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Homework (H4T)

:: heuristics for teachers ::

Coffee Shop Trax

What is Andragogy? (School of Tomorrow)

Per the above video, you might have an interest in teaching others, teaching self. Looking for tips?

One heuristic I'll leave you with is "don't underestimate the role of private eye detective". There's the whole noir genre in filmmaking to back that up, plus some splendid animation. Then there's Sherlock Holmes. Great TV shows like Columbo (Falk) and Murder She Wrote (Lansbury).

Didn't Einstein credit an uncle for making the "finding of man X" a worthy framework for boring algebra?

There's a world of difference between a detective and someone working back from a final conclusion i.e. cherry picking in order to backfill and bolster, i.e. between an open minded investigator and someone making or building a case, pro or con. The same individual may switch between both of these modes, as when gear shifting a manually shifted car model (I had a couple of those).

Now that you're wearing your detective hat, you have some new decisions. An important one is: are you drawn to hop on a rolling bandwagon, a project already well joined, by others, or are you drawn to something you have a hard time finding others with any interest in? 

I'm sketching extremes along a spectrum, from public to private.

For example, on the public end, choosing to dive into the JFK assassination theories, the many overlapping conspiracy threads, is to join a huge community of several generations, and including some of the best investigators you'll ever meet. I'll admit to having permitted myself a lot of time in this arena. As a window onto the world, the hours have paid off (by my own accounting, granted).

Something more private would involve a private language you're working on, a computer one or maybe a human one. Think of Tolkien laboring to devise Elvyn, including a script. No team is peer reviewing your work on a daily basis, or scrambling to find preprints. If you find a tiny coven of fellow travelers, count yourself lucky to have found a mini-bandwagon. Enjoy your party. Love the burn.

Now, course correction, naturally your self education needn't be confined to one rabbit hole. Just because you're doing deep research, in detective mode, for some hours almost daily, doesn't mean you can't also be muscle building (literally, like at a gym) or learning to drive, or learning to fly or whatever it is. 

So this choice of whether to join a large community, or to take a lonelier route, need not be made for your whole life all at once. I'd suggest hopping on at least three major bandwagons. In my case, I'd say Python's has been one of them. I've met a lot of interesting people through Pythonic listservs, for example, edu-sig in particular.

Another course correction: although detective mode is one of the great modes, I'm not suggesting you won't need other modes in the course of a business day. There is such a thing as defending a narrative, as some form of partisan warrior with a canton to protect, shades of Kagemusha. 

I call this role "manning a think tank" which is purposely sexist in flavor in recalling some WW1-or-2 stereotype poor slob in a mobilized gun box. Being a detective can be a luxury, compared to needing to side with your comrades in arms, or feed your own fan base, nurse your wounds.

Glenn would suggest the I Ching be included in your practice somehow, partly just for the combinatorics. You're reminded of a pattern language, in the Christopher Alexander tradition. Sometimes life is this way, your posture that, sometimes life is this other way, still in the matrix. 

The I Ching's action frames consist of "way it is" and "vector forward" i.e. there's a dv/dt feel to each posture.

Back to detective mode: if you find yourself relying purely on the recommendation engine, without refining the searching on your side, then reawaken to your power to actively shape the search space, to narrow it down, to zoom in. 

You'd like to hit bedrock from time to time, just to stay grounded. 

In other words, as a detective you will want to zero in on occasion, which may mean snagging an obviously relevant puzzle piece. Your story moves forward. The narrative builds momentum over yet another day in the neighborhood.

If you're new to these blogs, maybe do some random sampling and use the search box top left, to see if we overlap in keywords at all.  Do I ever write about this or that?  How about proper names:  people and places.  

This is who I often approach blogs, which I'll come across through other blogs as often as not. The blogosphere is a real thing, and is abetted by the "vlogosphere".

As I was writing to Thirsters (discussion listserv), a specimen from my "under sociology" outbox (this is an excerpt from a longer email):

Russians are somewhat divided, and express a rather broad spectrum of opinion, as we also get here in Oregon (where Russian is the 3rd most spoken language after English and Spanish [1]).

A Russian vlogger I've followed for years left the country because she's fed up with all the Z stuff (pro war propaganda).[2] She's from the far eastern part of the country, like near Vladivostok (more Pacific Rim). Then I follow this other guy, who also left, who mocks the Z stuff incessantly.[3]

In my July 2 posting, I list a bunch of journalists I follow. I'm in an echo chamber for sure.

I'm pretty fluent with how Lavrov and other Kremlin officials tell their side of the story. They're pretty lucid IMO, as one would expect. But I leave it to them to keep bringing up the Minsk agreements or whatever, as I really don't know all the history that well. Not really my part of the world. I find the Russians to be effective communicators, not so much the DC Americans.

[1] https://www.wweek.com/culture/2017/12/13/welcome-to-the-russia-issue/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@NatashasAdventures
[3] https://www.youtube.com/@roman_nfkrz

In case you're wondering why I find it relevant to bring up the Russians in this context, check out my YouTube on Pythonic Andragogy.