BTW, I still have a large collection of Compute! magazines going back to March 1983, all the way through to 1988 (I let my subscription lapse when they stopped publishing type-ins). I pulled out a few of them because I wanted to spruce up this post a little with a few more videos, rather than stills (haven’t gotten to it yet). I decided to type in the programs again (in an Atari emulator) since my current living situation hasn’t allowed me to do the setup so I can transfer my old Atari disks to disk images so they can be run in the emulator. It brought back some fond memories, but at the same time I was like, “My goodness, this stuff is cryptic!” I’ve looked back at some of the old Applesoft BASIC programs I wrote and wondered how I did it. There were so many limitations back then about how long variable names could be. I had to keep track of where different sections of code were and make sure I branched and returned properly. I had to keep track of all my variables, which were global–no scoping. Yagh! And the code was totally non-descriptive. REM comments were essential if you ever wanted to understand your code again.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing.

You’re welcome. And thank you for sharing as well!

I still have a bunch of old issues in my bookshelf. One of these days I’m going to scan the covers and share them all.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing.

From what I hear teens and pre-teens really like it, even though the humor is supposed to be too mature (gross or offensive) for certain ages.

I agree with the idea that some elements of pop culture can make us seem more savvy and sophisticated, but I agree it doesn’t offer deep knowledge.

My hypothesis is that the pop culture that really has an impact on people has deep knowledge hidden behind it. The creators take their understanding, put a “low-pass filter” on it, and release it to the public. Consumers feel impacted by the knowledge that went into it, without understanding how what they’ve enjoyed was created.

I’ve seen that in my own experience as a software developer, and in a small minority of other developers. We are able to appreciate the power we see in certain software architectures, but most of us don’t have the knowledge to create something like it ourselves. That’s something I’m trying to change with myself.

I’m quite sure this watering down of deep knowledge goes on. When I was in college taking a course in technical communication, we were told that only about 18% of the population had college degrees. Most newspaper readers only have a 7th grade vocabulary, so any sophisticated scientific/technical content has to be watered down to that level of understanding so that people can read it and understand a little of what’s going on.

I’m sending this link off to the long suffering help desk at my school, they will enjoy it

Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter (2005)

Is it possible for a society to be smarter in certain ways (trivial pursuits) while at the same time becoming less knowledgeable about more important Enlightenment Knowledge, knowledge with a capital K? That’s my current hypothesis of what has been happening.

(reference: our intelligence )

According to what I heard on the DVD, Dowland’s music was popular even into the 19th century. There are probably other 20th century recordings of his music that I’m just not aware of. Sting said that the music kept coming up sporadically throughout his career. He would hear it here and there. People also kept suggesting to him that he sing some Dowland songs. So he finally did it.

The DVD I have came with a CD. It mostly has Dowland music on it, with a couple of Sting’s own “unplugged” tunes. The stand-alone CD has many of the same tracks as the CD that comes with the DVD, but it has some extra Dowland songs (no Sting tunes, like I said). It also has little narration vignettes, where Sting reads from one of Dowland’s letters, in between songs.

In the narration bits there’s a subtle sound effect they used that sounds like “whispers”. I think the reason for this is the letter Sting reads from is an autobiographical one sent to a prince to try to clear up rumors about Dowland’s activities, to clear his name.

Odd coincidence. I may just check out the CD, too.

J.Ja

You’re right. A real engineer would use metric. I didn’t catch that.

I had a suspicion they weren’t real engineers either. In that scene where they’re eating toast the “silent one”, T.J., makes a comical face that I thought was “over acting” for a “dull” engineer. Plus, how many engineers do you know who would think to put a bit of Mozart opera (for the “martial arts” scene) in their video? You and I might think of it, but IMO we’re exceptions.

What’s kind of amazing to me is that Paul’s voice is a dead ringer for James Robertson. If you listen to his podcasts it’s difficult to tell them apart.