High school pictures from the 50s are so weird. Everyone looks to be both 14 and 37.
When did teaching slide rules stop? I learned in HS, and maybe used a bit in college (I started in 1972). They were certainly still used in my HS for several years after as there was a bit of family drama a few years later when my father confronted HS chem teacher over exams he thought favored those with calculators in my sister's class. Utterly uncharacteristic for him to do so; but the underlying tension was my younger sister was the first non-quant-oriented child of his and he was frustrated at her chem grades.
According to the talk I just watched, the last slide rule competition held by the Texas UIL was in Saturday, May 3rd, 1980.
I remember learning interpolation and slide rules, but now I can't remember when that was. My best guess is 1984 at the very latest, but more likely it was around 1981 or 1982.
We learned the theory that slide rules work on and how to do the calculation by hand in high school (1986, probably). I don't think the teacher had one. The first I recall seeing one was in Calculus class when the professor's costume was dressing as himself when he was in college.
Obviously I've completely forgotten it, but I recall being suitability fascinated that you could use logarithms to make multiplication simpler.
Something about Napier's bone is all I remember.
3: Aka the night they drove Keuffel and Esser down
No slide rules in the 90s for any of my classes. I just remember having to get the right kind of calculator.
Weirdly enough, those same TI calculators are still required in high school math classes. So, you're paying $100+ for a calculator with technology that is thirty years out of date and probably costs $2.45 to make.
Which reminds me that I've wondered what the timeline was for graphing calculators. We didn't have that option, just scientific, but I'm not sure if that was because of budget or test rules or what. I remember seeing them around as something some kids had.
I spent most of last week at a conference at a weird, Biosphere 2-like venue. I had a blast seeing my friends, but was nervous about COVID the whole time.
In my affluent and up-to-date public high school, calculators replaced slide rules in Fall 1977, the start of my sophomore year, meaning that all the cool slide rule tricks I had taught myself to do that Summer got no visibility. This was for the best.
I experienced a similar transition in 1992, when in lawyer's offices everywhere ash trays disappeared, and computers appeared.
In 1989, Taylor Swift was born and also the engineering students I was taking calculus with had TI graphing calculators. They cost like $300 and that was back when you could buy a hamburger for a nickle.
13.last: My office building was built in 1996 and there are built-in ashtrays in the men's room.
Graphing calculators were common when I was in high school (graduated 2003). There wasn't a consistent policy about them from the school; they were banned in some classes and required in others.
That's one minor reason to fuck the patriarchy.
I looked at the stuff lying around my desk and I still have my solar-powered Radio Shack scientific calculator I bought a couple days before the AP tests in maybe 1993? The number pad still works but you have to pressure really hard to get the 9.
press, pressure, it's all the same
On the other OP topic, I also follow the general rule of masking when other people are, and not when other people aren't. It amuses me to no end that this is a completely irrational response to balancing the cost (discomfort) vs. benefit (reducing risk of infection) of masking. There's much less risk reduction, because there's much less risk, when everyone else is already masked.
On the other OP topic, I also follow the general rule of masking when other people are, and not when other people aren't. It amuses me to no end that this is a completely irrational response to balancing the cost (discomfort) vs. benefit (reducing risk of infection) of masking. There's much less risk reduction, because there's much less risk, when everyone else is already masked.
I'm still using a Casio scientific calculator from about 1987. The battery is long dead and not replaceable, so I have to use it right under a lamp to keep the solar power running it.
I haven't used a physical calculator in years.
I was the kind of insufferable kid who had an HP 48.
I try to get my students to use the calculator on their phone during group work, instead of using their high school graphing calculator, but they won't do it. (We don't allow calculators on exams.)
I just wear an N95 mask indoors around people I don't know, plus while at work. I don't find it hugely uncomfortable and it's pretty easy to not think about what the rules happen to be that day in that place and whether others care about what I'm wearing. But I don't live somewhere where people will comment on how you don't have to wear a mask.
I carry around an N95 but only put it on when I'm in a place with signs explicitly saying masks are required. There aren't many places like that around here these days, mostly local small businesses catering to a progressive clientele, and even those don't seem to be actively enforcing their mask rules.
I stopped wearing the mask at the gym and at church. I still wore it to Whole Foods yesterday. I'm going to a restaurant tomorrow, which will be the first time since August.
I carry a cloth mask and wear it when required or when I'm talking to someone wearing a mask. I just don't see any advantage at this point of delaying the inevitable. (Though I kinda wonder if I've gotten Omicron at some point and was asymptomatic, I just haven't been careful at all other than cancelling Christmas travel, so it's kinda weird that I didn't get it.)
I spend a lot of time with my parents and my dad spent essentially the whole first two years of the pandemic getting cancer treatments for multiple different cancers, all of which currently seem to have backed off. Delaying the inevitable is just another way of living.
I saw a movie last night at one of the places where they serve food and drinks at your seat. (Film: highly recommended.) My companions, one a very safe-practices person like me, the other a new friend I don't know about, took off their masks upon sitting down, not waiting for the food, which I felt was pushing it but I still felt the peer pressure and went back and forth.
Film: highly recommended.
Looking forward to the movie; I haven't seen it yet, but this story was touching.
There's more covid in the poops again, but I figure it might take a while to build up again.
I'm not saying there's never a reason for delaying the inevitable, just that there aren't any that apply to me at the moment. Now would be a relatively convenient time for me to get it.
I don't know how I'd approach things if my personal circumstances were different. My current thinking is to watch case rates and if they stay low enough long enough I'll feel more comfortable not worrying about it. I'd rather get sick after I move this summer, if I have a choice in it.
I would say "follow the poops" but that's not really possible or necessary.
Yeah, if rates get high I change behavior (hospital reasons). If I were visiting people who were at higher risk and more careful than me, then I'd also change behavior. But my parents aren't particularly careful (or particularly at risk beyond being in their 60s) so it doesn't seem like I'm a major risk factor even when I visit them. If I have something important coming up which would get screwed up by being sick (like international travel) then I might be more careful that particular week.
I follow the Boston poops but should probably be following more poops. I have a theory that a bunch of the country isn't going to get a BA.2 wave because so many people got BA.1 but don't show up in the testing numbers, but under that theory you'd still expect Boston to have more BA.2 wave than the rest of the country, so I should follow some red state poops.
The Boston Poops with John Williams.
Whenever I look for it I just can't find anywhere else that has nice data the way Boston does.
I think Santa Clara county may have the only poopy dashboard in the Bay Area. Shit's not going the right direction recently.
There's this, which has several other Bay counties. It's not a government site, but it seems to be from UC Berkeley and work with them.
Counties other than Santa Clara not going up - or not clearly, like one subregion a bit up and another a bit down - but the Santa Clara government page seems to show more recent dates.
Nice, that's a good website. But I'd like one from somewhere where people didn't wear masks in January. Santa Clara is great if you live in the Bay Area, but if you're in flyover country it's not any better than Boston.
Right, I'm not remotely the only person wearing a mask around here* even now, so it's a huge outlier nationally.
*San Jose, basically.
Well, Fresno and Kern always do the minimum required by the state, and they're not on the upswing. But it can come naturally to different places at different times.
What I'm trying to suss out is why the BA.2 wave is looking so much different in the US than in Europe. There were plenty of places in the US that were only a week or two behind Europe on BA.1 and are now a month behind on BA.2. It's clear that BA.2 is spreading more slowly here than it is in Europe and I'm confused about why, and about whether whatever is causing that effect will be more dramatic in some parts of the US than others.
I read somewhere that the sub-variant of BA.1 we got was actually slightly different from the one in Europe, with characteristics that mean we likely have better immunity against BA.2. That may be what we're seeing.
28: My church - whole diocese - just dropped masks, so I did Zoom church, because Covid is taking off (or at least what's reported) in the more affluent suburbs near me.
They are now allowing people to take wine and not just bread, but very clear that it's fine if you just want to take bread.
They are now not alluring intimation (dipping the wafer in the wine). I know the Canadian Anglican Church disallowed the practice after SARS 1. I don't understand exactly, but the germs from accidentally having your finger touch the wine are thought to be worse than if you take a sip from the chalice. The minister wipes the cup, and turns it, so it's probably a few minutes before someone else's lips touch it.
Apparently there have been studies on this, but I don't really understand it. I'm keeping my mask on.
I wear it when I've taken public transit, and when I've had to go in to work, I wear it because it's a hospital. I figure I might as well at the supermarket, but I really have not gone to anybody's house in a while and would not eat at an indoor restaurant, so no, I'm not having coffee indoors at church.
I'd have more concerns about drinking a cup of blood.
54 - some places serve awful crap. We usually get halfway decent port. I've been taking the wafer and eating it outside after the service.
IIRC, I mailed one of you my old HS graphing calculator when this topic had last come up here (or one of the times it came up here; too lazy to RTFA).
Utah is tracking poop and our public health people think that v2 won't be bad here as between omicron and vaccination there's not a lot left assuming any kind of immunity.
Ah, perfect! Of course that's the only state with a well-run government that's also full of Republicans.
It's totally weird. My theory is that Mormonism insulated the state from the earliest of the evangelical craziness because the 'message bills' that got one elected were catering to people who didn't want to go to a bar and grill if they could see (or, really, be seen near) the bar. So one was left with mostly sane conservatism (not to my taste but not usually nutso) and the occasional howler of a law. Alas, it's no longer the case post-Trump, so we had a government that initially set sensible targets for reopening, commissioned the purchase of masks, even an app for tracing (probably mostly a grift but no one was squeaking about COVID not exisitng) ---- and then went down the "no state insitution including the universities shall have a mask mandate" insanity of the national party. Mike Lee is a little shit. Dollar General Ted Cruz.
I had a sliderule on a watch (unfortunately I wore it surfing and ruined the watch mechanism) and it is fantastic for travel, converting currency.
Here we have a same Republican governor (Holcomb) who impressively managed to hold the line on localities getting to make their own decisions (until a month ago when he let the emergency authorization expire). Which is surprising because you can overrule vetos with a simple majority. I think he might be the best Republican in the country and will sorely miss him when he hits his term limit and is replaced by someone awful.
In Utah I was also guessing that there's a role played by organized religion valuing bureaucratic competence in a way that unorganized religion doesn't.
62: That's interesting - our Republican governor started off well on Covid, but at some point he seems to have decided the lunatics are in charge and there's nothing he can do about it.
Even Texas followed that model for a while - Abbott had a universal mask mandate in place for about a year. Then he legislated that Covid was over. Then Delta and Omicron came, but fortunately they respected the legal precedent set by declaring Covid to be over.
No slide rules at any point. I graduated HS in 1984. The HP 12C I bought c. 1990 still works perfectly and gets used more or less daily. It's less glitch-prone than the 12C knockoff app on my phone, which I also use a lot.
Googling a little leaves me confused about when we got started with RPN. I was thinking that my dad had been introduced to the HP 15C (which he then bought and used forever, despite the 12C being better suited to what he did) during a trip to visit his brother in Pasadena in 1978, but the model wasn't introduced until 1982, so I dunno. Doesn't help that my memory is shit.