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Tinfoil hats aside, I'll really be let down if 2012 turns out to be another Y2K. I don't know what I want to happen but I know I want it to be awesome.

I feel exactly the same way. I think it's kind of a shame, though. I think most people fixate on dates like 2012 and Y2K and ideas like the apocalypse because they're almost desperate for some of the weirdness of fantasy to enter into their exasperatingly mundane lives. It shouldn't be so.

My resolution for 2012: try to make everyday life weird enough by then that no one will notice that it just turned 2012.

Even if Quetzalcoatl does choose that moment to ride a goat-drawn chariot across the plains of Armageddon to fight Xeno.

Which would be pretty cool, too.

The thing is, it's all a matter of perspective. Yeah, culture and race (race in particular) are just human constructs. Fundamentally, all people are just people. Pan out a little more, and all people are just mammals. Pan out a little more, and all mammals are just complex organisms on a planet. The more you step back, the less meaningful or relevant these categorizations become. That does not make it valid to dismiss the existence of different cultures, and in fact starts to look dangerously like an excuse to annihilate smaller cultures and homogenize the planet. Homogeneity is one of the reasons you can already travel to so many places and find the cultures so very similar... the US, Canada, Australia, Great Britain. Those aren't examples of disparate cultures which turn out not to be so different after all, they're examples of a relatively homogenous Western culture which has spread.

Agreed. White Americans like to think that they have no culture because their culture has been spread so broadly that they can't see its borders any more.

And I realize that I mistyped earlier-- I should have said that a person's culture has everything to do with how they're raised. Cultures themselves grow out of geography.

I think the hyphen issue has been misappropriated, but does have a valid use.

As has been suggested, it's used to refer to subcultures within american culture-- not to indicate some sort of "double citizenship," or even a blend between cultures. I'm thinking specifically of African-American, here: part of the problem for the descendants of slaves is that being forcibly removed from their homelands had robbed them of any cultural identity except for the slave culture which they had cobbled together from bits and pieces of African, American, Native American, and Caribbean cultures. So they clearly weren't African anymore, in any real sense (they couldn't go 'home' and be seen as natives), nor were they white, obviously, so they couldn't just be American either. Same for Irish immigrants, who were just 'yanks' if they went back over, and I'm sure of many others. So there's a sort of creole culture for which the hyphenated terms have some use.

Trouble is when people use such terms to describe Ethnicity rather than culture-- an easy mistake to make, because most people are just American (read: white) in terms of culture, and don't want to admit it, because of, y'know, slavery oppression and genocide.

And culture has everything to do with how you're raised, and nothing to do with where, or even by whom.

Nothing is ever ever going to become more important in education than the direct interaction between teacher and student. NOTHING.

Except maybe for the student's personal investment and interest in the subject matter-- although, to be fair, a good teacher can do a lot to stimulate this.

Halmet contemplated, but never followed through, mostly because of his religions ("or that the almighty had not fixed his canon 'gainst self - slughter").

I guess that could be read either way, but in my own mind, fear doesn't qualify as a religion. While Hamlet has a general christian framework informing his fear, really it's his uncertainty that stops him, not his religious convictions per se.

Your brain has a lot of circuitry that is active when you're listening to a person. Circuits which aren't active when you're watching TV. Call me neophobic but I'll take the meat-based teacher.

That's a good point-- but I think what's being described here at MIT is an environment far more interactive than television-- maybe even more interactive than a traditional class. Trouble is, the vast majority of tech-enhanced or telelearning 'classrooms' that I've seen, read about, or heard about are either just using new tools for old purposes-- like using laptops to write on the board instead of chalk-- or are clunky attempts to transmit an essentially traditional classroom experience through the screen.

If they do this and take it down to the primary level, I shudder to think of the social skills these children will develop.  It would be a world of trolls IRL!!

Actually, I have a friend who works as a residential counselor for behavioral special needs children who feels that immersive online learning environments, sort of like a moderated MUD, could be a hugely effective tool for teaching social skills to children who would otherwise be resistant-- because the environment is non-threatening, requires cooperation for success, and feels like (and is!) play, which is always a child's primary learning strategy. Again, though, that won't exist for years, now, if at all-- and since such a tool isn't nearly as profitable as  recreational pursuits like MMORPGs, there's a good chance it never will.

I think there's a ton of potential involved here for teaching and learning-- but it won't have much real relevance until electronic education evolves it's own symbol-logic for communication, and it's own infrastructure and resources to make itself relevant.

aaand purchased.

This is nice, I know a bunch of anarchists who need some churchin' up. Not to mention freaking out the norms.

You are a dry sponge, absorbing everything the media tells you, what your friends and family tell you.
The wetness makes you feel important, it makes you feel like an individual.

Niiiice. Three cheers for a blow well struck against nihilism.

I disagree, Richter. While Hamlet's decision 'to be' was influenced by his religious beliefs, it wasn't an ethical or moral decision, but rather a decision made out of fear of reprisal. A Good Christian would avoid suicide because it's against God's plan; Hamlet chooses against it on the basis of "the dread of something after death,/ the undiscovered country from whose bourn/ no traveler returns, puzzles the will/ and makes us rather bear the ills we have/ than fly to others that we know not of."

Instead of saying his suicidal drive found an outlet in revenge, say rather that his failure to revenge his father lead him to contemplate suicide-- but of course, Hamlet can't kill himself, for the same reason he can't kill his uncle. He's just too afraid to do anything until act five. In short, he's lost in a post-modern haze of uncertainty and confusion-- eristic illusion-- not unlike Dostoevsky's Underground Man.

I agree with Cain-- particularly in Hamlet's case, considerations of suicide had little to do with the Christian, and much to do with the Elizabethan, social value system

Well, how do I know he's not pregnant?

Sounds tasty, but why bother using canned salmon when you can simply mail-order mercury from most chemical supply companies for a fraction of the cost?

A big fraction.

With, like, the numerator larger than the denominator.

...Shut up.

it would be awesome to have a hobby i can share with the kids!

try screaming.

I don't think it counts if the kids try it first.

Cool looking sculptures, though, btw.