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Learning On My Time

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Recently I have been to the south of France four times to enjoy cycling vacations. The people there are super friendly and happy to have our tourist Euros. The food is outstanding.

I took French in high school and for a couple years in college, but dropped it. I have recently picked it back up and am learning every day – literally.

I have been using a free app called DuoLingo. It was pretty cool to see what I remembered after twenty something years.

I set a goal to do some French every day. The app rewards you for hitting your daily goal. I made it realistic – equivalent to about 20 to 30 minutes a day. I am on a 92 day streak as of this writing. I am competitive with everything, especially myself.

It is amazing how far I have come already. Now that I have knocked down most of the basic vocabulary and tenses, it is getting more difficult – but I am learning quickly. The app works you over in several ways. It says something that you have to write, or shows something that you have to translate (English to French and French to English) or shows you something that you are supposed to say into the voice recognition.

While the app isn’t perfect, it is very, very good. I feel at this point if I could get someone to slow down while speaking that I would have a pretty good chance of getting around, ordering in a restaurant, reading basic travel information, etc. Someday I want to buy a little place in France so obviously learning the language is key – not to mention fun (to me anyways). I would recommend DuoLingo if you are interested in refreshing your language skills – it works on all of your platforms, and if you are in a place where you can’t speak, you can simply turn off that function.

DuoLingo isn’t perfect – at a certain point down the road I will likely have to find a new app or hire a private tutor to perfect my conversational French, but for these basic building blocks, it is fantastic.

But this particular post isn’t necessarily about DuoLingo – it is about learning on my time. In the past, something like this would be unimaginable. You would have to hire a private tutor or go to community college. My life isn’t structured that way. I am a business owner with kids all over the place so I need to approach learning French when I have 20 minutes here or there. I recently looked at the local community college for French courses and they only offered it at 6pm to 8.30pm on Tuesday and Thursday night. Not gonna happen.

With DuoLingo, I hit it when and where I want to. Waiting for a kid to get out of dance class? DuoLingo. Someone is late for an appointment or maybe I am early? Same thing. I don’t have 2.5 hours to sit in a chair twice a week, away from my house or work.

There are a lot of apps out there, and like with the first inning of the game, Khan Academy, I am excited to see how these new learning methods and interfaces come to fruition in the future.

We aren’t there yet, but I think eventually kids graduating high school will be able to say “why college?” – and I think that is a great thing.

Adults who want to simply further themselves no longer need to sit around at the local community college.

“Trump plan calls for nationwide concealed carry and an end to gun bans”

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The Washington Post:

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump — who said he has a concealed carry permit — called for the expansion of gun rights Friday, including making those permits applicable nationwide.
 
In a position paper published on his website Friday afternoon, Trump called for the elimination of gun and magazine bans, labeling them a “total failure.”
 
“Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice. The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own,” Trump wrote.

Where did this come from? Perhaps Trump’s people read this and similar articles from libertarians. Gun rights is a gimme issue for Trump. He can use it to get the support of libertarians, and of conservatives who lean libertarian, without alienating his other supporters.

It’s a pity that the other main Republican candidates are so inept by comparison in their use of modern media.

(Via The Right Coast.)

More on Politics and Social Media

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…some thoughts from the UK:

A lot of what happens on Facebook, as with Twitter, is “virtue signalling” showing off to your friends about how right on you are.

via the Assistant Village Idiot, who says:

I mentioned this long ago in terms of Not In Our Name, and also suggested that Jonathan Haidt overlooks those places where liberals are just as purity vs. disgust* concerned as conservatives. (See also environmentalism, vegetarianism, NASCAR and a host of other disgust issues, including, I think wealth – though that is more ambiguous in both camps.

*And  authority driven, another trait supposedly more common among conservatives.   The imprimatur of Roberth Reich or Paul Krugman is enough in economics; climate change catastrophe is based on choice of authorities.

See also my related post  Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is…do you, Mr Priebus?

 

Worthwhile Reading & Viewing

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Propaganda:  turning human beings into automatically responding machines

Victor Davis Hanson:  Progressive mass hysteria, enabled by the Internet

Sarah Hoyt thinks we are suffering from  the political equivalent of an autoimmune disease

Tolerance for ambiguity  can be an important career asset

It seems that color movie film was often used in early cinema, going back to the 1890s

If  railroads  are a gauge of a society’s health, then it sounds like  Sweden is in serious trouble.  See also  railway socialism and safety

The story of  Pyrex

A visit to the Le Creuset factory

Virtual reality for football training

Once there was a “know-nothing” movement in America;    today, we have the “know-betters”

Why we should study the ancient Greeks

Still Not Finished With Sad Puppies

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With some apologies because this is not a matter which particularly touches me, or the books that I write, I am moved to write about this imbroglio one more time, because it seems that it didn’t end with the official Hugo awards slate of nominees being finalized with many good and well-written published works by a diverse range of authors being put forward. The Hugo nominations appear for quite a good few years to have been dominated by one particular publisher, Tor. And it seems that the higher levels of management at Tor did not take a diminishment of their power over the Hugo nominees at all gracefully. (This post at my book blog explains the ruckus with links, for those who may be in the dark.)

A Ms. Irene Gallo, who apparently billed as a creative director at Tor, replied thusly on her Facebook page, when asked about what the Sad Puppies were: “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.”

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