Wim 🅾 @wim_v12e@octodon.social

I finished my #drawing, on the last day of my holidays! It's the first time I've done such a large #watercolour (50cmx70cm). It's based on a picture I took of a lotus in a pond in a temple (萬福寺) near #Kyoto. #art #mastoartDetail of the lotus pond watercolour

#introductions

I'm Wim, in Glasgow (Scotland).
I like #photography, #reading, #art, #veggie cooking and #japan (#日本語).

I do research on #compilers, #languages and runtimes (e.g. #OpenCL) for #FPGAs, #GPUs and #manycores.

I program in #Perl, #Haskell, #Fortran, #C++,#Python.

@wim_v12e is my main account, I use it mostly for the non-technical stuff. The computer stuff usually goes on @wim_v12e.

I finished my #drawing. It's based on a picture of a scene from the Gion Matsuri that I took in Kyoto last summer. I used #watercolour pencils, acrylic watercolour paint and bistre. #art

Dead Scots pines have a beauty of their own (2).
#photography #photo #mastoart

Dead Scots pines have a beauty of their own (1).
#photography #photo #mastoart

This flower has the delightfully Tolkienian name of "asphodel".
#mastoart #photo #photography

This is the view inside the actual pass. "Lairig" means "pass" in Gaelic. The "Ghru" part is apparently derived from the name of the burn in the picture, the Druie.
#photography #mastoart #photo

This is the approach to the Lairig Ghru, probably the best known hill-pass in Scotland. What I like in particular is that it is 10 km from the nearest road.
#photography #mastoart #photo

(3/3)
And some of them objected strongly to his giving everyone the same mark. How could the diligent students be distinguished from the dull ones? What was the good in working hard? If no competitive distinctions were to be made, one might as well do nothing.

“Well, of course,” Shevek said, troubled. “If you do not want to do the work, you should not do it.”

(2/3)
He asked his students to write a paper on any problem in physics that interested them, and told them that he would give them all the highest mark, so that the bureaucrats would have something to write on their forms and lists.

To his surprise a good many students came to him to complain. They wanted him to set the problems, to ask the right questions; they did not want to think about questions, but to write down the answers they had learned.

This is a great observation on education and assessment from Urusula Le Guin in "The Dispossessed" (1/3)

"He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand.
At first he refused to give any tests or grades, but this upset the University administrators so badly that, not wishing to be discouneous to his hosts, he gave in."