Think outside the box.

So did you?..

I named them as, Electromagnetic, Strong nuclear, weak nuclear and Gravity.

Kid is looking at me strangely..... I then add that Gravitational is the greatest force in the universe....
The reply to that is No it isnt, the forces involved in nuclear force are stronger.

Oh yeah?.. what about the black hole paradox?...

I state with conviction that I believe the definition of absolute zero will be at the centre of a black hole, because inside that gravity field, you will have compressed the atom so much, the electrons have no space to move, therefore, have no energy, and thus they will be "cold".
Its because we cant see a black hole that we know they exist.

Gravity inside a back hole has the ability to compress the atom, therefore, gravity, the force that creates galaxies, solar systems, planets, suns, and all the rest, is not just a week force, it is just spread out a lot at the moment around here, where as, electromagnetic and nuclear forces only have a localised effect.
Even Radio waves have a limited ability. Gravity, however, is "Everywhere", and as such, it can interact with other forces and be greater than them...

In that a radio telescope pointed in the right direction will see deflection of radio waves around a black hole, and isnt that how we found evidence to support the existence of black holes in the first place.

My kid looks at me.... how the hell do I know all this stuff?... its part of the argument he is having at his college at the moment, and as I have never ever been that far in the education system, why do I know this stuff?...

Right you lot, listen in, and take note.
It YOUR fault.

All of you have helped "educate" me in many things,

One of the things I am keeping back for later is our knowledge of "Dark Matter".
Dark matter, as discussed on here, is like the Higgs Bosun 5 years ago....
Back when we {Human race} only thought we might know it may exist....

Dark matter, as we know, is only the stuff we expect to find, because its the stuff we havnt discovered yet.
Look at the periodic table from the 1980's, the last time I studied it in education, and compare it to now.
The 1980's one has a lot of "dark matter" missing, that we now know exists, so therefore, the bits discovered since 1980's are no longer "dark matter"?...

So can we all keep this site a secret from my kid?.. as its one thing I got that keeps me able to discuss things with him....

I am to him a Truck driver that used to run a Pub many years ago.
He is still amazed that some of the things I know are even in my interest....

And I still have yet to tell him how many of the Richard Feynman lectures I have actually watched....

Why?..
Yo keep ahead of him?...

Erm... no... this isnt a race.
I want to encourage him to be further up the tree than I have ever dared to climb.
He is well on his way.
What he doesnt realise yet that I have e genuine interest in all of this stuff, it fascinates me, and I spend more time doing this than he does playing games...
Because my "after work" hours are right about now, its 11:30 am here, and daytime TV is a blast of noise thats supposed to entertain those people who dont work.

I could watch TV, or I can watch something like the video of Douglas Adams Hyperland.
Go look for it, its funny and slightly educational.

So where is this thread going?...

Anywhere you want to take it.
Just think outside the box and see what happens.

Then go and think about Education. how we teach our kids, what we teach them, why, and is it any use to them?....

Quadratic equations.... I remember studying them for my "O" level maths.

Then I found out about Schiehallion, a mountain in Scotland, and how its regular weight and the deflection of a pendulum by the astronomer royal Nevil Maskelyne were used to calculate the weight of Earth.
Charles Mason then did the calculations....

Even with the best minds we have in todays world, the calculations done back then in 1773 were no more than a few percent out.....

All the changes they are making in maths and how we teach it to kids.
Is it doing any good?..

You cant change the numbers, they remain constant, and, in that, I enter a plea that perhaps the methods used to teach maths back then were equal or better to what we teach today.
Except back then they did it in their head or reached for a slide rule, basics, now, we teach them how to google the answer.

Its not what we are teaching the kids, its how we teach the kids.

I can by just thinking about it construct a wardrobe, and was able to do that at school
Most kids leave school with just about enough woodwork experience to build a pencil box....

But they can hold an interesting discussion on the financial system of countries the wrong side of the world and far away from where they will ever visit....

Are we trying to teach them too much?...

Surely knowing three subjects in depth and being able to master one or two basic trades alongside Maths and English would be better that "just about adequate" in a dozen subjects they will never use.
Surely school is the time when we need to educate them in what industries there are available locally.... and maybe train them in that?...

If the local industry is steelworks, do they need to know the history of Coal mining?..
If the local industry is Mining, do they need to know agriculture?..
If the local industry is agriculture and the nearest mine is 500 mile away, the nearest steelworks is a two hour flight or more, scythe the above, teach 'em how to drive tractor.....

If they have no interest in the local industry, they can go to colleges where there are different subjects in different areas.

And if you live in silicone valley, ignore the last paragraph, you WILL need to know information technology.

We have in this area a HUGE influx of Television, they have built a "Media city", yet not one class in my Kids school has been how to hold a camera even?.. [except an after school club...]
Surely with that kind of thing being attracted to the area, all schools should at least look at "Media studies".

So open the box, think outside of it, but, also think inside of it..
If a Kid is to be educated, think of the box as a reasonable "Commute" from where they live now, not many kids will immediately need to move a thousand mile away, so think staying in touch with the support of family.
Look at the box as what industry is available, what jobs are going, what is the winner of this area, what is its major export....

And instead of educating them on the language customs and lifestyle of a tribe of people that live exclusively in the Congo, how about you introduce them to the language of the Focus puller, how to wire a lighting rig, what is a "grab", and how to start out as "gofer" for a day and see if thats what interests them.
After all, you live next to a film studio, you cant say that you will never be interested in what goes on inside?..

I'm inclined to disagree with you on the definitions. Dyslexia is a thing. like having two X chromosomes is a thing and having an extra dark suntan is a thing. what it isn't is a reason why the person should be excused from effort. sure some fields will be closed to you. for example, it probably isn't going to be easy for a dyslexic to become a typesetter.

but more critically, before you can find a solution, you must first define the problem. determining that the student has difficulty in pattern recognition defines the problem - now the teacher must find a solution that helps the student learn to compensate.

So here is a suggestion.
If you didnt do the job you do now....
What would you WANT to do?.

Forget what you may be !qualified" to do here, forget what you may be "allowed" to do because you aint licensed to do that.
Think what job you would have loved to do if you had been given the chance.....

We are at our best when we are enjoying what we do.
If therefore we are doing stuff just for the sheer delight of doing it?...

I would love to work with Animals.

I keep a pond.
Was I qualified to do that?..
Nope.
But you learn on the job......

Right, so, I challenge all of you to think OUTSIDE the box, and think of your next career move, what would you do?... if you had free choice and on the job training, so getting full wage whilst being educated in that change of direction.

This is the way this thread is going to go, I am challenging the way we think.

So challenge me back if you feel the need.....

so your position is if it can't be put inside a box it doesn't exist?

in that case autism also doesn't exist, because nobody has been able to prove a cause for that. Left Handedness doesn't exist. being uncoordinated doesn't exist. light doesn't exist.

No, my position is that just because you have a hard time learning one specific thing it doesn't mean you're disabled.

As I said, reading and writing are not inate abilities of the human mind, but acquired skills.

You know what else is an acquired skill that's really close to writing? Drawing.

I'm not very good at drawing. For years I've practiced and practiced, read books, watched tutorial videos, even taken classes and then I've practiced some more, but I'm still not very good at it.

Does my having a hard time learning this particular skill mean I have a disability? Oddly enough, no.

If you attempt to fry 10,000 eggs and burn each and every one, clearly showing that you're having difficulties learning from one mistake to the next in this particular process, you're just bad at cooking. Even though that particular skill might be vital to your family's survival, not being able to cook to save your own or your children's lives is strangely enough not considered a disability.

You're an electrician. That's an acquired skill too.

Are all electricians able to learn the trade at the same speed and to the same level of expertise? Are all electricians equally skilled when they're done with their education? Do all people who try to become electricians even succeed? Do the ones that don't all have some sort of disability? If someone fails their final exam/certification as an electrician, is the only possible explanation that there's something physically or mentally wrong with them? No? Well, that's pretty much what you're told if you have difficulties learning to read and write.

If you can't learn these particular skills, you're dyslexic, which means there's something wrong with you. You're disabled. Not normal. Handicapped.

You know what they used to call that, right?

Slow. Dense. Dimwitted. Simple. Stupid.

"Dyslexic" is the PC term for "too stupid to learn this simple thing that others master with relative ease" and that's the main reason I dislike it. I've met just as many dyslexic geniuses as I've met literate idiots. Well, that's not entirely true... I've met many more literate idiots, but that doesn't make the many dyslexic geniuses I've met any less smart or more disabled. Of course, today, we don't use the words "dyslexic" and "stupid" interchangably, because it's commonly accepted as a disability now, but that's where it has its roots.

Dyslexia as a disability is a social construct. The only reason having a hard time learning to read and write is considered a disability is because our society relies so heavily on those skills. Society doesn't rely on the majority of the population being able to draw a realistic looking bowl of fruit, fry up a perfect egg or install a breaker box, so having difficulties learning either of those things is not considered a disability.

So, yes. There definitely are people who have difficulties learning to read and write, but I don't see them as any more disabled than someone who has trouble learning how to dance.

ADDENDUM: By the way, how many of us here who haven't been diagnosed "dyslexic" can truthfully say that we've never read something wrong or misspelled something? I certainly can't. It doesn't happen as often as it might for someone who's had a harder time learning to read and write than I had, but it happens from time to time. Does that make me mildly dyslexic?

If it doesn't, then why is someone who merely does it more often than me labeled dyslexic? Where's the cutoff? At what point do you decide that it's no longer just mistakes, but a disability? Especially when there's no consistently quantifiable evidence of the disability to begin with. Who decides when you go from "just not that good at it" to "disabled"?

I know plenty of people who are considered literate who are slow readers. People who take half an hour to read a 12 page newspaper. Why is SD - who from the sound of it reads faster than I do - considered dyslexic, but those people aren't? Why is my cousin considered dyslexic when he consistently spells better than his sister who isn't?

The diagnosis is flung around as wildly inconsistently as "female hysteria" was in the 19th and early 20th century.

For your reading pleasure, here's a list of 37 common symptoms of dyslexia:

www.dyslexia.com/library/symptoms.htm

If you don't want to follow the link, here are some stubs:

- "High in IQ, yet may not test well academically; tests well orally, but not written."

And on the very same page:

- "Difficulty putting thoughts into words; speaks in halting phrases; leaves sentences incomplete; stutters under stress; mispronounces long words, or transposes phrases, words, and syllables when speaking."

So, if you test well orally, but not written, there's a chance you're dyslexic, but if you can't finish a sentence to save your life, there's also a chance you're dyslexic...?

Here's another good one:

- "Talented in art, drama, music, sports, mechanics, story-telling, sales, business, designing, building, or engineering."

And yet:

- "Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball or team sports; difficulties with fine and/or gross motor skills and tasks; prone to motion-sickness."

So, if you're good at other things than writing and reading, there's a chance you're dyslexic, but if you suck at anything else, that could also be because you're dyslexic...?

And I saved the real gems for last:

- "Extremely disorderly or compulsively orderly."

- "Can be class clown, trouble-maker, or too quiet."

- "Can be an extra deep or light sleeper; bedwetting beyond appropriate age."

- "Unusually high or low tolerance for pain."

In other words, unless you're juuuust right in the eyes of whoever is watching, you could be diagnosed with dyslexia by any quack who thinks you're a little odd.

Yeah, that dyslexia thing, that's a solid diagnosis! Nothing wrong with that system at all!

If it was something that could be fixed by taking a little white pill, dont you think we would have tried by now?...

Dyslexia, amongst many mental conditions, is not a physical thing that can be fixed with a band-aid sticky plaster pill medicine or physical therapy... its not physical...
Its to do with the way the brain is "wired up"

Think on it this way, if there was a fault with your computer where only hale the screen lit up, its most probably a loose wire inside...
It wont stop the computer working, it will still be able to work completely 100%, its just you now only have half the screen size to see the results.

It can be fixed by just getting in there and finding that loose wire and replacing it, or putting a dab of solder on that dry joint.

But first you need to know which wire it is thats loose.


Medical science has not been able "So far" to identify the broken connection.

Think on it this way again, I have had problems with my back for near on 30 odd years plus or minus some I dont care to remember.
When the injury first happened, there was "Nothing we can do".
At all.
Here are some pain meds, stop doing that, and sit down.

in 2005, there had been such a sudden increase in technology, that what had been "Pioneering" surgery 3 yrs earlier had been broken down to be "Keyhole surgery", and instead of being flat on my back for a week recovering from a huge hole in my back, I walked out after three hours after surgery with no more than a "Cigarette packet" sized plaster over the three or four stitches in the hole.

Think on how Cardiac surgery has been improved.
How was the first full heart transplant at that time?... yet there is probably more than a dozen going on in the world right now as you read this post.
Multiple bypass surgeries are now "Day surgery", they only keep you in if you are too week to go home.

Aspergers syndrome had not even been named when I was born.....


Modern medicine has learnt more in my own lifetime that has ever been learnt in the same period of history EVER in the world.
And its getting better.

Just because we didnt know what it is before I started this post doesnt mean they have discovered something whilst I write it...

Maybe even the cure for Cancer......


Try living with it.

Sorry but can you now go on and say Aspergers syndrome is not a disability?..
There are quite a few high profile cases where aspergers people have gone on to do great things.
Yet they have to love with the social awkwardness that is they just dont understand "Normal" people, and the grey lives they lead.
Yes we live grey lives.
We live lives where the lines are blurred.
"It would be nice if I could get a cup of coffee"
Why not just spit it out and say "Hey any chance you could make me a coffee or is it better I do it myself".
Same result, just a clearer way of stating the obvious?.. yes, and that what the "Aspies" thrive on, black and white, clear concise instruction, clear choices.
I have lived in an Aspergers world in a room of Aspergers kids getting on just fine with each other.
There are no "Hints" like that, they ask obvious questions and expect obvious answers, its a transfer of information.
Can I have one of your sweets is clearer than "Are they any good?... " and a huge hole left hanging that needs to be filled with something like "Why dont you try one and find out"
If an aspie asks you "Are they any good", they actually trust your opinion, and are only asking what you think.
If they want one, they will ask.

No means No.
None of this "well not right now" hints that sort of say if you try again in 5 mins?...
If they want you to wait 5 mins, they say "Can you give us 5 mins to finish what I am doing here?.."
If they dont want to do it at all, they will tell you straight, no thanks, I dont want to, and no offence is taken by you not letting them down gently, they know for sure thats "Not your thing" and will remember not to ask again....

Yet with all their problems they are fully aware and capable of living in the real world and succeeding in life.
All you got to do is remember to be clear in what you ask them, and expect blunt exact answers.

Dyslexia is like that.
Its not that it stops us being part of the rich tapestry of life, it just means in that particular area of communication, we are not as fast as other people.
But race you up that hill on my mountain bike?...
In my younger days, you would be wondering just how the hell I manage to get that far ahead.
Does that mean YOU are disabled in the area of mountain bike racing?...
Yet in the world of getting up that hill, compared to us lot who ARE good at that type of thing, you are at a distinct disadvantage, and therefore, to you, its a disability.

Getting the "Look anyone can do it" type of reply, and to be honest, your sort of getting close to that yourself, is kind of like walking up to someone sat in a wheelchair and saying "Come on lets dance... everyone can do that...."
Ohhhhhhh look at YOU with your legs....
What did no one teach you the right way to walk?...

Ponder on that a moment.

Maybe there is something where the "clock speed" of the processor of Dyslexics brains runs just half the speed of "Normies" when it comes to written language skills.

Or maybe its that your trying to educate a bunch of Farmers how to draw like Van Gough, and expecting a Michael Angelo type result?.....

To and Too.
I have met some rather obnoxious people in my life, the grammar natzies, who will bang on and on and on and on and (ETC) about the rules of grammar...
But to and too, its their favourite gripe..
I just dont get it.
Its the SAME BLOODY WORD WHAT DOES ONE EXTRA LETTER O MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE?....
If I said it out loud, can you even hear the extra O?...

They are, here becomes there, their is theirs as in you inherit it, that eventually makes sense...
But the extra O on to and when to use it just doesnt make sense to me, so a lot of times I avoid it.

To be honest, as my how many l's there are in until, and I will guess wrong.
Until my spellchuckler underlines it, actually has two, why doesn't until?.. they "sound" the same at the end there?..

"But you could make sense of it if you just try...."

You think I never tried?...

Go ask a Farmer who has spent all his live on the farm the four rules of force and ask him to explain thermo nuclear dynamics.
Then ask the nuclear physicist who has never ever spent a day on a farm about sheep and lambing season....

Perhaps I have more important things to do in my life, more interesting things, than to try and remember "Rules" about which letter comes after C.
I before e except after c....
Except it has been proven by counting the words in the English dictionary that that is exactly the wrong way round, as there are more words spelt cei than cie.....

So I ask you to ponder again on this.
You have read all my posts on this board.
Am I to be considered a "Numbskull"?...
No I aint fishing for compliments here, because I know you will answer honestly that that just isnt true.
But I suffer Dyslexia.
I watch some people walk tightrope, and I believe learning to do that is probably easier than learning all the rules in the English language on spelling...

Not only do they not make sense to me at times, they are just so "old".

I have a page open on the other screen, hand on, lets just drag the link
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox

I have more interest in reading through that one than I do repeating and repeating "Until it sticks" how many letter l's in untill....

Some people "get it", I say that if they have spent their whole life learning those skills, then the missed an awfull lot of interesting stuff.

My mind works "Different", its not that its wrong, its just different, and that name so you can understand the difference is Dyslexia.
Its not that I do not understand every single word on that page, I do, and many of the sentances as well, in fact quite a few of the paragraphs are making an awfull lot of sense, its just, ask me again how to spell paradox, and my fingers slow down on the typing.

The problem with disability is other peoples attitude to difference, they will point stare and make fun, whilst we have to deal with them, thats the disability.
It takes us longer to deal with attitudes that it does the problem.

Because it IS a disability.....

You have all those ideas in your head, an exam, and one-and-a-half hours to write all the answers that are those ideas down.

Compared to other people, you spend more time thinking about how a word is spelled than you do on what you are writing, you have to stop at every word with more than four letters in it....

So yeah, when it comes to writing down your ideas, it is a disability, because the effort of doing that, compared to someone who doesnt have any problems at all spelling, they can do the same work as you in less than half the time?...

"In the world of the blind the one eyed man is king"

Comparitevely speaking {And I cant find the right correction there) I have to expend twice as much effort to write a single paragraph to the majority of people who post here.
NO I dont whine about it, no I dont expect sympathy, no I dont get special treatment, I am just letting it be known for information sakes.

It IS a disability, because I am not able to write as fast as I should be able to.

However.

When people know you are dyslexic, they tend not to be to grammar police about the occasional typo.
Which helps.

It has never held me back, I just have to realise that when writing stuff down, it takes me longer, so leave more time to do that.

Some day I will publish a book...
But at the moment, my spellchuckler has ggone on strike and is demanding overtime.

sounds to me like Dennis has an undiagnosed physical disability.

not being able to write War and Peace is not a disability. not being able to write "I will be gone until the weekend" is.

and that doesn't mean the person is disabled in every way. it just means trying to use standardized reading curriculum is stupid.

let me put it in blunt terms: you are telling Silverdragon his difficulties in reading and writing are all in his head.

Absolutely not! And SD, if this is what you've been getting from what I've been writing, I sincerely apologize for not being clear enough!

What I'm trying to say here is that different people are wired differently and have different learning thresholds for different things, but being able to learn one thing really well and hitting an impenetrable wall when trying to learn another does not mean there's anything wrong with you.

What I'm TRYING to say is that dyslexics are completely normal people who happen to have hit that learning wall when it comes to reading and/or writing. There is nothing wrong with that! Other people hit that same wall with other things all the time, but we don't necesserily call them disabled, no matter how early or how hard they hit it, do we?

I completely recognize that hitting that wall when it comes to reading or writing is a much bigger problem for most people than hitting it when trying to learn to read musical notes, because not being able to read or write is a much more integrated part of society than so many other things you can have difficulties learning, so it impacts your life in a much more significant way. I am in NO way trying to downplay the problem, or tell anyone that there's no such thing as having a hard time learning to read or write!

What I am in fact trying to do is get the stigma away from that problem. By labeling it an illness or a disability, no one is doing anyone any favors. I've seen more kids get left behind, given up on and give up on themselves when being diagnosed with dyslexia than I've ever seen helped or inspired to overcome it. THAT'S my problem with it! The negative connotations it carries that cause perfectly intelligent children to be left for academically dead by a flimsy and self-contradictory diagnosis that can be administered to anyone who shows the slightest problems learning something that seems comparatively easy to others!

One of my son's best friends was given this diagnosis and labeled "disabled" about a year ago. Yes, he's a slow reader and he makes spelling mistakes. Yes, he's taken a little longer to learn to read and write than others in his class, but he IS learning, just like most dyslexics. He's just catching up at a slower pace.

Promises were made from every conceivable direction to get him the help he needed, but what happened? Whenever the others are reading at grade level, he's taken out of class, put in a room with a teacher all to himself, who's supposedly there to help, but gives him a book that's BELOW the level he's at, because you wouldn't want to challenge this poor, disabled child and then she leaves for an hour. And that attitude is starting to carry over to other subjects as well. Teachers talk.

Tell me, how is that diagnosis helping him and thousands of other kids in a similar situation all around the world? Would they maybe be better off without a diagnosis of "disabled", replaced by a note on their record saying, "Generally very intelligent, but needs extra help reading and writing"?

You wrote: "so you can't make a photorealistic rendering of a human face. can you at least make a symbolic representation? or do you get the mouth above the nose? the former is a lack of skill. the latter is a sign of a disability."

How many dyslexics have you met who couldn't recognize or write some decent rendering of all the letters in the alphabet? Who can't write or even recognize their own name in writing and are utterly incapable of learning that, no matter how much practice they put into it? There probably exists such a person somewhere and if there does, then yes, that person more than likely has a disability and that disability is more than likely creating problems for them in other areas as well, but I've met exactly zero dyslexics like that and I have met MANY people diagnosed with dyslexia! Fact is that I've never met a dyslexic person who was a hundred percent incapable of learning at least SOME reading and writing, because, funny thing, most of them can if you give them the time and help they need to do it at the pace they're capable of and reach the level possible for them.

And therein lies the problem, if you ask me. We're so hellbent on standardizing everything, telling these kids that if they can't do something exactly this well at exactly this age, there's something wrong with them and they're not normal. Yes they are! It is in fact perfectly normal that not all people are equally good at everything! It is perfectly normal that what may make complete sense to you is utter gibberish to me and vice verca! It is perfectly normal that someone will reach a point at which they just can't improve anymore and that's as good as it gets for them!

And dyslexia is NOT, as you proposed earlier, a universal problem with language comprehension. If you look at that site I linked to with common symptoms, it is in fact very normal for some dyslexics to be very articulate and verbally creative and have careers as actors, sales people, singers and a whole host of other things that involve complex language comprehension skills.

Listening to and learning to speak a language by copying what we hear around us is an inate capability. If you have a severe problem with that, then yes, there's a good chance that some wires in your brain are crossed or disconnected. But most dyslexics don't have severe problems with that. What they DO have a problem with is linking the sounds they inately pick up on and can replicate with their own mouths to arbitrary symbols we as a "tribe" have agreed should represent those sounds. The written word is not something you inately pick up on. It's a set of rules that a portion of a population has at some point agreed on and the rest have accepted that they need to learn in order to be able to communicate in written form with other people in that population.

Why do you keep insisting that grasping every aspect of that set of arbitrary symbols and rules is something all people should be able to do equally well and that if someone can't, there's something wrong with them?

A child can learn to speak without active teaching, just by listening and copying. The same is not true when it comes to reading and writing. Someone has to explain to the child what those symbols mean. That's why we have schools.

SD is as logical a thinker as anyone I've ever met. His language comprehension skills are not lacking in any way, if you ask me. In fact, the man is very articulate and verbally creative, is able to express himself in a myriad of ways, ranging from simple, straight talk to the darkest forms of sarcasm and everything in between and he has no problem understanding what the rest of us write. From his own description of how he experiences dyslexia, the rules of spelling just don't make logical sense to him. His extremely well-functioning, logical brain can't make sense of why there should be a difference between "to" and "too" and what exactly that difference is, but I am as close to certain as I can get that if you sat down and spoke to him face to face, he'd use both words perfectly in conversation without even thinking about it. It's the RULES of how to spell things that aren't logical to him, not the language itself.

If anything, dyslexia should be defined as this: "An inability to logically link inate language comprehension skills with the manmade symbols and rules governing their usage agreed upon to represent that language in written form."

That's what reading and writing is. Linking a natural, inate ability to understand and use language with an articficial, arbitrary system of symbols and rules.

And that's supposed to come naturally and at a somewhat equal rate to everyone?