[Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL

[Kirby Urner]

> My answer to your moral activist concerns, which I like to think I share
> in my way, is "mindfulness".
> 
> Mindfulness depends on an appreciation of the evolution of things.
> 

I can't help but translate this into some Buddhist namespace -- several are
familiar to me.

> The "Empires of Time" subheading to the Galison's book is somewhat a play
> on words, but in the most basic sense he means Empire, as in Roman Empire,
> British Empire.

In Fuller's (RBF's) lexicon, some of which I've adopted, per Synergetics
Dictionary (EJA), we speak of the East India Company, which his father
worked for.  Fuller himself drank tea to excess.  I'm more inclined towards
coffee (plus am also sometimes excessive).

Speaking of coffee, I meant to include 'coffee drinkers' in my list of
programmer nicknames:  gemologists (Ruby), perl divers (duh), snake charmers
(double duh), and now Java programmers.

> There is nothing at all inevitable  - or scientific (ask the French
> revolutionists who tried to influence things otherwise) - about how we
> have come to express what time it is in Tokyo.
> 
> What time is it in Tokyo?
> 
> Have a year or two to discuss it?
> 
> Art

You want this to be poetry or something?  Airplanes have to land, computers
have to communicate, phone calls have to occur.  The details were worked out
years ago, and are now basic infrastructure.  To me, it sounds like you're
saying we shouldn't teach basic infra to 2nd graders, by showing 'em their
school via Google Earth.  No, we have to wait for some teacher to wax poetic
in like 10th grade, where they maybe give it some existentialist spin (all
highly irrelevant).

I'm not talking about airy fairy stuff, I'm talking basic logistics.  Think
of Dutch kids learning about dikes.  "This is why we're not all under water
kids."  If GPS is off by a second of an arc, a lot of people could die.
Remember in Louisiana when that guy on the porch shouted to CBS News that
they should turn on the pumps.  He was right, and that's what the military
was working on (generals got involved).  But first the pumps hadda be pumped
out by other pumps, pumps that got floated into place by boat.  Then Rita
hit.

Kirby