h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Of course you can stop by any time you like, Manda.

Something is bothering me. I forgot to jot down people's birthdays in my summary, so I cheated and looked at the birthday page. But I don't recall actually saying "happy birthday" to Courtesy. So happy birthday, Courtesy.

[Munchkin]

Sol:

How about taking some spices in to the class and getting them to use adjectives to describe the smell, or try to have a conversation about what the smells remind them of?

Just a thought.

I meant to post this yesterday and forgot: http://www.themeatrix.com/ It starts out amusing, then gets preachy.

Shame it gets boring so quickly - because it's all true - and most people just close their eyes to the issues. Unfortunately I fear this site is unlikely to make the desired impression on those it's intended for.

Actually, that's a good idea, and the whole concept isn't that sily. It's just that it is quite hard to come up with generic tasks to teach say tenses through these senses, which is the idea of the battery of tasks for every aspect of langauge learning which are diferent for visual or auditory learners. The point being, it rather takes the mickey out of the emphasis on those two types if you can't or won't do the others.

I suppose a diferent perfume for different grammar points, or different skills might work. Coursebooks which have a scratch and sniff panel with one smell for the present perfect and another for gerunds. And you could give students diferent flavours of sweets or something too. Third conditional tastes like mars bars and... Oh dear, I need to get some rest.

I never really got the hang of English grammar which made German and French grammar even more incomprehensible, let alone genders!

So I was wondering, if you were quite happily living in the Matrix but aware that your body was hooked up to a huge computer, would you really want to change things? Would it be a terrible indictment to say that I'm not entirely sure I would be all that fussed?

*wonders if he has a chance at FTTF today*

Obviously, Caer, you were an olfactorary learner whose needs were not being taken care of...

Depends on how much independence within the Matrix you really had. I mean, if it wasn't actually being controlled/ manipulated and you had as much freedom as you would have had on the outside, what is the difference? Aside from the fact that you didn't have control about being there in the first place.

Wasn't there a whole skit in Red Dwarf on that?

Where they chose that life, I mean. It was called an adiction, of course, but still.

[Hyp] with enough to do for 3 people - at least.

Funnily enough, Sol, you may have something there, just a whiff of burnt jam or apples takes me to my grandmother's kitchen and Cuticura talc reminds me of prickly heat in Singapore.

Some scents can make me feel really for no real reason that I'm aware of and others have the opposite effect. I will never be able to smell lilies again without thinking of Norwich Catherdral on a sunny October afternoon with the light from the stained glass windows colouring the stone columns.

Now that might be the way to snap me out of a comfortable existence in the Matrix, I suppose. I think there was a Red Dwarf episode that was similar, it is a theme that reappears all the time in sci-fi. What was the place that 7of9 used to drift off to?

F38024?thread=344183

Clean cups! Clean cups!

Oh well, it does rather take VR to it's logical conclusion.

Actually, there's a lot to the NLP stuff. In fact, I did know someone who, when revising, used a different perfume for different subjects, and of course to the exam itself. And I'm a very strong visual learner whereas my colleague is aural. If I'm learning a language (or anything else) I need something to look at while I think about it, preferably some kind of diagram or chart, but also tables or sentences and words written down help. I think the reason why I don't make much progress in Russian without clases is because most of my other exposure is aural. I learnt a shedload of new words this summer just by reading, and most of those were ones which I remembered hearing, but had never actualy got fixed. My colleage on the other hand, just finds all that confusing. She needs to hear explanations.