybody plug your ears...

Quote of the Week...from Maya Lin

Math...it's a puzzle to me.  I love figuring out puzzles.                 ---Maya Lin

Maya Lin is the architect and artist responsible for the design of the Vietnam Memorial wall in Washington, D.C., which was initially considered controversial but is now widely esteemed as one of the greatest memorials anywhere...Melissa and I were very impressed when we visited it last October. Lin's above quote resonates with me as I have always thought that mathematics was taught in schools incorrectly.  If the puzzle-like nature of this field were emphasized in school instead of making it all a solemn judgment of the poor student's abilities and work ethic, than I believe we'd see a lot fewer people...including those with a high intellect...suffering mental blocks over the subject.  As for me, whenever I do pick up one of my several Shaum's Outline Series books on mathematics...and this series covers just about every course imaginable...I regard their "problems" as fun puzzles to work out, and the answers are provided along with explanations as to how to solve them.  And since I'm not going to school, there's no verdict coming down on me being a dumbass because I got a wrong answer.  So many people nowadays like to do puzzles such as Jumble, Sudoku, Kakuro (my favorite), Hidato, Crosswords, and others... I'm also a fan of jigsaw puzzles.  But believe it or not, picking up a Schaum's book about a particular field in math and going through it can be its own kind of fun puzzle experience...and who knows, you may discover that you're not as mathematically-challenged as you thought.  But keep it secret if you do this, otherwise folks will be asking you what you're going to do with your new mathematical learning while if you stick with the more "standard" kinds of puzzles they won't bug you over it...

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing.               ---Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was a biochemistry professor much better known for his prolific output of books, most notably in the realm of science education and science fiction.  After Sputnik in 1957 put the Soviets ahead of us for a time in the space race, there was a panic in the U.S. regarding our state of science education...Asimov took a break then from his fiction writing and produced a series of very readable books spanning the fields of science and mathematics.  Early on in school, young Isaac was considered a prodigy and quickly jumped far ahead of his peers with his learning.  Which presents a bit of a problem with his above quote...

I used to be a pretty sharp little kid in elementary school, too...but definitely not at prodigy level like Asimov.  The teachers taught the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic with their specially-designed curricula, with the obvious knowledge that we children did not know beans about "self-education" and exactly what it was we were supposed to be learning.  I do agree with Asimov, though, that schools need to make self-education easier.  But to accomplish this, they need to first teach students what this means and how to do it.  And one other thing: if left to their own devices students...like folks in general...will focus on what interests them and ignore areas that don't.  It's up to schools to make sure that everyone learns about the broad range of subjects that as a society we deem important for them as later functioning adults. I don't buy the notion that little children just need for teachers to get out of their way and then they'll transform into budding Einsteins.  On the contrary, the teachers I had from elementary through high school were far too disengaged, leaving me usually drifting through the school years and feeling insignificant, if not invisible...

But education does not end with formal school and adults should know how to educate themselves, or at least know how to find the appropriate sources for the education they are seeking.  Still, you cannot self-educate if you're not motivated or curious.  And not everyone is a prodigy like Isaac Asimov was: I could have used more teacher-student interaction, not less...

Just Finished Reading The Rooster Bar by John Grisham

The Rooster Bar, a 2017 legal fiction novel by John Grisham, examines the world of for-profit schools, in particular law schools. Mark, Todd, Zola, and Gordon are all classmates at seedy Foggy Bottom Law School in Washington, D.C., racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt while soon to receive essentially worthless degrees. In the meantime, their school has done little to prepare them for the bar exam needed for them to legally practice law, so they are looking ahead at a mountain of debt with little-to-no means of paying it back.  Gordon, Zola's boyfriend, is the first to crack up, and with his bipolar personality has constructed an elaborate conspiracy theory around a reclusive investor who has gained control over eight for-profit law schools, including Foggy Bottom.  His friends try to save him in his crisis, intervening to look for his doctor, but to no avail with a tragic end.  Now it is just Mark, Todd, and Zola...she is distracted by the fact that her entire Senegalese family has been arrested and are to be deported back to Africa.  After seeing how some lawyers hang around courtrooms and offer their services to different accused parties without their legal credentials ever being called into question, Mark hits upon the idea of winging it as a lawyer and Mark and Zola join him, leaving Foggy Bottom and taking on new identities.  The story develops from there as they naively stumble through one foolish mistake after another.  With all that is going against them, their situation seems more and more hopeless.  Yet...

The last ongoing prime time television series that I followed while it was going on was The Pretender, where Jared, an escapee from a school for specially gifted children, successfully takes on different roles, even once as a surgeon.  The Rooster Bar is something like that, although Mark, Todd, and Zola in the end come out looking comically clueless in their endeavors to hoodwink those around them.  But they are very sympathetic characters and I (hope to) to see them in another Grisham novel: a sequel is in order here.  As for the staggering student loan situation in this country, it is bad enough with the legitimate schools. But these for-profit institutions strike me as legalized con rackets and should be much more tightly regulated and scrutinized... 

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

People think of education as something they can finish.            ---Isaac Asimov.

Isaac Asimov (1920-92), author of the science fiction Foundation, Empire, and Robot series, is one of the most beloved science fiction writers of the twentieth century.  Besides these fictional works and others, he wrote many books on general science, math, and other topics, with a targeted audience of adults.  Asimov was one of the early proponents of life-long learning and did not believe that one's education ends upon graduation from school, crystallized by the above quote.  And while I agree with this notion wholeheartedly, I still feel a bit out of place whenever I'm in public and begin to practice writing out sentences in Chinese or Russian, or start to work on math problems in...say, linear algebra or probability.  That's because once you're out of school, you can nowadays still be "allowed" to be learning things...only they need to have some sort of "application" in your life that you can justify your learning to others, as if there were really any need for an excuse...

But aside from the cognitive reverie that I find myself in from time to time, along with quirky interests like foreign languages or treating math problems as fun puzzles to solve, I also keep up with events around me and their historical foundations and causes.  After all, I am a voting participant in this representative form of society called a republic and to fully be able to understand the important issues of our time and how they affect me. my family, and my country, I need to be continually studying and learning.  I do also read a lot as well as engage in daily practice expressing my thoughts on this blog...that's all part of lifelong learning.  And I also firmly believe that keeping myself informed and interested in the news helps to protect me from demagogic politicians and media figures who play upon people's fears and prejudices in order to build up support.  But beyond this, I have a natural curiosity about things and like to learn...applications or not.  I consider it all as simply being a necessary, basic element of life...

Weekly Short Story: The Feeling of Power by Isaac Asimov

In many science fiction stories from the mid-twentieth century, interstellar travel is presented as a  certainty, but computers are also pictured as filling up entire rooms, completely failing to anticipate microtechnology and how much it would pervade nearly every aspect of our lives.  A notable exception to this misjudgment of the future is Isaac Asimov's 1958 short story The Feeling of Power, appearing in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 20 (1958) (DAW Books). 

The Feeling of Power is only eleven pages long but it packs a big punch, with great application to what's going on today.  It is in the future and space travel has humanity going to the stars, settling there, trading...and, sadly, going to war among themselves.  The computer technology has developed to the point where scientists and engineers just push buttons...the machines themselves come up with new innovations.  A lowly clerk has discovered how to mentally multiply numbers, which he demonstrates to the skeptical top brass by quickly answering 9 x 7 = 63.  That gets their attention...but then he amazingly demonstrates that he can multiply any two numbers ON PAPER with a system of his...of course, this is stuff we (well, at least my generation) learned in early elementary school.  The generals and officials are flabbergasted...eventually one of them realizes that this could be the breakthrough to free themselves from the total dependence on computers that have placed both sides in an interstellar war into a stalemate.  The story's ending, which you can read for yourself, is not a happy one...

When I read about the clerk's arithmetical demonstration, I had to chuckle...but there's some profound truth here.  There's no doubt that having sophisticated computers and software has lightened the mental burden of computing that heretofore was tedious but necessary, either mentally, on paper, or by slide rule.  But now we have incredibly powerful machines that do the tough work for us, be it arithmetic, correcting our shoddy grammar and spelling, instantly translating other languages to our own (no need to learn a new one, right?), telling us where we are by GPS without us ever having to orient ourselves through maps, and just about any other area where people went to school to learn certain skills.  With this super-technology we may be falling into a trap of collectively losing old skills after they have been deemed "obsolete"...there was even a push in schools to eliminate the teaching of writing in cursive!  As our digital gadgets make us appear to be smarter, without them to supply all the right answers we're becoming a society of dunces.  Maybe we should take a moment to reassess where we're going with all this...

Language Learning Apps I've Been Using

Over the last two or three years I have tried out three different sites that help with my foreign language study: Quizlet, DuoLingo, and Memrise. I’ve opted for the free versions as opposed to the premium editions that offer extra features. Of the three I like Memrise the most, but with some criticism. Quizlet is a do-it-yourself way of studying all sorts of subjects, not just languages, which accepts “lessons” from its members and has a “student beware” policy where the learner is on his own and has to make his own judgments as to the accuracy of the material being taught. Still, it’s a good way to build up vocabulary...I use their "match game" feature that pairs up foreign language vocabulary with their English translations.  DuoLingo, which I only used on my laptop, has better lessons but also one gigantic flaw: it does not supply the script for the language being presented...the student must add whatever foreign fonts are necessary in order to complete the lessons. I’ve stopped using DuoLingo for this one reason, but have a replacement for it in Memrise, which I have on my cellphone as an app. I am currently using it to take basic courses in Turkish, Hungarian, Hindi, Polish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. Of these Korean and Arabic are by far the most challenging, but running through the gamut of daily lessons just takes a few minutes for all of them combined. I do have a problem with the Hindi lessons, which do not provide me a way to enter ligatures (two letters combined as one), which many words in this language contain. Also, they used to allow me to have access to many different languages, but recently have cut off that option...meaning that I am blocked from continuing to the next level in Hungarian (I’ve completed two so far)...

Although I appreciate Memrise and still use Quizlet from time to time, I'm thinking of exploring some of the other language learning apps out there to see if there isn't something better.  I probably wouldn't be looking elsewhere, though, had Memrise continued to give me access to what they apparently consider to be "minor" languages.  But who knows, maybe there's an app out there that's better than anything I've seen yet...I'll let you know if I find it...

Tuesday's List: Fundamental Units of Physics and Derived Formulas

A few decades ago I was studying basic college physics when I tired of having to remember all of the formulas in mechanics and electricity...and decided to develop numerical strings for each type of quantity that, for me at least, were easier to retain.  Now in physics there are seven fundamental units, of which everything else can be derived (back then I only used four):

1 mass.......................kilogram (kg)  
2 length.....................meter (m)
3 electric current........ampere (A)
4 time........................second (s)    
5 thermodynamic temperature...degree Kelvin scale, or kelvin (K)
6 amount of substance...mole (mol)
7 luminous intensity.....candela (cd)

For the purposes of this article, I'll leave off the last three units, although you might find it interesting that thermodynamic temperature does not figure into the formula for energy...heat energy or otherwise.  What I did was to write out four-number strings, each number representing the exponential powers for the units or combinations thereof.  So...

mass:          1  0  0  0  kg
length:        0  1  0  0  m
current:      0  0  1  0  A
time:           0  0  0  1  s

From this we can derive more strings:

area             0  2  0  0   length-squared
volume        0  3  0  0   length-cubed
velocity       0  1  0 -1   length per time
acceleration 0  1  0 -2  length per time-squared
density         1 -3 0   0  mass per length-cubed
force            1  1  0 -2   mass multiplied by length per time-squared
energy         1  2  0 -2   mass mult. by length-squared per time-squared
power          1  2  0 -3   mass mult. by length-squared per time-cubed
pressure       1 -1 0 -2   mass per length per time-squared
charge          0  0  1  1  current mult. by time
voltage         1  2 -1 -3  mass mult. by length-squared per current per time-cubed

Each number of the string represents the exponential power of that fundamental unit within the formula...and you multiply across the string.  A unit represented by "0" simply isn't present within that formula.  I found this numerical mnemonic system, once learned, to be easier to remember...

And it's also easier to see relationships between the different formulas, for example:

We're taught that force=mass x acceleration...or:

      1   0   0   0    mass
      0   1   0  -2    acceleration
      1   1   0  -2   force     (note that when multiplying exponents you add the powers)

If you're interested, you can go through the whole physics textbook like this and the formula derivations can get to be almost a matter of second nature after a while...

Stream-of-Consciousness Foreign Language Dialoguing

While visiting Austin, Texas last month I had the opportunity to practice speaking some foreign languages with my nephew Gregory, who knows several and is in the process of learning some more.  Of the two of us, his path has been the more productive, having traveled and lived in several non-English speaking lands...giving him proficiency in French, Italy, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish and Czech...to name just a few.  Right now he's learning Chinese...my presence gave him an opportunity to practice it.  Greg loves to practice speaking foreign languages with anyone who'll listen...and I was only too happy to play the role of receptive audience.  Our multitude of stream-of-consciousness dialogues over the four-day visit served to put me on alert: if I am to ever truly get to the level I want with my language study, then foreign travel...coupled with enthusiastic conversational engagement with speakers I encounter here at home...is something I need to pursue.  Melissa already has a step on me: she's visiting Ukraine next week!  I'd better finally get a passport...

When expressing myself in a new language, I naturally want my pronunciation, word choice, and grammar to be good, if not flawless.  But while being "correct" when speaking in a non-native language I'm learning is ultimately desirable, the learning process demands that "communication" should be the driving goal.  Let's take three scenarios where people learn language: early childhood, school, and travel/immigration...

When a baby begins to speak, no one scolds him or her for saying things incorrectly: the goal is to communicate and to positively reinforce effective communication.  In the same way, when someone is learning a new language by living and interacting among the people who speak it natively, it's still the same goal: first communicate...then fine-tune it all to be more accurate.  But when I went to school...whether with the Audio-Lingual Systems curriculum back in the 1960s and 70s in elementary and high school or the college classes I took, the instructor's mantra was consistently the same: if I want to say something in the language I'm studying, the overriding concern is that I say it correctly...even though this puts the cart before the horse and inhibits vocabulary development, confidence, and progress in the long run.  When I worked back in the early 1980s at a local Chinese restaurant, I often did the same kind of "stream-of-consciousness" chatter that Greg and I just did...but with Vietnamese and Chinese coworkers in their native tongues...and with several different people.  They were delighted that I wanted to learn their languages and only criticized me when my speech was incomprehensible to them.  Likewise, I took the same attitude toward them when they were practicing their English, emphasizing meaning over correctness...unless of course they themselves brought up a question about usage.  To this day, Vietnamese is my second most spoken language with others, although my pronunciation is awful, I haven't consistently studied it for years, and my vocabulary is limited...and Chinese is right behind Vietnamese as my third most spoken language.  In contrast, regarding Spanish, French, German, and Russian,the languages I formally studied in school...before Greg conversed with me in them last month...I've essentially spoken none of them with anyone since school...   

So in summing it all up, I have to thank my talented nephew for reminding me what works in language study.  I'd like to travel and live, if only very briefly, in a foreign language setting.  But there are actions I can take here and now in Gainesville...actions I've taken in the distant past and which...as Greg showed...can stimulate thinking in those languages I want to learn.  Unfortunately, this idea of having stream-of-consciousness dialogues with others runs counter to my tendency to seek solitude.  Sounds like a real growth opportunity!
 

Quote of the Week...from Tony Robbins

We aren't in an information age, we are in an entertainment age.               ---Tony Robbins

Anthony Robbins is a well-known self-improvement guru who has been around for decades.  I read one of his books back in the 1990s, but haven't kept up with him...hope he's doing well.  Back then, Robbins had taken ideas he had heard from other sources and assembled them into a program to help people to be more proactive and take personal responsibility for their own lives.  That's great, I'm all on board with that...but things like the coal-walking ceremony at the end of his seminars?  Well, that's not so "hot"...

I don't know the context of the above quote of Robbins, but I can certainly understand its meaning anyway.  We are living in an age of information explosion, with the Internet making just about any kind of learning available with a few clicks of a mouse.  Yet folks in general seem more interested in using it for entertainment than enlightenment.  When you're out in public and you see someone just staring at their cell phone, they're probably watching sports or a video on YouTube or Facebook...or just scrolling down the latter for provocative posts.  But even if you get offline and just watch television, there are relatively very few channels that are devoted for teaching or information, the overwhelming majority of them being designed to lull the viewer into a complacent state of mental lethargy.  I think it's telling that, concurrent with the just-recent ability to access so much information, there has been an explosion in the popularity of mindless "reality" shows...and one such host even got himself elected president, even with all that has been made public about him.  But human nature being what it is, why should I be surprised that people will opt for entertaining themselves over learning?  I for one like my soccer matches and old reruns...but I also like to watch science and history shows...

I think that the media nowadays goes out of its way to assume that their users have attention deficit disorder and will zone out after a few seconds on a channel or website if they don't somehow get stimulated.  I write relatively short articles on my blog here, but even with their brevity very few seem to have the small amount of concentration needed to get through them.  So if you've made it this far, you're one of the special few left on this planet with anything resembling an attention span...congratulations!
 

Quote of the Week...from James R. Newman

The most painful thing about mathematics is how far away you are from being able to use it after you have learned it.                                              James R. Newman

I found the above quote and decided to use it, although I hadn't heard of James R. Newman before.  He was a mathematician as well as a popularizer of the field, writing a number of books.  What attracted it to me was how strongly I have agreed with its message over the course of my lifetime...well, at least that lifetime after my mathematics education in school passed from arithmetic to geometry, algebra, theorems, and proofs.  Seeing how my life veered in a direction from a career that directly used mathematics...careers like engineering, physics...and of course, teaching mathematics...I've found no occasion whatsoever to employ anything I've learned beyond simple arithmetic...not even basic algebra...and at college I've taken courses in calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, and mathematical statistics.  This has to be the one subject in school for which the grand majority of graduates will find little or no application in life...beyond that basic grammar school arithmetic competency.  Yet I find the subject intriguing and from time to time delve into it...

In a way, mathematics is an area that anyone can do...even one untrained in it.  If you're not trying to get something extraneous from it, such as a passing grade in school or math-related job, then you don't have to worry about impressing others or being as fast or accurate as them.  Ultimately, removing the competition and time pressure angles from studying mathematics can make this field more attractive for life-long learning.  Of course, it also helps to have a good amount of free time at your disposal!  Still, YouTube is loaded with free math courses on just about any level, and the Internet provides many resources that in former eras would have been more difficult and expensive to amass...

I've decided to go "back in time" and approach mathematics as something to embrace instead of fearing...in the process hoping that I will better grasp some of the principles contained within it than when I was "under the gun" in school...