Top Ten Tuesday – Fictional schools that would be better to teach in than an actual school

Top Ten Tuesday

“Top Ten Tuesday” is a feature started by “The Broke and the Bookish“, in which people list their top ten books that match some given criterion. It changes every week, and happens on a Tuesday. Lots (a frankly ridiculous number) of bloggers take part.

This week the theme is “back to school”, which is not normally something I enjoy thinking about. In the spirit of that theme, I’ve decided to list fictional educational establishments which – in one way or another – would be preferable to real-world schools. Importantly, this list is about schools it would be preferable to teach in, not to learn in – most fictional schools would give you a terrible education.  Continue reading “Top Ten Tuesday – Fictional schools that would be better to teach in than an actual school”

Give Us Strength, Oh Lord, to Let our Children Starve

I came across this article today. Following on from that, I came across this extremely similar article, but on a much more readable website. Both articles date from early last year, and both concern the same event: a machine has written poetry.

I don’t approve – it is important to me, I find, that there are some arenas in which mankind is not surpassed by machines. I’m happy to concede efficiency, I’m happy to admit that a computer can simulate and calculate far more rapidly and accurately than I could ever hope to achieve. All the privilege I claim for my own species (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of creating: of making something new and original, of infusing ink and dead trees with beauty and meaning, of finding the figure trapped inside a block of stone. Continue reading “Give Us Strength, Oh Lord, to Let our Children Starve”