Castle Aching

[Hroth]

In High School during my last two years before being sent out into the horrors of the real world we were permitted to use slide rules.  I discovered there was such a thing as a circular slide rule and I became an enthusiastic user.  Easy to carry as I could just slip it into my blazer pocket and bring it out quickly whenever I needed it.  While cleaning up around the place a couple of years ago I found my old circular slide rule and my now adult electronics age children were both much intrigued by it.  An artifact from another age when the notion of a computer in the home was the stuff of science fiction and the internet was a mythical concept. (This was New Zealand remember so we were still in a timewarp a decade behind Britain).

 

I've never used a circular sliderule in earnest, though I did pick one up cheaply some years ago when a big local bookshop and stationers closed down.  As you say, they're very pocketable.  Again its still around, along with my fathers slide rules and my own.  The best thing about slide rules and log tables is that you don't need batteries or mains electricity to make them run.  In addidion, intermediate and final results can be recorded on pads of compressed vegetable fibres using a graphite-tipped stylus, again needing no electrical supply!

 

Calculators and computers?  Pah!  Who needs 'em? 

[sem34090]

Well, after having spent a few years attempting to get through the modern education system with neither a home computer nor a home internet connection, I am sorry to report that it is almost impossible. Schools expect these things. Homework is set online, documents are often expected to be typed.

 

I remember the final large piece of work I did without a laptop. It was in year nine (so I was... 14) and it was a history research project. My chosen topic was "I. K. Brunel and the GWR". So, for the first lesson of doing this the teacher asked us all to bring in our laptops so that we could do research and get typing. He was almost dismayed when I turned up with a pile of books, a pair of pads and some writing materials! He actually asked me why I'd brought it all in place of a laptop. He refused to accept that I didn't actually own one, nor did I own a smartphone!!! I wrote the whole thing out by hand, drew my own illustrations based on photos in books and from taking a sketchbook to Didcot. I was really proud of myself when I handed it in.

 

Then he handed it straight back and told me he wanted it typed with photos. Oh, and he wanted it 'properly researched using the internet'. Honestly telling me that the internet is more reliable than the 25 books I used as well as the resources of two museums I visited?!

 

So I spent a depressing afternoon typing it all out in the school library then I think in a fit of sadness/anger I destroyed the original.

 

Unfortunately I still have him for A Level history. And he still has something against me!!!

Edited December 7, 2018 by sem34090

[Hroth]

You go to school to learn to follow the rules....

 

Any real learning you pick up is down to your own efforts!

[sem34090]

How true, Sir. Most of the time.

Edited December 7, 2018 by sem34090

[Donw]

DonW

 

Yep, it’s called WDM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing

 

Phil

 

You sure that photo is an accounting office? It could so easily be the local folk musicians, tuning up some kind of instruments, in the bar of the Corner Cutters’ Arms, preparatory to a dance.

 

Thanks. They were not using it in BT when I left the cable area  mid 80s but it was an obvious way to go. I doubt the cable we laid was good enough for WDM but these things develop.

Don

[Donw]

Well, after having spent a few years attempting to get through the modern education system with neither a home computer nor a home internet connection, I am sorry to report that it is almost impossible. Schools expect these things. Homework is set online, documents are often expected to be typed.

 

I remember the final large piece of work I did without a laptop. It was in year nine (so I was... 14) and it was a history research project. My chosen topic was "I. K. Brunel and the GWR". So, for the first lesson of doing this the teacher asked us all to bring in our laptops so that we could do research and get typing. He was almost dismayed when I turned up with a pile of books, a pair of pads and some writing materials! He actually asked me why I'd brought it all in place of a laptop. He refused to accept that I didn't actually own one, nor did I own a smartphone!!! I wrote the whole thing out by hand, drew my own illustrations based on photos in books and from taking a sketchbook to Didcot. I was really proud of myself when I handed it in.

 

Then he handed it straight back and told me he wanted it typed with photos. Oh, and he wanted it 'properly researched using the internet'. Honestly telling me that the internet is more reliable than the 25 books I used as well as the resources of two museums I visited?!

 

So I spent a depressing afternoon typing it all out in the school library then I think in a fit of sadness/anger I destroyed the original.

 

Unfortunately I still have him for A Level history. And he still has something against me!!!

 

 

Well that just shows his ignorance and unsuitability as a teacher. Leaving aside the question of being discriminating against those 'less advantaged' he failed to see the point that you were doing proper research. Rather than having a search engine just pop up a few things for you to just cut and paste into your report. You had to select sources, locate relevant passages then write out the information you needed which involved actually understanding it. I bet many of the others hadn't properly understood the chunks they had pasted in.

Anyway these days it is difficult to get proper answeres from Google, the internet is so commercially based you get pages and pages of results trying to sell you something however tenuous the link to your question with the odd useful result hardly enough to know you have fully researched approopriate sources.

 

Don

[sem34090]

Well, that's what I thought and still think.

 

Same teacher told me off for being ill recently. I pointed out that I would happily arrange for him to have three weeks of a flu-like virus but I thought he might appreciate my having stayed off to avoid passing it on. I also pointed out that, now I'm on to A Level work I would much rather be in lessons than missing them!

Edited December 7, 2018 by sem34090

[Nearholmer]

There have always been sh1t teachers, and there have always been good teachers, back to the dawn of time, and it’s a matter of luck as to which sort you get in any subject at any stage. It’s not much different from grumpy vs empathic doctors, plumbers who are rubbish at plumbing, shop assistants who go out of their way not to assist, etc etc etc.

 

The bit that I don’t quite understand is why the sh1t teachers/doctors/plumbers don’t find something else to do, because it is almost always the case that they are people who have come to loath their job and those it requires them to interact with, sometimes at an astonishingly early age. Shop assistants I would let off to a greater degree, because we all know how employment in that sector works.

[sem34090]

Ah, see this teacher thoroughly enjoys his job, and is fine to everyone else! Just me with whom he has some kind of grudge, probably because I dared to do something other than what he instructed (didn't have much choice!).

 

He likes trying to play the part of the public schoolmaster, in a school that isn't a public school!

[Edwardian]

Sem,

 

You have my every sympathy.

 

Schools do expect prep to be researched online and produced on a computer. 

 

Neither of my two have their own computers, and out here in the Ooloo, there's not a lot of bandwith to go round.

 

It is a problem.

 

That said, your history teacher is clearly not helpful and I find his methods and his judgement questionable.

 

History is a wonderful subject and deserves a wonderful teacher.

 

Just heard a very disturbing segment on R4 concerning the training of armed teachers for schools in Ohio. In one scenario a teacher was commended for shooting dead the kid who pulled a knife (though not for the slight hesitation before doing so), and in another, a teacher mistakenly shot one of the pupils running away from the incident. 

 

So, at least your history teacher is not unhelpful and armed!

 

[sem34090]

Thankfully the A Level course is split between two teachers.

 

And you've reminded me of yet another reason I'm glad I'm not American!!!

[Annie]

In America it has always been fine to shoot people if they are from the wrong social, racial and economic demographic.  There was a video on Youtube recently where a school 'rent-a-cop' beat a young black girl to the point of hospitalisation for sassing a teacher.  And of course everyone in the school administration thought that was just fine.  Until recently New Zealand had a travel advisory warning Maori NZ citizens that in some parts of the US they could be at risk of death by cop.  I personally cannot think of a single good reason for wanting to live in the USA and I would not go there even if I was paid $NZ10,000 a day to do so.

[St Enodoc]

I've never used a circular sliderule in earnest, though I did pick one up cheaply some years ago when a big local bookshop and stationers closed down.  As you say, they're very pocketable.  Again its still around, along with my fathers slide rules and my own.  The best thing about slide rules and log tables is that you don't need batteries or mains electricity to make them run.  In addidion, intermediate and final results can be recorded on pads of compressed vegetable fibres using a graphite-tipped stylus, again needing no electrical supply!

 

Calculators and computers?  Pah!  Who needs 'em? 

Circular slide rules are (or, more probably, were) used extensively in the world of aviation.

[Talltim]

I've never used a circular sliderule in earnest, though I did pick one up cheaply some years ago when a big local bookshop and stationers closed down.  As you say, they're very pocketable.  Again its still around, along with my fathers slide rules and my own.  The best thing about slide rules and log tables is that you don't need batteries or mains electricity to make them run.  In addidion, intermediate and final results can be recorded on pads of compressed vegetable fibres using a graphite-tipped stylus, again needing no electrical supply!

 

Calculators and computers?  Pah!  Who needs 'em? 

I tried posting to RMWeb using my slide rule but I couldn't tell if anything happened. Maybe I need to use the log table.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Talltim

[TheQ]

I tried posting to RMWeb using my slide rule but I couldn't tell if anything happened. Maybe I need to use the log table.

You should have tried a calculator...

[St Enodoc]

Circular slide rules are (or, more probably, were) used extensively in the world of aviation.

As was the Dalton's Computer:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Dalton

 

I've still got my CRP-1 version somewhere, although I haven't used it for over 30 years (and I don't think I could remember how anyway).

Edited December 7, 2018 by St Enodoc

[Regularity]

In America it has always been fine to shoot people if they are from the wrong social, racial and economic demographic.

That and nicking land was part of the motivation for some of the founders of the USA, sadly.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Regularity

[TheQ]

A bit closer to castle aching.

Edited December 7, 2018 by TheQ

[Northroader]

On the matter of school teachers, the one that always sticks in my mind was “Smokey” Brown. You’d never see his like at a school these days, I’m afraid. 1946, I was eight, he’d just been demobbed, having fought across North Africa and Italy. He was an army sergeant, and brought his parade ground methods back to educate us. The old school shook with his bellowings, (it’s a different school now, the old one was burnt down in later times by the pupils, that’s why it’s called the Phoenix today) When he really thought you weren’t paying attention, he’d push his face a foot from yours, his blue eyes would bulge, his moustache bristle, and he’d snarl “you little gentleman, you”, and you could tell being a little gentleman wasn’t the best thing to be. We loved him.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, I heard that utterly chilling item on the radio, Just after seeing offsprings to school.

 

Is it possible for an entire nation, or at least all the people within it who have sway over all the rest, to be psychotic?

[Edwardian]

In America it has always been fine to shoot people if they are from the wrong social, racial and economic demographic.  There was a video on Youtube recently where a school 'rent-a-cop' beat a young black girl to the point of hospitalisation for sassing a teacher.  And of course everyone in the school administration thought that was just fine.  Until recently New Zealand had a travel advisory warning Maori NZ citizens that in some parts of the US they could be at risk of death by cop.  I personally cannot think of a single good reason for wanting to live in the USA and I would not go there even if I was paid $NZ10,000 a day to do so.

 

Staying for a period with her relatives in the USA cured my wife of a life-long ambition to live and work in the States. It's quite sweet, though, that the US assumes that everyone wants to go there!

 

Quite what you are free to do in the Land of the Free, or what others are free to do to you, are interesting questions. 

 

Further, it is surprising to the outsider how freedom is subject to adherence to a number of norms, quite strictly enforced, that are quite alien and objectionable from the European perspective.  Still, each country has its funny little ways.  When I once crossed a deserted road in Southern Germany without waiting for the pedestrian lights I may have broken the German criminal code.  What I am absolutely certain of is that I was immediately sentenced to social death by the Germans patiently queuing at the crossing place, who tutted at me!

 

This is far preferable, however, to turning the wrong way in an airport terminal and having a gun pulled on you. US airports are, or certainly used to be, ill-adapted to international transfers, which is strange, because I can't think of any reason other than the necessity of changing 'planes for ever going to Miami. 

 

 

Yes, I heard that utterly chilling item on the radio, Just after seeing offsprings to school.

 

Is it possible for an entire nation, or at least all the people within it who have sway over all the rest, to be psychotic?

 

Yes, all joking aside I find that I remain very disturbed by that item, which rather preys on the mind.

 

As for your question, I do not feel qualified to answer, but, it must be said that it took a very considerable number of them to put Trump in the White House, which may support your hypothesis. 

[Hroth]

I was beginning to worry that my post had strayed into Pink Floyd territory, but thats pinko liberal stuff compared to Trumpism...

 

I was glad to leave my school, the ethos was set by a head teacher who seemed to be more concerned with his entry into the Church of England rather than in the care and education of the pupils of his school.

 

Back to calculating engines.

 

Why do it with paper, when it can be done by water?

 

Either here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC

 

Or on Discworld

https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Glooper

[Nearholmer]

The part of that particular topic that I really, really, really don’t get is that the problem is framed as being one of mad, bad, and dangerous students, who have to be shot, rather than as the free availability of weapons. Indeed, the solution appears to be to add more weapons to the mix, rather than remove any.

 

Hasn’t it occurred to everyone that there are disturbed students worldwide, that being a bit disturbed for a while is unfortunately part of growing up for a small percentage of people, and that the mercifully lower incidence of school massacres in other counties is not because they already shot all the disturbed kids, but because disturbed kids can’t get guns so easily?

 

And, hasn’t it occurred to everyone that pumping out TV programmes and video games that are couched in terms of conflict that has to be resolved by the goodies pulping the baddies, even programmes for tiny tots, is likely to increase the prevalence of disturbance?

 

Sorry, but that item really got to me.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Nearholmer

[sem34090]

I agree with all of the above, m'lud.

 

The combination of widespread social media and violent games can't be helping anyone.

[Martin S-C]

Just heard a very disturbing segment on R4 concerning the training of armed teachers for schools in Ohio. In one scenario a teacher was commended for shooting dead the kid who pulled a knife (though not for the slight hesitation before doing so), and in another, a teacher mistakenly shot one of the pupils running away from the incident. 

How typical of Americans to use this bent logic. Let's not take guns away from those who have them, but give them to those who do not.

 

I just shake my head in sadness at how broken American society is in regard to its refusal to deal with gun control. Thousands of innocent people every year being shot or killed just because a bunch of men in wigs decided 250 years ago that farmers needed muskets to defend themselves against Indians and Redcoats.

 

The insanity of American society in regard to guns is why I steadfastly refuse to ever visit the USA.