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vxbush
2/21/2024 5:26:09 AM
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1
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Not posting any news at the moment—debugging a serious issue at work.
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Occasional Reader
2/21/2024 8:20:00 AM
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3
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Reply to JCM in 2:
Who do they think they are, Justin Trudeau?!
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JCM
2/21/2024 11:35:52 AM
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5
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Google once upon a time. Don't be evil. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels would be proud of Google upholding the tradition of the Big Lie.
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Occasional Reader
2/21/2024 11:46:47 AM
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6
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In #5 JCM said: Joseph Goebbels ... who was black, according to Google Gemini AI (probably)...
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JCM
2/21/2024 11:52:36 AM
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7
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Reply to Occasional Reader in 6: Better yet, a black rabbi.
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buzzsawmonkey
2/21/2024 12:57:57 PM
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8
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Reply to Occasional Reader in 4: Reply to JCM in 5: This is why we use books for reference, and why our approximately-three-foot research library is important. We have a mid-20th-century Webster's Unabridged Dictionary; a Webster's Biographical Dictionary; a copy of the Oxford Companion to English Literature (a fascinating street-find which has marvelous cross references between authors, their works, and the terms contained in their works); a KJV Bible (we use it mostly to research quote clues in puzzles); a copy of "America's Table," a "dictionary of foods" from the 1950s; the Fairchild "Dictionary of Textiles"; a relatively-recent (perhaps too recent) copy of "Oxford's Familiar Quotations"; several volumes of film reference; and Variety's "Cavalcade of Music" (3rd edition), which not only contains the hit songs in America, year by year, from 1620 to 1969 (when the "Cavalcade" ceased publication), but historical notes and snippets for every one of those years. One of the greatest spelunking books ever. Not only is there more knowledge contained in any of these books than in a hundred Google searches; the pleasure of digging through them, including the distractions and side trips, are themselves a part of the process of acquiring knowledge---both knowledge through acquisition of information and knowledge acquired by the operation of the process. That's analog learning, folks---and there is no search engine that can replace it.
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Occasional Reader
2/21/2024 1:24:09 PM
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9
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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:
Stay where you are, citizen, Guy Montag and his fellow firemen are on their way to your location.
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buzzsawmonkey
2/21/2024 1:28:40 PM
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10
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In #9 Occasional Reader said: Stay where you are, citizen, Guy Montag and his fellow firemen are on their way to your location.
Montag, Montag Can't trust that slag He'll come to your nook and torch all your books with an oily rag
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JCM
2/21/2024 1:33:38 PM
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11
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If you scroll far enough you come across this.... 
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JCM
2/21/2024 2:36:16 PM
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13
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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8: Education at one time not so long ago focused on "the canon of western literature" as just the basic foundation for further learning and understanding. A common bedrock to work from. They've removed and effectively erased that common basic set knowledge. Leaving people open to "every wind of teaching". It's not just the "3 Foot Shelf" it the physical book. I've read a few studies now how reading a physical book improves retention, the act of holding the object, turning pages, provides a tactical and temporal reference frame for the material in our brains. Those references can then be connected into larger and larger ideas.
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buzzsawmonkey
2/21/2024 5:27:45 PM
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14
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In #13 JCM said: Education at one time not so long ago focused on "the canon of western literature" as just the basic foundation for further learning and understanding. A common bedrock to work from.
They've removed and effectively erased that common basic set knowledge.
Leaving people open to "every wind of teaching".
It's not just the "3 Foot Shelf" it the physical book. I've read a few studies now how reading a physical book improves retention, the act of holding the object, turning pages, provides a tactical and temporal reference frame for the material in our brains. Those references can then be connected into larger and larger ideas.
The "Harvard Five-Foot Shelf," a small self-contained bookcase which contained the Great Writings of the West, was a common feature of many of the houses at which I attended stoop sales back when I was in high school in the '60s. There were similar assemblages of Western Civilization knowledge done by my alma mater, the University of Chicago, and, I believe, one or two others. I'd bet all of them are now as one with Nineveh and Tyre, i.e., dust and ashes. In the meantime, the absolute worst thing that libraries have done is to replace their card catalogs (analog learning, because you found things you didn't know existed while you were flipping through the cards in the drawers) with "computer search terminals," where you go where you are directed by some anonymous a**hole. Analog learning has it over search-engine learning like a tent.
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JCM
2/21/2024 6:46:33 PM
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15
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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 14: My sister stole our set of Harvard Classic.... unforgivable! I can't tell how many times, random finds in the catalogs lead to wonderful rabbit holes.
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Kosh's Shadow
2/21/2024 7:14:27 PM