[Edu-sig] The fate of raw_input() in Python 3000

[kirby urner]

On 9/15/06, ajsiegel at optonline.net <ajsiegel at optonline.net> wrote:

> There is no such thing as gnu math, so I have idea what the hell
> you are talking about.
>

I beg to differ, except begging isn't really my style.

> >
> > Disney is a stronger teacher than Heidegger in my book.
>
> And if you submit that book to the marketplace of ideas and few buy it - well,
> the marketplace has spoken.

Nobody buys Heidegger.  Part of Disney's genius as a philosopher was
to turn his stuff into cartoons.  I've been trying to do something
similar, but I can't draw worth beans.

> If you submit motives for a conspiracy of
> suppression that ring true, that might be considered, in some circles.
> You haven't, to my ear.  Your conspiracy theory seems to be in line
> with Kay's - that everyone is simply dumber.

That's a good place to start.  Kay gets my attention for being a
Slayer of some kind, hard to type him at first.  But as the meetings
went on, I ended up having fewer and fewer problems with the guy.
Plus Smalltalk is a dead language and off my radar, so I'm not feeling
like he's a Big Threat to my competing brand of snake oil.

> No wonder you belong to the same support group.
>

I hope not.  I like the diversity it adds, to have Alan operating
independently, neither of us feeling like we're trying to dictate to
the other.  If there's leftover business, it's probably that basic
background frustration level we all have with technology:  it's dumber
than it could be or should be, if we just had more time to concentrate
and experiment.  But stupid wars keep getting in the way.

The story of television is instructive.  It was all set to go *before*
WWII, but the war delayed its inception in the public eye.  However,
in retrospect, if we'd had more sophistication with this medium,
there's every possibility that war could have been made far less
devastating, if not altogether prevented.  TV, in wise hands, puts a
heavy damper on war (as cold warriors discovered).  You see "the
others" and empathize more, demonize less.  Plus there're likely lots
of embedded Americans, everywhere you go.

>
> > If the Ivory Tower had any pride, it'd have raised the CP4E
> > banner
>
> I have zero stake in the Ivory Tower.

I don't know what this means exactly.  I'd think you'd be trying to
plant the Pygeo flag in this or that campus.  That's would I'd be
doing with such an asset. If you've got it, flaunt it, at least
discreetly.

> And I would like to bury the CP4E banner.
>

Not me.  I want students to feel someone cares, that not every school
of thought is as invested in dumbing them down as it sometimes seems
to them.

I'm in overdrive trying to make TV executives see the wisdom in taking
Basic Education beyond the Sesame Street level.

They way they're already doing that with cop shows like NUMB3RS (which
mentioned Sloane's Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences in a recent
episode), but I say a diet of All Fiction All the Time is not good
enough.

Bill Nye the Science guy is more on the money.

A problem:  actually showing source code is frustrating in both NTSC
and PAL.  HDTV is what's needed.  ToonTown aims to focus in high
bandwidth  Not that source code is all we want to show -- but let's
drop this foolish notion that flatscreens spell the end of Lexical
Literacy.  We stare at Word all day yet still seem to believe that.

> So the problem must be a little more complicated
> than that.
>
> Art

My assembled CP4E troops keep waiting to be noticed by the lazy Eloi,
nursing on their baby algebra books, teaching "precalculus," other
pablum.

Over and over I've put them on notice:  we have an investment in
children too ya know, want at least a few Morlocks to play with, not
to mention Wizards, other types of Circus Geek (link to chicken).

Do you really want us to invade?  Wanna negotiate first?

All we get back are jeers and sneers:  you don't really exist, you're
just a mirage.

They wish.

By now it's too late to negotiate the same way we might have.  Too
many dead already.

Kirby