Free online course Just found this free course, if anybody should be interested :)
ABOUT THE COURSE
What is gravity?
This fundamental force is the common theme between concepts as intriguing as the Big Bang, black holes, dark energy, space-time, gravitational waves and the expansion of the Universe.
If these concepts pique your interest, this free online course is for you. It doesn’t require any background in physics or mathematics, just a simple curiosity about the Universe and our place in it.
Mark the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s theory of relativity
The theory of gravity, Einstein’s theory of relativity, was published exactly 100 years ago. This course presents in a simple manner the main ideas behind this theory, before explaining why “gravity is the engine of the Universe.”
The basic notions are then introduced to understand why the Universe is in expansion. We’ll find out:
• why the further you look, the more distant the past is;
• how we can tell what happened just after the Big Bang;
• what the dark components of the Universe are;
• why we’re so impatiently expecting the discovery of gravitational waves;
• and what happens when you cross the horizon of a black hole.
Learn with experts including a Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Over six weeks, you’ll learn with Pierre Binétruy, the Director of the Paris Centre for Cosmological Physics at Paris Diderot University, as well as the cosmologist, George Smoot, who will explain the discovery that earned him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2006.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/gravity
https://www.futurelearn.com/register
NL : The Groningen ABC I found this on a blog about the region. Groningen is the North of the Netherlands; and not in Holland. It is a bit like Scotland, Northumbria and East Anglia all rolled into one, complete with the bagpipes (those are regularly played on the pirate radio stations).
It was written by an unnamed school student in the 1930s (before DE invaded the place and it got bombed possibly twice). Back then they taught the kids in their own dialect (which is closer to German as you would expect) as well as Standard Dutch. The age of the student is not given but s/he is probably early high school age; the academy mentioned at the start appears to have been a public funded high school for kids who are intelligent but whose parents are not that well off and need to be convinced that the child should go to school instead of working on the farm.
it shows how advanced Groningen was even in the early 20th century - not only did they have the school but also electric light in the street (and possibly power to houses), a care home for those who were deaf or dumb, their own bicycle factory, and a town clock (the kid makes the correct distinction between the "uurwaark" (timepiece) and klokken (the bells rung by it) that was accurate enough to calibrate other clocks and wristwatches ( "horlozie" == horloge) as well as a public hospital. They have since started selling fish in the fishmarket (vismaart) once again; in the 1930s it sold everything else apart from fish.
A is d’AKKEDEMIE dij opent de stoet,
doar kroamen de prefesters heur wieshaid in oet.
B is de BEURS woar ain kerel op staait,
dij doarom de ‘Kerel van Korenbeurs’ hait.
C is CATS’ BITTER en CATS’ levertroan,
As je dat pruift, loat je d’r alles veur stoan.
D is ‘t DOOFSTOMMENHUUS, dat leert jonk en old,
het zwiegen is zulver maor ’t spreken is gold.
E is ’t ELECTRISCH STROATLICHT in stad,
doarveur hebben wie nog de lanteernopsteker had.
F dat is FONGERS zien FIETSENFABRIEK,
Doarr moaken ze fietsen, ze hebben geliek.
G is ’t GEVANGENHUUS dat geft groatis loozjies,
moar ik loozjeer laiver bie Willems of Suisse.
H is d’HARMONIE dei grode soosjetait,
woar men veur ’n concert altied geern hin gaait.
I is de IESBOAN veur wintervermoak,
moar zummers den lopen doar koubaisten voak.
J is ‘JAN PLEZAIER’ om met uut rieden te goan,
met kouke en ranja, ’n haile karrevoan.
K is ons KOUKE da’s wereldbekend,
ain pond ‘wrakke latten’ dat kost moar acht cent.
L is ’t LEGER DES HAILS dei binnen overaal,
Ze kennen alles bruken, al is ’t nòg zo maal.
M bennen de MOLLEBONEN, dij moaken ze in stad
doarom hebben stadjers dij noam altied had.
N is ‘t NEISBLAD VAN T NOORDEN woarop èlk zuk abbeneert,
ook al hebben ze ’t lezen soms haildal nait leerd.
O is ’t Museum van OLDHEDEN, as gast
mout je d’r jonk hèngoan, aans hollen ze joe d’r vast!
P is ’t PLANTSOEN da’s jandorie zo’n pracht,
dat de poartjes d’r lopen te kuieren bie bie nacht.
Q is nait Grunnigs, dus wat mout je d’r met
Der is niks van te zeggen, dus gooi moar in mien pet.
R is de RENBOAN doar lopen peerden zuk dood,
of as ze loos bennen, gooien ze berieder in sloot.
S dat is t SLACHTHUUS boeten STAINTILPOORT,
doar wordt ’t vei op ’n menselieke wieze vermoord.
T is de TOREN biegenoamd ’Lange Jan’,
en ’t Peerd op zien kop wiest de windrichting an.
U dat is ’t UURWAARK met klokkemuziek,
doar zet elk zien horlozie en klokke met geliek.
V is de VISMAART, moar allennig in noam,
want vis is d’r aans nait, as met kermis in ’n kroam.
W bennen de WOAGENS, geelachtig van kleur
dij roek je in de verte al, van ‘t Grunneger odeur.
X dat is NIKS dat is goud in joen ogen,
doarmet heb ik deze keer ècht woar nait logen.
IJ is ain WOATERLOOP moar aigenlieks boeten stad
as AE wordt ’t maist schreven, din waiten ie dat.
Z is ’t ZAIKENHUUS wel hail netjes baauwd,
moar om d’r te liggen is toch moar benaauwd.
—
Met dank aan Kor Feringa.
UK : Scot : Younger Scots speakers "throw the R away" "Speakers with a more vernacular Scottish accent seem to delay their 'R' gesture making it hard to hear"
This means ye sassenachs have tae learn Scots the noo - but it was predicted nearly 30 years ago :laugh_at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=066oSmDRKPA
Younger Scots 'losing' their rolling Rs - BBC News
The 10 funniest Danish expressions and how to use them This made me laugh out loud, and it will take some time to read.
[h=2]From windy pelicans to wet bottoms: our columnist gets to grips with her new neighbours and their strange sayings[/h] The 10 funniest Danish expressions and how to use them - Telegraph
UK : This years (Summer 2015) GCSE maths exam To be fair you would need to be in top set to answer either of the two questions and predicted for A / A* as the exam board says - they are about the same level as a 1987 O Level exam which I did sit (back in 1987).
Were I to sit the same exam today I might have got a few marks for the sweets question (but not all the available marks) - and I have totally forgotten how to do simultaneous equations). I probably wouldn't get A or A* for the maths exam; and have never believed the right wing press claims that these exams are "dumbed down"; exams are equally difficult and stressful to a young person as they were nearly 3 decades ago. If any students (or parents) happen to be reading this; it is not the end of the world if you do not get A* in this years GCSE.
It is worth learning at least some skills with basic arithmetic; but there are further education colleges where you can retake the exams. I work for a medium size company here and we don't care when our younger staff got their basic qualifications (whether its 15, 16 or age 20) or for that matter what country they got them in (provided they can speak English). People live to 80-100 anyway so there is no need to try and cram every bit of growing up into below age 25; those who do only end up feeling middle aged by then.
Student protest against 'unfair' GCSE maths question goes viral | Education | The Guardian
Tricky GCSE maths exam sees pupils take to Twitter - BBC News
DK : Medhør As a consequence of a system upgrade, I ended up with 3 DECT-handsets (connected to the same base station and extension) in my room. So I set them to 3 different languages, NL, DE and DK.
When I activate the handsfree loudspeaker, I get
NL : Handsfree (same as in EN)
DE : Lautsprecher
DK : Medhør
which is interesting, as a lot of German telecoms equipment from the 20th century still had a label "Achtung! Feind hört mit!" - in German Mithören means to (covertly) listen in to a telephone circuit. This DECT terminal can (unusually) connect to an already seized line from a different handset (in the same way parallel wired telephones can); but it is hardly covert; the other person would hear the background noise from the "listening" extension, it can be set into privacy mode anyway and if I did require to listen in to a phone call I can do that directly from the telephone exchanges I build using the right codes....
I also found an old Nortel end user guide to one of their featurephones in Danish; it does seem like Medhør more commonly means to "listen in" without necessarily taking part in the conversation (or listening to a music line in a radio or sound studio). Maybe the Japanese used this translation because they wanted to (or were required to) comply with DK privacy laws?
Ich will mein Deutsch verbessern ;) at some time I plan to translate the ethics statement of the Chaos Computer Club (as this hasn't been done for the English version) and also watch a maths tutorial some random German professor kindly shared on Youtube (intended for German teenagers and/or older adults who dropped out of education in the 90s due to the hedonistic times).
North European languages are "difficult" because many words are similar to your own but mean something just slightly different.
The geese are not looking for a "floor" to land on (even the most animal-friendly folk would not tolerate that; they would use it as a toilet) but a suitable piece of land.
The smaller third goose is a new hybrid species (a cross between Canada geese and Asian species) that is noisier than the others :laugh_at:
DK/NL : Ø and å have crossed the border into NL :) schoolchildren who learn the local dialect of Groningen (northern most province of NL) are now being taught to use å and ø to write in this dialect (which makes sense as it has historical links with Scandinavia through shipping and the Hanseatic League)
[h=2]NL - GR[/h]
e(è) - æ [ op je toetsenbord typ je alt (ingedrukt houden) gevolgd door: Z ]
ai - ai
oa - å [ op je toetsenbord typ je alt (ingedrukt houden) gevolgd door: W ]
eu - ø [ op je toetsenbord typ je alt (ingedrukt houden) gevolgd door: L ]
oe - u
u - ù
ui - øj
Groningse taal: woorden en zinnen in de taal uit het noorden | Educatie en School: Taal
UK : East : Freshers week advice from Cambridge Uni in Middle Ages "Goe not a gadding and gossiping from Chamber to Chamber”,
“Wear no boots, nor powder your hair, let yr Garb be grave & sober, yet cheerful & pleasant,”
I think back then most British Universities were for boys only (may have been as late as the 1800s before girls were admitted and then only in segregated colleges); though the advice is probably still valid for todays hipsters :laugh_at:
'Goe not a gadding': Freshers' tips 1660 style - Student Life - Student - The Independent
DK : The Little Red School Book. I mentioned elsewhere my high school English teacher - not just did he encourage us to go to the anarchists bookshop (which wasn't all about protest and rioting but also a community centre, a Pakistani chap whom I was later to work with and whose family are well respected in the electronics industry was a regular there asthey'd have meetings with trade unions about how to deal with multiculturalism and immigration, that caused tension even on the Left).
One thing he particularly encouraged us to buy was a book called "The Little Red School Book". it was deliberately sold for pocket money prices so teenagers could get it,and was packed full with what were very radical ideas about how high schools should run, as well as info about drugs, sex etc. Indeed it was a bit like partyvibe.org in many respects.
it was why he would let us call him by his first name, and often we could suggest what books to read or films to watch or what we would write about. It worked too, as his class wasn't in "sets" of ability so some lads who would normally misbehave in class were there (I was also friends with them; at some point I will post my experiences of computer hacking in 1987.), but unlike other teachers who'd theyd rag a lot more, there would be about 5 mins of banter when he attempted to start up the video recorder and TV or any AV kit and it would all be connected wrong, and he'd often say "Alex, can you help me with this?" to great hoots of laughter from the class, but as soon as the VCR and tellly were correct everyone would fall silent and all eyes would be on the screen as he'd always pick an interesting documentary, often with a leftwing slant (I do wonder if some teachers so did support Thatcho deliberately set the TV all wrong as it would be on random settings like input for a Japanese camera (the school did not get one until 1990, long after he'd left and I was in my last year!)
Anyway, Ssme of it was a bit dated - it was first printed in the early 1970s but got banned in England due to the censorship, and still was "not listed" to libraries so you had to get it rather furtively even in 1986/1987. It is in English, but I noticed the names of the authors were "foreign", and their grammar matched someone whose first language is more Germanic. It turned out that the authors are from Denmark!
So what I've always wondered - do Danish schools for age 11-18 actually do all that cool progressive stuff? I did have a look last night on Danish wikipedia, but it was complicated as there are about 20 different sorts of schools and it seems everyone can still go to school at age 40 or even age 80 as they feel you must always be learning throughout life (another friend of mine from Northern Europe says this was the case in his country)
the English teacher at my old high school I mentioned elsewhere my first English Literature teacher at high school around 1985.
He was definitely a hippy type but a very good teacher - he would often show interesting video documentaries to the class, and was more like a European teacher, he would encourage us to call him by his first name (not normal in UK schools) and was very progressive in his views. Everyone liked him and even those who made mischief would rarely do so in his class.
In those days VHS video tape was used, the big colour TV sets used in school classrooms were expensive (they only had about 5 for a very large school with 1500 students), these sets were shared between the arts and science blocks. They were either based on a British TV set or a Scandinavian model (posher schools got the ones from DK/SE) and had all sorts of connections not commonly found in that era (SCART connector was not yet invented) and a switching panel (the set could be used as a normal TV, or a monitor to play back video tapes or even to relay its signal to another set at the end of a long coax cable (for big groups).
The school did have an AV technician but she was a petite young woman in her late 20s/30s, TV sets then were very heavy (even on trolleys) so the janitor would be given the task of bringing the set to a classroom.
Very often the switching panel and/or the connection leads had often been changed by the science teachers and not returned to normal operation, so the English teacher would find the tape was playing but the screen blank or just showing noise and would get confused by all the buttons and switches (some of which were in odd places including also on the video recorder). He knew I had an interest in AV/multimedia, thus I often managed to get extensions on homework (and sometimes blatantly not do it at all some weeks) for getting the TV working correctly, he knew I could do good work and was also very aware of Oriental culture and that schoolkids of my ancestry are put under enough pressure as it is by their parents.
he later left high school teaching and now teaches some martial arts (the ones where you eat good food and exercise but don't do violent stuff), and in the late 80s went to China (which wasn't that easy to do due to Cold War) and became the very first white man to get the title of sifu for these martial arts.
He still teaches them today and travels between China and SW England, I will email him the pics of the housing co-op and the community radio station (he realised wanted to do these things even then but it wasn't possible in England) and it is probably because of his teaching that I am able to do many things today both at work and for hobbies.
NL : Video from VSL (Dutch Metrology Laboratory) with good soundtrack.. VSL are like NPL in England, they keep track of national standards for time and other measurements (and agree on the international definition of units, these can change as science advances).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRnT8hIxjqk
uni ? Do you think in the current climate university is a good idea?
So in a nut shell I have worked through my last year at school, after school I worked and went to college to study art. This was good but at 17 I was quite immature at told to move out (I wasnt a bad teenager but my dad got a new misus and baby in the house) I had to stay at my nans which worked badly. After college I worked full time and had to find a way to move out of hers. I then met Jason moved to brighton and got a new job and after a year we had a baby. Its now been 2years since my last job ( which were all dead end min wage jobs) and I really need to think about my future.
I love art and my dream job would be based around it. I really want to study as I can learn to improve my skills, use their resources ( which is important in art because artists tools are expensive as is finding somewhere to do it.) and make friends.
I understand how important realistic goals are and as we all know subjects like art have a low percentage of students going on to develop careers.
So Im thinking its not a great idea, should I just find something else to study ? ( baring in mind studying with a child is quite hard so it would have to be something I am motivated for)
UK : 24 hour University libraries Seems like a good idea to be fair, just because they are there doesn't mean all the students will overdo it and there are far worse (and unsafe) places for them to be hanging around late at night...
they mentioned folk are quietly crashing out in the corner after nights partying, could also be a good way for those who take stimulants to deal with not being able to sleep, they might even learn more stuff from reading the books :wink:
24 hour library people: all work, no play? | Education | guardian.co.uk
Hi school students outburst as he is told to leave the room. Not sure what the back story to this is but he does make a fair point, but he is wrong to do it in front of the class and should have said to her in private if he had an issue. Becaise it seems like he is doing it to humiliate her
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAYVv_kBWi8
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