Saturday, April 05, 2008

Not about astronomy, science, art, politics or anything trivial in particular, but still pretty important.

I'm 21. I'm young, almost criminally so. I don't feel I'm qualified to talk about alot of the things going on in the world right now. I feel like I haven't been through enough. Expressing your views and thoughts when you don't know enough is only okay when the audience you're speaking feels like you've known enough. Even so, I still feel this constant sense of inferiority.

With that understood, I'm not going to say anything today.

But I'm going to let someone else say what I wanted to say.

I'll have my say in due time.

But society doesn't often allow you the context in which you can freely express yourself and be taken seriously.

So I give you what is positively the most entertaining presentation I have seen, perhaps ever.

Clifford Stoll is an astronomer (though his astronomy career took a turn when he noticed a bookkeeping error that ultimately led him to track down a notorious hacker), researcher and internationally recognized computer security expert -- who happens to be a vocal critic of technology -- Stoll makes a sharp, witty case for keeping computers out of the classroom. Currently teaching college-level physics to eighth graders at a local school, he stays busy in his spare time building Klein bottles.

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