Computers in classrooms are the filmstrips of the 1990s.
quote by Clifford Stoll
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Every Little Thing She Does
Freshman year mama asked waht do you wanna
do when you get out of here.
i said well gee, i'm only 13, but i think i'd like to play my guitar
be a star
She well thats not it you got some time to go
good sense will kick in any time you know.
i'm not worried, i'm not worried
Softmore year she asked the same old thing,
my answer had remained unchanged
i saw her fidgit with her thumbs,
she said you like computers John, you like computers don't you
you see i always see with a computer you like computers
maybee you could do something with computers yea wouldn't that be nice
Junior year, its a little more tense she says,
what do you want to do with your life?
i'm not on the fence i know exactly what i am to be
and i'm only 17.
she well all i ask is that you pay attention in class,
so if you happen to xhange your mind in time you can still go
so where reputible, do us proud.
so i went down stairs and played the guitar loud.
yea and senior its the same old question
she said what you wanna do?
i said play my guitar and sing, she said theres no such thing,
she said thers no such thing
song performed by John Mayer
Added by Lucian Velea
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Blue Collar Workers
Blue collar workers feeling used.
And being replaced,
By a robotic hasted pace.
Blue collar workers feeling used,
And moved...
From an assembled human touch,
To programmed computers...
More effective as tools.
Blue collar workers feeling used,
And moved...
From positions that were sacrificed,
To improve what they do.
Automated are these times,
And cheap labor too!
Booted by computers that leave nothing to do,
For the blue collar workers,
Feeling used and abused.
Delete.
Don't need.
Delete.
Don't need.
Booted by computers that leave nothing to do,
For the blue collar workers,
Feeling used and abused.
Blue collar workers feeling used,
And moved...
From positions that were sacrificed,
To improve what they do.
Automated are these times,
And cheap labor too!
Delete.
Don't need.
Delete.
Don't need.
Booted by computers that leave nothing to do,
For the blue collar workers,
Feeling used and abused.
Delete.
Don't need.
Delete.
Don't need.
[...] Read more
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Man is not a machine... Although man most certainly processes information, he does not necessarily process it in the way computers do. Computers and men are not species of the same genus... However much intelligence computers may attain, now or in the furture, theirs must always be an intelligence alien to genuine human problems and concerns.
quote by Joseph Weizenbaum
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That's the new way - with computers, computers, computers. That's the way we can have the cell survive and get some new information in high resolution. We started about five years ago and, today, I think we have reached the target.
quote by Lennart Nilsson
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People don't understand computers. Computers are magical boxes that do things. People believe what computers tell them.
quote by Bruce Scheneier
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REALIZATION OF ROMANIAN COMPUTERS - In the period 1955-1957, ROMANIA designed and built its first digital electronic computer (1957, CIFA 1 computer), by a team led by Victor Toma, at the Institute of Atomic Physics (IFA ) - Magurele Bucharest. After 1970 followed the construction of Romanian electronic computers FELIX C series at the ICE Felix Electronic Computers Factory based on licenses purchased from the Dutch company FRIDEN and CII, a French private company created in 1966, within the French government project Plan Calcul, in the time of Charles de Gaulle.
Marin Vlada in ROINFO Romanian Informatics 2018-2022
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So Long, Astoria
It was the first snow of the season
i can almost see you breathin
in the middle of that empty street
Sometimes i still see myself
in that lonesome bedroom
playin my guitar
and singing songs of hope
for a better future
life is....only....
as good as the memories we make
and i'm taking back what belongs to me
polaroids of classrooms unattended
these relics of remembrence
are just like shipwrecks
only theyre gone faster
than the smell after it rains
last night while everyone was sleepin
i tripped through my old neighborhood
and resurrected memories from ashes
we said that we would never fit in
but we were really just like them
does rebellion ever make a difference
life is
only
as good as the memories we make
and im taking back what belongs to me
polaroids of classrooms unattended
these relics of remembrence
are just like shipwrecks
only theyre gone faster
than the smell after it rains
So long astoria
i found a map to buried treasure
and even if we come home empty handed
well still have our stories
of battle scars, pirate ships and wounded hearts,
broken bones, and all the best of friendships
and when this hourglass
has filtered out
its final grain of sand
i raise my glass to the memories we had
this is my wish
this is my wish
im takin back
im takin them all back
song performed by Ataris
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Chabi of the Okavango
Chabi Maenga bought me a chicken. It took two, three hours to cook in the big black pot and was still tough as our leather boots. A goodbye gift to me, upon my leaving the district, leaving the passenger seat by his side.
Chabi had met me in Gaborone with a newly-issued 1978 model Toyota, a boxy thing that bounced crazily on the dirt tracks but was considered state of the art at the time. We drove north until the paved road ran out, then north east across the remote reaches of the Northern Kalahari to my new duty station in Maun. We slept half-way at Serowe, at the 'we are working together' cooperative hotel, under thatch. On the second day we skirted two of the four long walls enclosing the richest diamond mine in the world and tracked the elongated fence that separated buffalo, endemic with foot-and-mouth disease, from cattle. We swung north once more as we reached the side of the 'vanishing lake', Ngami, that in some years confirmed its presence on the standard maps, and in others was simply no-where to be found. All depended on the rains in distant Angola.
Chabi and I shared that front cabin, on and off, for nearly three years. 'Call me Chabi.. like Chubby Checker' was how he introduced himself. He was early 50s, salt and pepper in his tight thin curls, and I was 24... supposedly the boss, the one who signed the requisition slips and the log book for each and every trip. But Chabi was very much in charge.
The first thing he taught me was the Tswana language. After three months by his side I was almost fluent - a status I had not remotely reached in my two years to that point in the capital city. I spoke with his northern dialect: 'f's pronounced as 'h's, 'tl's with a silent 'l'. This marked me as a man of the Okavango, the Ngami, for the rest of my days among the Tswana people. Later my wife of the southern Tswana, and her family, would tease me constantly about this northern country-bumpkin accent. But what did I care? It sounded good to me and I was proud enough simply to be rattling away in SeTwana, however rustic it might sound, and to know more or less what others were rattling. In reciprocation, I helped Chabi with his English, when he was in the mood for it.
The second thing he taught was how to shoot guinea-fowl. He did this mainly by intimidation. Since he was putting in all the hours of driving - not only did I have no licence, but he was the designated official (although I did break the central transport rules more than once when his arthritis was playing up) - and it was me who had better take care of the supper. He would slow the truck to a crawl and I would open the window as we came across a gaggle of birds on the left hand side, gesture for me to pick up his shotgun and cue me... 'ema.... ema.... jaaanu! '. And if I aimed for the centre of the crowd, and kept the gun fairly straight, we would be sure to get a couple of birds for the pot. These we would take to the local primary school and have any available hungry teachers take care of the cooking and share in the meal. This required some concentration to avoid biting down on buckshot.
But the best times we had were on the road to Shakawe. He was delighted, first of all, when I nicknamed the village at the end of the Delta, at the remote northern border, as 'Shake-a-way'. He found this unnecessarily hilarious and I backed it up with a cassette recording of the South African multi-racial band Juluka's song, 'Shake My Way'. In fact we played very little but the first few Juluka albums on my portable cassette player during those trips.
We loaded up the back of the truck with the necessary items: my metal trunk, bought from the Mazezuru (the impoverished itinerant white-clothed Jehova's Witnesses expelled from Rhodesia-Zimbabwe - as it was at the time of my purchase, temporarily - who lived by tinsmithery, also beating out conical tin tops for rondavels) , and filled with a few changes of clothes, a couple of books and plenty of 'tinned stuff', cheap imported meals such as chicken biriyani. On top of the trunk went Chabi's battered suitcase. And then the two most essential items, side by side: a barrel of drinking water, a barrel of fuel. And a prayer that the last of these should not leak or spill over anything else, along those bumpy roads.
If it was winter, it was plain sailing. The dirt roads were dry and firm and we could make it to Shakawe in a day. We would circumnavigate most of the villages along the way:
.... Sehitwa, within sight of the vanishing lake if it had not vanished, Sehitwa where an Irishman started a little fishing industry singlehanded, selling frozen bream fillets all the way down to Johannesburg, supplying my monthly 'Fishko' party... until the Lake dried up...
... Nokaneng, meaning 'by the river', but it was a river that had long disappeared with the gradual drying of the swamps that fed it;
... Tsau, a camp for road building, which had created about 20 kilometres of Norwegian-funded tarmacadam in about five years, supposedly an experiment in desert blacktop that in fact linked nothing to nothing;
.... Gomare, the district's secondary centre, with its massive 'community' school, of which I was a board member, where the board had spent years painstakingly rounding up a few cattle and bags of sorghum to finance the first classroom. These efforts had been completely bypassed by the arrival of the World Bank with nearly a million dollars, more of which appeared to be spent on highly artistic walkways than on the new classrooms;
... Etsha, a new village settled by several thousand long-term refugees from the Angolan civil war who turned out to be impressive growers of grain, unique basket designers and weavers and secret brewers of palm beer (to search for which, Chabi would occasionally take us by alternative backroads) , by a handful of Danish medical students, and by one Welshman with scores of cats who marketed the baskets to tourists and the national museum;
... Sepopa... oh, what to say about Sepopa, a village like any small and remote African village;
... and then finally, Shakawe, a busy trading post hard up by the Angolan border, with a local culture, chiefdom and opposition political party all its own.
The trip was easy between dawn and dusk, in the cold dry season. In the summertime, however, a different question entirely. With the road camp at Tsau concentrating on its lonely piece of blacktop in the middle of nowhere, the rains and the traffic - such as they were, and they were always sufficient for this at least - churned up the rest of the district roads unmercifully. There were patches of known notoriety where we were almost sure to get stuck, and no way, due to thick bush linings along the track, to avoid them. Chabi, fortunately, was a past master at laying wooden planks under the wheels and using the 4-wheel drive to get us out...eventually. The journey took two days. The floors of classrooms in Gomare, Etsha or Sepopa became our beds.
The journey took us along the outer rim of the river channels that flanked the vast inland swamp called Okavango. And it was at Shakawe that the settled population enjoyed a true and vivid view of the river, there at the ingress, the inflow which fed the intricate waterways of the swamp, the high-banked and spectacular panhandle. Shakawe perched above those fast-flowing, pure, clear waters, which over the years had slowly diminished in flow for reasons no-one seemed to fully understand. It was often the place where we started our weeklong series of Kgotla meetings, village assemblies chaired by the Chief, and addressed by the young English district officer on the subject of the latest local government plans for the area, speaking a nervous mixture of Setswana and English (Chabi or a local agricultural officer providing translation) . This was normally followed by several hours of grandstand speeches by the assembled males, rising one by one from their wood-and-leather chairs to comment on what they thought I had proposed. The meeting - perfect for total-immersion SeTswana training for the young DO - were finished off, sometimes, by an invitation from the Chief to the women, sitting on the outer margins of the throng, often with babies, to speak their minds at last.
Through many such assemblies, the oddity of my presence was remarked upon only once, by a slightly intoxicated monnamogolo (respected old man) , who approached the table at which the Chief and I sat, and called out loudly, I never thought I would see the little lady (being Queen Elizabeth, or her representative) at this Kgotla once again!
Once at Shakawe, there were three options for continuing our journey. To work our way back down the side of the Okavango, holding meetings in two villages each day, taking about a week to return to the district office and our homes in Maun. Or to head off west to visit the few remote villages - Shai-Shai, Nau-Nau, Kangwa - founded by Herero cattleowners, their wives clad in massive layers of German-inspired skirts, and their San (Bushman) herders, near the Namibian border, across which lay a land still heavily occupied by the apartheid army. Or, the most magical and exciting option of all, to drive onto the little ferry ('pontoon') and cross to the remote eastern bank of the panhandle, and drive down to the three villages that lay there, on roads that barely deserved the name. Only one trading store with the most basic items could be found in that territory, and no supplies of fuel at all. Once a month, a Baptist dentist arrived in his light plane to preach to the people, distribute Bibles, and then, only then, extract teeth. If you were stranded, and spoke politely, he might stand you a lift back home.
Snakes became caught under our wheels sometimes. Ostriches would run alongside, trying to outpace us, then following the trail in front of us. And once an elephant suddenly stepped onto the trail from its hiding place behind a tree. Chabi brought us to a massive sudden halt, and we waited, waited silently.. until the creature went on its way.
In three years, he had only one accident, and that was on the tarmac on the way back from the trip to the capital. It was dark, approaching Francistown.. and a cow had gone to sleep on one side of the road. It was a minor collision, but the government censured him anyway, after much argumentation.
When we camped in the villages at night his radio took over from my cassette player. First the Botswana news. Then the solemn reading out of those who had passed away. Followed by church music. Just right to lull us both to sleep.
Perhaps the last thing Chabi tried to teach me concerned the wizards of the forest. When, during the long hours of travelling, he would start to talk as in an obsessive trance about the 'baloi', the spirits, he would gradually enter the world of 'deep Setswana', and his meanings became lost to me. The guttural sounds of the language would become a backdropp to the noise of the engine. My lack of ability to follow him into the tales of the wizards always seemed a disappointment to him, but he never gave up completely.
Mainly, while on the road together, he and I talked like father and son, cooked and ate together, and often slept alongside each other. When back in town, however, we did not socialize. We became formal in our work environment, 'district officer' and 'driver'. Chabi never came to hear me entertain the office crowd from the District Council with my guitar on Friday nights at Le Bistro cafe on the banks of the Thamalakane river. He never invited me to meet his family or to see his home. Which is what make it all the more surprising when he turned up at my place, during my last days in Maun, with that hardy three-year-old chicken. The first thing he did was invite me to wring its neck. And not for the first time with him, I ducked this challenge.
Zimbabwe was already free and its freedom would continue for a while. The wars of Angola raged on, fueled from distant lands, while the occupation of Namibia intensified. My place at Chabi's side was taken by a young Motswana graduate, and doubtless later by another. And then, as if by a miracle, generated by the pressure of resistance in the heart of South Africa, the dark clouds began to lift across the region, and the peace that lay at the heart of Botswana began to spread to all its troubled neighbours.
[...] Read more
poem by Frank Bana
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Children Need Their Fathers
The mothers are now saying,
Their children need their fathers.
But weren't they they ones,
Who kept the fathers away?
And had the law hunt them down...
After having the courts chase they,
With warnings to keep their distance...
From these same children,
The mothers are saying...
Need their fathers!
And the fathers...
Who have discovered a peace of mind,
Are no longer trying to find excuses...
Why their fatherless children,
Seem to be out of their minds.
No matter who tries,
To blame their lack of discipline...
With no respect to others to show or give,
And put this on their shoulders...
To claim this is a reaction to their absence.
People who make decisions with ignorance,
Are always guaranteed to put their activities...
In the path of someone else to fault and shame!
'How many children raised by their mothers,
Compared to those raised by their fathers...
Have issues of discipline?
Or sit in prisons?
As a direct result of those who have created,
This statistic...
As if it had developed on its own!
Like hunger, homelessness and racism.'
~Excuse me?
I think you are looking for the excelerated classrooms.
You've stepped into a remedial one,
By mistake.~
'I'm sorry.
I was getting eye contact.
And immediately I thought they were paying attention.
Where are the excelerated classrooms? '
~Up those stairs, take a right...
And they will be the ones,
Where the light is shining bright.
You will not miss them.~
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Off Of Those Stages Rehearsed
One experienced has strong beliefs.
And normally away from classrooms,
Has their lessons been taught.
It is difficult to converse,
With someone who has lived...
Far away and off of those stages rehearsed.
When one has survived alone,
And has done it from the trenches.
And not sitting on park benches...
Sniffing floral arrangements,
Or wishing to be uplifted...
By a drifting of a Spring breeze.
It becomes difficult to share idealism...
With one who realistically lives.
One experienced has strong beliefs.
And normally away from classrooms,
Has their lessons been taught.
It is difficult to converse,
With someone who has lived...
Far away and off of those stages rehearsed.
There is a depth of meaning,
That has been involved in one's interpretation.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Mimicry Assignment
Many classrooms were my home
and dozens of teachers called my name
thousands of lessons taught and learned
after time its all the same
For I was an intelligent child
my knowledge knew no end
homework tests and lessons
it seemed book smarts were my best fried
Everyday I proved ready
to ace my work with ease
with hardly any effort or drive
my lessons were a breeze
For I was an intelligent child
my teachers and classmates knew it
the lessons were long and tedious
but i knew i had to do it
During all those monotonous years
I decided it wasnt for me
I hated math and things with rules
I desired creativity
Yes, many classrooms were my home
and dozens of teachers helped me see
while i excelled at math and science
creative writing was for me.
poem by Greta Streed
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Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.
quote by Edward Shepherd Mead
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At our computer club, we talked about it being a revolution. Computers were going to belong to everyone, and give us power, and free us from the people who owned computers and all that stuff.
quote by Steve Wozniak
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Because I believe that humans are computers, I conjectured that computers, like people, can have left- and right-handed versions.
quote by Philip Emeagwali
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The guy who knows about computers is the last person you want to have creating documentation for people who don't understand computers.
quote by Adam Osborne
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My Tree
Don't pick my apples
Don't pick my peaches
Leave my tree alone
This is not my money
This is not my car
This is not my world 2
What labels me a star?
CHORUS:
This is my tree, my tree
And I ain't never gonna let U climb me
This is my tree, my tree
And I ain't never gonna let U climb me
Can't a man have secrets?
Can't a man have love?
Can't a man have an attitude?
Or is it all or none?
I don't know what U want
CHORUS
Watch me dance
This is not my woman
This is not her race
Color shouldn't matter
If your soul is in the right place, right place, ooh
CHORUS
Yo, Robin Power's on the mic now
Pumpin' a steady jam, but this ain't a battle
N.P.G. is in the house 2 rattle your brain 2 the new idea
Love's the only drug we're doin' here
Love's the only drug we're doin' here
We doin' it hard! (Hard!)
N.P.G. is in the house and we're just gettin' started (In the house, yeah)
And on the way, I'll preview all the days 2 come (Mm-hmm)
We got a big bad drummer who got computers on the run, oh yes it is
Got computers on the run
N.P.G. in the house (N.P.G. in the house)
N.P.G. in the house (N.P.G. in the house)
Yeah
If U're lookin' 4 [it then]
Look in your own backyard
Plant some peace flowers in your war zone
So I can fire my bodyguards
This is my tree (CHORUS {x5})
No, U ain't climbin' me
I ain't never gonna let cha climb my tree
That's right
Funky, funky, but we got 2 slow this down
Yo, Robin Power's on the mic now
And I'm comin' from a positive place
Uptown James, let's get ready 2 turn this papa out
Yo boy, turn this mic up
[...] Read more
song performed by Prince
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There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!
quote by Richard P. Feynman
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One of the problems with computers, particularly for the older people, is they were befuddled by them, and the computers have gotten better. They have gotten easier to use. They have gotten less expensive. The software interfaces have made things a lot more accessible.
quote by Steve Case
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People think computers will keep them from making mistakes. They're wrong. With computers you make mistakes faster.
quote by Adam Osborne
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It always helps to be a good programmer. It is important to like computers and to be able to think of things people would want to do with their computers.
quote by Bill Budge
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