

"Will it rot my students' brains if they use Mathematica?" - asciilifeform
http://www.theodoregray.com/BrainRot/index.html

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mechanical_fish
The first half of this is very, very good. _Really_ good.

I tuned out in the second half, somewhere in the middle of the big rant about
how playing _Doom_ has conditioned me to be a violent bloodthirsty killer. Or
whatever. Maybe there was some more good argumentation down there, somewhere,
but I shall never know. I was too busy imagining how the streets of South
Korea must look now that an entire generation has grown up playing
_Starcraft_. Blood runs in the gutters of Seoul! Don't make any Zerg-like
moves on the subway!

Sometimes, even good writers need editors.

~~~
parenthesis
If you skip the middle bit, do please at least read from _But what do violent
video games have to do with educational software?_ to the end, where you will
find a very worthwhile discussion of what makes good vs. bad educational
software.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Your editorial efforts are appreciated. ;)

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kqr2
The mathematica home edition is now priced at $300 which makes it more
affordabe:

[http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematicahomeedition/qa.ht...](http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematicahomeedition/qa.html)

~~~
gaius
Not available outside the US and Canada tho', and Wolfram UK don't know
if/when it will be.

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lsb
I really loved the first half.

I'm working on my master's in Classics, with some Computer Science on the sly,
and one of our requirements is a reading proficiency in French or German. When
we're reading through paper journals in the library stacks, the thinking went,
we'll need a knowledge of French or German to get through all the scholarship.

I can't see myself ever reading any journal articles far away from a computer
with an internet connection to Google Translate, but academic requirements
aren't changing as fast at the technology scene.

Fortunately, technology came to the rescue. There's a huge corpus of text
segmented by domain, Wikipédia, so I just read various articles and refreshed
my French.

~~~
jfarmer
The same is true in Mathematics. Most PhD programs and some maters' programs
require proficiency in German, French, or Russian.

~~~
anewaccountname
The real goal of it is to have mathemeticians available to translate journal
articles into english for the curriculum-setting elder mathemeticians =P.

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fgimenez
I wonder where a game like Myst, where nothing is easy to figure out, would
fall under this spectrum of computer games. I remember spending hours with
friends trying to solve the logic puzzles and still believe it was one of the
best games I've ever played.

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dylanz
Excellent discussion. They both have great points, are well read, and,
experienced in the topic at hand. Theo has some great explanations.

OT... my 4 year old just learned how to do simple addition AND can gut a
chicken. A fine balance !

