As a former high school math teacher, I interpreted "general math" as a class intended for students who have not been successful with the typical grade-level math curriculum. That is a situation where teachers need to get creative with instructional approaches.
As a child in the 70s, I spent endless hours at teletype terminals connected to the Dartmouth time-sharing system, writing programs in BASIC, the language he and Kemeny designed for ordinary people.
I am no theologian, but this seemed like an interesting topic until I started reading the article, which likely could have been summarized in a paragraph or two. The relentless onslaught of advertisements and white space made me want to claw my eyeballs out. Then the author plagiarized himself in his own article, telling us TWICE that "Q" is short for the German word “Quelle,” meaning “source”. It reads like a high-school essay that has to reach a word count.
I am spending my retirement working part-time on a realistic spacecraft simulator (3D, VR) set in the late 20th century on a fictional moon made of Tungsten ("Tungsten Moon"). For some reason, I decided the spacecraft needs a "real" flight computer with code that can be modified by the player, so I am now deeply immersed in coding a Forth virtual computer ("AMC Forth") to run in-game. It will control the navigation and systems on the spacecraft. If you've gotten this far, and you're intrigued, you can try the free demo on Steam (no Forth machine yet).
They often don't. Consider phenylephrine, the OTC replacement ingredient for the original Sudafed formula. If you ever felt like it didn't do a damned thing for nasal congestion, then you'd be right. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-panel-says-co...
Now I have to watch it again. How did I never notice.. ?
I thought this was going to be about the other scratches that are visible in the film: the ones on the piece of glass that is used to create the illusion of a floating pen. I never noticed that until I saw my first screening of a pristine 70 mm print in a smallish theater. I was hoping to read about that and any other physical scratches I might have missed.
Feynman grapples with the question the same way we would grapple with a question from a child: "why is the sky blue?" If you drill down into the explanation, you ultimately reach a statement that everyone just accepts as true, or you simply end with, "no one knows".
The way Feynman answered it looked extremely condescending and anti curiousity. Being pedantic for no reason. When answering you should try to guesstimate what the asker who is not an expert in your field is looking for and then start explanation relative from there.
At certain point, yes, you do have to say that either you don't know or humans haven't figured it out yet.
I took it very differently. I took it as him encouraging curiosity, because his point was, if you are curious, and nobody's explanation is satisfying you, then you should go research it yourself and be the first one to be able to explain it to the level you were looking for.
It's Richard Feynmann. He wasn't gonna be like "Magnets attract and repel because the spins of the electrons in atoms in the magnet are preferentially aligned which causes a macroscopic dipole in the magnetic field", and just leave it at that, like he just shared de-facto science gospel, because he doesn't want to assume that you won't ask something like "why do aligned electron spins create a macroscopic magnetic field?" or "Why do electrons spin?" or "is a magnetic monopole possible?"
He is teaching the core of curiosity itself. You can ask as many questions you can think of, but if you're not happy with the answers, then there's no other option than to go out there and do your own science. He is one of the smartest physicists of the last century and he is telling you that you don't have to take his word for it, he will not be able to answer everything for you and nobody will. And hopefully you are still curious after that.
Having read some of his lectures, and his autobiography, he was anything but anti-curiosity in him or in others. Watch that through the lens of someone who valued nothing more than asking questions and it might come across differently.
Eight years ago, when I bought my first Nissan Leaf, I was astonished to learn that the process of charging the car at a CHAdeMO station was entirely different from the process of filling a gasoline car. Eight years later, with a wallet full of different membership cards, and every charger with a different UI, the situation has actually gotten worse.
I, for one, welcome our new Tesla charging overlords.
Funny anecdote from two weeks ago: I had just finished a CHAdeMO session, stopped the charge, the UI said it was done (have a nice day!) but the charger refused to release the plug from the car. I spent ten minutes pulling and pulling, and talking to a clueless person on a customer service line, when the charger unlocked it all by itself. Imagine a system where a bug or glitch can lock the charging cable to your car for no reason whatsoever, completely immobilizing you in the middle of your trip!
I am building my very first computer game, Tungsten Moon, a VR+desktop spaceflight simulator with realistic physics and engineering, inspired by Orbiter, Eagle Lander 3D, and a little bit of Subnautica: https://tungstenmoon.com/
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