"Good for him. This was an absolute ridiculous case."
Absolutely so. I watched Tom's Explosions & Fire video just after he published it and as he said this prosecution was a gross overreaction by authorities. I say that as someone who once worked in nuclear safeguards/surveillance (I'm an ardent non-proliferation guy).
Living in Australia one has become to expect such incidents although this was the first one involving nuclear materials. The reasons are complex and too difficult to describe in detail here but it's a combination of poor education in tech matters, a very timid, risk averse and conservative Australian population and the fact that we've precious little high tech industries/infrastructure, concomitantly we've almost no high tech culture to speak of.
Moreover, it wasn't always like this, it has gotten worse over the years. For instance, when I was at school quite some decades ago we had samples of metallic uranium and some small amounts of other radioactive materials to do physics experiments with. Today, the mere thought of that would send shivers down the backs of educators and most of the population.
Such high levels of timidy and concern are not just limited to radioactive materials, the same concern applies to chemicals well and above that necessary to protect public safety—for instance, the state where I live has now banned fireworks (and that's just for starters).
That has ramifications past just safety considerations, one of the reasons I became interested in chemistry was fireworks and that we leaned to make black powder in highschool chemistry and actually got to test it (today, even that's banned in our school system). Similarly, we've even produced a generation of kids and young adults who've never seen liquid mercury.
Let no one say I'm against safety as I'm particularly careful around dangerous substances. That said, you can have both in a well regulated environment and with a well educated population.
Without hands-on experience, Australia is deskilling its population and tragically this unfortunate prosecution is testament to that.
Superstition and witch-burning are natural human behaviors. Philosophy has always required a ceaseless struggle against them. William Kamkwamba was nearly lynched by his neighbors for building a windmill.
Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of the fact. BTW, I've always thought civilization is only one step removed from superstition and witch-burning if but not for the fact of education.
That film was made about 40 years ago and even then the Dundee character was a dying breed and only found in pockets of Australian society—those parts where life was hard and day-to-day activities were hands-on with the physical world (like those portrayed in the film).
Even in the '80s most Australians wouldn't have lived and worked like that, these days much less so. Most Australians live in a highly urbanized city environment and many of them live in high-rise buildings without even a backyard. Moreover, nowadays, they mostly work in the service industries such as banking, finance, tourism and retail. Put simply, a reasonable percentage would hardly know one end of a screwdriver from another let alone perform manual labour or know how to ride a horse, or use a lathe or milling machine.
That may sound harsh but having lived through that time (I was an adult when the film was released) I reckon that's a reasonable assessment. You also need to keep in mind that Australia has essentially killed off its manufacturing industries over that time with China being the beneficiary. Thus, Australian society has lost many of those hands-on, down-to-earth skills it had at the end of WWII through to the end of the 1960s. Today's Australian society is nothing like it was when I was growing up, I now live in a totally different world.
BTW, what made Paul Hogan (Dundee) so suitable for the film's character was that he is one of that dying breed of hardworking ruffians and was so before he became an actor, his persona was essentially behind the making of the film. He came from the rough outback opal mining town of Lightning Ridge and then worked as a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge—a very dangerous job that required working at hundreds of feet in the air—those with the slightest fear of heights would have been terrified, and that would include most Australians. (I can say that because in my younger days I used to work on radio and television towers—shame I can't show you photos I took from the top of them).
We can't drink alcohol without getting cancer, we can't eat red meat, cheese, dairy products etc. without getting cardiovascular disease, we can't eat most fish because of its mercury content not to mention the build up of micro plastics. Vegetables contain toxins such as oxalic acid—and that's just one of many.
We can't eat sugar without becoming obese and or getting diabetes, and the sugar fructose causes oxidative cell damage—consume too much fruit and or things containing corn syrup such as sodas and you're in big trouble. Carbohydrates make you obese and can cause diabetes, and the refined stuff is hypoglycaemic—causes hypoglycemia etc.
Then there are all the special precautions that apply to certain foods—peanuts, shellfish can cause allergies and life-threatening anaphylaxis. Eat the wrong type of mushrooms and you're soon dead—there's no antidote for their cyclic peptide toxins such as amatoxin. Oh, and by the way peanuts and peanut butter often contain small amounts of mold which produces the poisonous and carcinogenic aflatoxin—buy from a disreputable supplier who's not done proper testing and you could rue the consequences.
Seems we can no longer store our food in plastic containers because of shedding micro-plastics that accumulate in our arteries and even our brains. Toast some bread or make any yummy crispy foods and the cooking process causes a build up of the carcinogenic chemical acrylamide—even the cooking of food is dangerous. And if you don't cook certain foods you then risk all sorts of diseases: everything from bacterial infections — E. coli etc., to food poisoning, to tapeworms, to toxoplasmosis, and even more….
Moreover, even cooking vegetables in the microwave is dangerous because the temperature is hotter than when when boiled. Ah, and it gets worse, the higher microwave temperature causes additional micro plastics to shed into food and phthalates, DEHP etc., leach out of plastic containers, especially if cooking oils are present.
Hoping to escape sugary poisons we turn to artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose and saccharin only to be told they can cause a plethora of ailments including cancer.
I'm fed up hearing the goddamn woeful news about the dangers of food, year after year, it's never-ending. Perhaps it's time these bringers of doom ought to tell us the truth:
"Food is dangerous and can kill you, eat at your own risk."
Pocket-money fines won't stay that way and will be indexed if the EU is serious. That said, one has to doubt that the EU was ever serious given the fines have been so low from the outset.
Don't hold your breath waiting for fines to be increased.
Calibrating a monitor is intended to ensure that colors on your monitor closely match colors on an ideal reference monitor. That's not the same thing as ensuring that two different colors on the same monitor actually show up differently; that's a much looser quality standard, because even a badly mis-calibrated monitor may still show both colors as distinct wrong colors.
I would only expect poor calibration to break this test for colors near the edge of the display's gamut, or if there's a drastic-enough shift that the color space's lack of perceptual uniformity means a numerical difference that should have been visible ends up in a different part of the color space where that same numerical difference is not perceptible.
Well, I initially ran the test on my cheap vivo phone when I switched to my Motorola the difference was very noticeable, there's obvious color crushing/reduced visible color gamut on the vivo, they're like chalk and cheese when compared side by side.
BTW, I used to calibrate color grading equipment for the film processing industry and the controls were strict, 18% gray walls, D65 calibration sources, densitometric equipment, Ishihara tests for me, etc. so I'm well aware of the issues.
I got the same number wrong but I've passed every Ishihara test ever thrown at me. I did this test on a cheap mobile that's not calibrated, so it's anyone guess what its gamma and transfer curves are like.
One should only take such tests seriously if one's using a properly calibrated monitor and it's viewed under ideal viewing conditions.
"20 years later, I got back to playing piano, and I can't thank my parent enough for having me to continue playing in my teenage years."
One of the tragedies of being young is that few have the insight to realize that the 'boring' stuff parents and teachers are forcing us to learn will actually benefit us and that eventually we'll be very thankful that they did.
My parents nagged me all the time about studying and even though I did my fair share of it I never fully appreciated how important it was until much later.
It's a strange phenomenon, one cognitively understands the reasons but one is isolated from the reality so one is somewhat distant from it. For example, one can get upset watching war footage on TV but being there is on another level altogether (soldiers often do not talk of their experiences because they know those at home will never fully understand).
In the same way, wisdom gained through experience is almost impossible to impart to a younger generation who has no actual experience.
I upvoted all of the above posts because - all of them share some correct arguments.
* Training is hard.
* Using your training e.g. a bicycle race is fun.
* Training is easier, if you actually know why you’re doing it and recognize some progress.
> the 'boring' stuff parents and teachers are forcing us to learn will actually benefit us
My parents forced me to play the piano for more than 10 years because they were obsessed with the piano, and because they had a piano. I hated every second of doing that in order to please them, and I never got higher than beginner level because it was a torture for me. Being a beginner for 10 years should be considered as abuse and it messed me up big time, especially for my daily confidence.
30 years later, I still hate that fucking thing and I understand that they fucked up due to their delusion. They deny everything when we talk about it though.
Sometimes you have to listen to the kids and understand what they want do do, and accept it instead of feeding your Munchausen by proxy syndrome. All I wanted was a computer, even the cheapest computer ever would have been acceptable. Nowadays, I write C++ for a living and I still hate the piano. If only anyone listened to me back then... My hatred for that instrument is a mystery for some people, and some people think that "wisdom gained through experience is almost impossible."
Amen. And the surreal thing is to then hear the very same mentalities behind this uttered in this comment section.
It's like there's like a vehemence in people towards abuse. Reminds me of how Zweig said that people were in a state of jubilation in anticipation of WW1.
There's something dark in humans where they don't accept the absence of pain. They think to at least some extent, that hurting their kids is a good thing, perhaps under a twisted "toughen them up" mentality.
And the thing is, they get away with it. Maybe their kid gets a chip on their shoulder against them, or maybe even estranged from them. But they don't get hurt back.
"They think to at least some extent, that hurting their kids is a good thing, perhaps under a twisted "toughen them up" mentality."
Hurting a kid and proper discipline are two separate matters. Good discipline and training doesn't hurt kids (in fact many enjoy them). If you find that your actions are hurting a kid then you are doing things wrong.
"Sometimes you have to listen to the kids and understand what they want do do, and accept it instead of feeding your Munchausen by proxy syndrome."
I agree, and it's more than 'sometimes', kids have a right to be heard and that hearing should be fair and reasonable. Clearly, in your case it wasn't.
What you experienced was unacceptable by any measure, and in my opinion the fact that your parents were oblivious to your predicament is a damning indictment on their parenting skills.
Your extreme situation isn't what I was referring to, so let me explain by briefly describing what I experienced.
I learned the piano because I wanted to, not because my parents forced me. In fact, whilst my parents were both musical we didn't have a piano when I was young—so I started late and that's been to my disadvantage. I mention that to let you know I understand what you went through.
Whilst I like the piano learning it was no bed of roses and it's difficult for all but the most talented (anyone not wishing to learn it would be an unmitigated drag). For me, those fucking Czerny scales used to drive me to distraction, I'd goof off and play whatever took my fancy whenever I could. Also, my teacher used to reprimand me regularly for not reading score timings as written, I'd play the tempo as I felt felt like it and that always casued a ruckus.
At no time did my parents force me to take subjects that I did not like. That said, gentle persuasion was used. I was never much good at languages and despite my ambivalence for the subject I took French not so much at my mother's insistence but rather her desire that I do so (her sister married a Frenchman and was living in France and she thought it would be useful). Learning French used to drive me crazy, it's not that I detested it (I understood its value), rather the problem was that I wasn't much good at the subject. I'd sit on my bed at home doing my French homework and bash my textbook up and down on the bedclothes whilst tying to learn those fucking French nouns with their damn random genders—why the fuck can't they all be 'la' or 'le' and not random? Having a single 'the' in English is immanently sensible.
Well, despite being not much good at the subject in hindsight learning French turned out to be a blessing when I was living in Europe. I could never have foreseen that situation when I was at school.
Another example, my father used to nag me about not taking Latin, my usual retort being why the hell would I want to learn a dead language (although that was more in jest at his persistence). I sort of had a paltry excuse as my school didn't teach Latin but there were arrangements to do certain subjects by correspondence under teacher supervision in the library. So I never took the subject at school, so nowadays my Latin is at best a mess.
That was a fucking mistake of the first order on my part for reasons too long to describe here. It's only the wisdom of hindsight that I now know I should have taken my father's advice.
BTW, I understand your frustration over not having access to a computer, I'm an IT professional and I managed an IT department for years (I was one of those nerds university security would regularly chuck out of the computer room at 10pm at night). If I'd been in your position, I'd have been mightily pissed off at your parents' miserable attitude.
> One of the tragedies of being young is that few have the insight to realize that the 'boring' stuff parents and teachers are forcing us to learn will actually benefit us and that eventually we'll be very thankful that they did.
I'm 40. I don't know, perhaps I'm still young.
I did not appreciate having to learn the boring parts. Learning things for the next exam so as to forget them in two weeks... I didn't see the point then and still don't.
I managed to get by with the minimum possible, fluked my CS education, then had a career earning an order of magnitude more than the average salary. Shrug.
Maybe I'm missing something else because of my lack of education? I don't know...
We’re all going to have different paths but I’m certain that flunking CS education and then getting 10x the average salary is not going to be the common case and was probably only possible for a given point in time.
I’m in my late 40s. I left grad school to get a job in VLSI because it was possible to do so in the job market of the 90s. In today’s job market we wouldn’t even pickup the resume of a new college graduate that didn’t have at least a masters. I would’ve been totally passed by today.
Assuming the benefit we’re looking is getting a high paying job of course.
You (and I and many others on HN) were lucky enough to join the tech industry while it was still growing explosively and got outsized salaries because of it. If you were to do the same thing today, you'd be telling a very different and much grimmer tale.
I had way more than usual share of "life events". I threw my career out the window to care for my toddler and dying partner. Then my partner died and I'm left alone raising the kid. What else is going to happen to make me wiser?
"At school they keep trying to make them memorize useful phrases, like a tourist that goes to Paris…."
Like learning dozens of trig identities without any explanation about why one would need them. As I've mentioned elsewhere learning math for the sake of it isn't enough. For most of us math has to have relevance, and for that we have to link it to things in the real world.
I'm damed sure I'd be much worse at math if I'd not been pushed in a formal environment such as a school classroom.
I liked math—especially calculus as it made sense to me—but parts became a drudgery when I could see no reason for studying them.
Right, there's always the kid in class who excels at math like a mini Euler and gets bored because the rest can't keep up but the majority of us aren't like that—doing Bessel functions and Fourier stuff as abstract mathematics without any seeming purpose can seem pointless and our only interest in them was to pass exams. (Teaching may be better these days but my textbooks never discussed the value of learning these aspects of mathematics.)
Later whilst studying elec eng/electronics it became very obvious to me how important these aspects of mathematics were. If I'd been given some practical examples of why this math was useful then I'd have been much more enthusiastic.
Same goes for the history of mathematics, I'm old enough to have had a small textbook full of log and trig tables yet if someone had asked me at highschool who John Napier was I wouldn't have had a clue. In hindsight, that was terrible.
Mathematics is often taught as if the student was going to become a mathematician à la Hardy or Ramanujan and I'm firmly of the belief this is not the best approach for the average student let alone those with few math skills.
Mathematics ought to be taught with the real world in mind for ease of understanding. For example, it's dead easy to represent AC power as a sine wave and from there use that mathematical fact to solve power problems. (Perhaps maths and physics texts should be written in tandem and synced to show relevance.)
Teachers need to take time to explain that math isn't just abstract concepts but that it's very relevant to everyday life and that tying up mathematical functions to things in the real world is actually interesting and enjoyable.
> (Perhaps maths and physics texts should be written in tandem and synced to show relevance.)
I agree with most of what you wrote, but this part is tricky. Yes, it would be nice to have math and physics textbooks synced. Maybe other subjects, too.
But writing a textbook is a lot of work; it can take years. How do we get two textbooks synced, if they are written by different people? One writes their book first, then the other has to match it? What if the other disagrees with how the first book was organized? They both write together? Now there is a risk that one does a good job, another does a bad job, and the good textbook is connected to the bad one.
Or maybe write the common outline first, and then each author is trying to follow it independently? Plus, there could be multiple versions of each book, following the same outline, so each math textbook can be connected with each physics textbook based on the same outline. Here the problem is that people often disagree on the outline.
Also, not sure how important is this part, having things in sync could slow down the improvement in the future. For example, imagine that we figure out a better way to teach something in physics. But now everyone is used to having math and physics textbooks synced, so the new physics books would be rejected, until someone rewrites the math books too.
Absolutely so. I watched Tom's Explosions & Fire video just after he published it and as he said this prosecution was a gross overreaction by authorities. I say that as someone who once worked in nuclear safeguards/surveillance (I'm an ardent non-proliferation guy).
Living in Australia one has become to expect such incidents although this was the first one involving nuclear materials. The reasons are complex and too difficult to describe in detail here but it's a combination of poor education in tech matters, a very timid, risk averse and conservative Australian population and the fact that we've precious little high tech industries/infrastructure, concomitantly we've almost no high tech culture to speak of.
Moreover, it wasn't always like this, it has gotten worse over the years. For instance, when I was at school quite some decades ago we had samples of metallic uranium and some small amounts of other radioactive materials to do physics experiments with. Today, the mere thought of that would send shivers down the backs of educators and most of the population.
Such high levels of timidy and concern are not just limited to radioactive materials, the same concern applies to chemicals well and above that necessary to protect public safety—for instance, the state where I live has now banned fireworks (and that's just for starters).
That has ramifications past just safety considerations, one of the reasons I became interested in chemistry was fireworks and that we leaned to make black powder in highschool chemistry and actually got to test it (today, even that's banned in our school system). Similarly, we've even produced a generation of kids and young adults who've never seen liquid mercury.
Let no one say I'm against safety as I'm particularly careful around dangerous substances. That said, you can have both in a well regulated environment and with a well educated population.
Without hands-on experience, Australia is deskilling its population and tragically this unfortunate prosecution is testament to that.
reply