I’m in Malaysia right now, which is a majority Muslim country. Restaurants and convenience stores sell beer and other alcohol, but I have seen signs in the convenience stores covering the front of coolers saying that Muslims cannot buy alcohol.
I’m not sure how strictly that is enforced, most of the store clerks and waiters don’t seem to care.
It’s hardly highbrow literature and as far as you can get from “woke”, but George McDonald Fraser’s “Flashman” series has him at the heart of every 19th century conflict from England to China. Fraser was a journalist, and the history is supposed to be quite accurate, aside from liberties necessary for the plot.
Flashman is the main bully character in the book Tom Brown’s School Days. After he is expelled from the school, he manages to get a commission in the British Army and fail upwards even as he is a cad and a coward.
Language Transfer . Much better for learning a language than Duolingo.
Just audio. But it is presented in a way that helps you to learn, rather than just remember. If you give it a try, I promise that you will be shocked at how you can retain the knowledge.
It isn’t enough on its own, however. You need to reinforce the lessons by speaking to people, reading, and/or TV and movies.
I have found Duolingo much, much less useful for language learning than Language Transfer. The latter actually helps you learn to think in another language rather than memorize things (which is still useful, but not nearly as much).
Short if total immersion, I have found nothing better than LT.
I read a couple of books to my wife, as well as a limited series of comics period it was wonderfully intimate! Although she tried to read to me, and I just kept falling asleep.
That’s exactly right. The proof is quite simple and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be taught instead of just getting students to accept magic rules.
I went through engineering school, and 20 years of work (not as an engineer), before finding a calculus text that explained why the derivative of x^2 is 2x. Along with many practical applications of calculus.
That book was Calculus Made Simple, published in 1914. Thanks, Project Gutenberg!
Edit: derivative of x^2 is 2x. Got my differentiation and integration confused!
I know someone who works in a university group related to privacy issues. He refuses to have a smartphone because of the ease which which almost anyone can track you and your activities. I think he has an old flip phone.
But how much do IP laws actually protect the little guy? When a large corporation can bankrupt me by prolonging litigation until I have nothing left, what leverage do I really have?
There are certainly cases where small creators and inventors were able to overcome this disadvantage, but I suspect that they are the tiny minority, celebrated when they do achieve it.
I was seeing a lot of crashes two or three years ago, but none in the past year or so.
I guess if you can’t rely on human intelligence, you have to hope that artificial intelligence can do the job.
When I was in grade 9, in 1977, my science teacher told us about his solar panels. He was projecting that they would pay off the investment in about 20 years. How much better must that be now (and we are talking about Ontario, Canada, hardly the best place for solar power)?
Definitely a thing for days like Valentine’s.
I was a volunteer teacher in Africa from 1988-91.
I would write letter from my village, and it would take one month to get to my family in Canada. They would write a response, and it would take one month to get back to my village. That was just the reality.
Now the village I lived in has a cell phone tower in the middle of it. I haven’t been back, but I am willing to bet that a lot has changed.