[HSP #100] Free Speech in Schools, Blogging, and Typing Notes in Math
Happy Shiny People!
Whoa- I’ve been working on this one f o r e v e r. Sorry about that, but I long ago promised I would never rush out a mailing with sub-par material for the sake of making an arbitrary deadline.That means you occasionally (ok, ok… often) get these (much) less than once a week. Enough apologizing: this is the 100th of these I’ve sent out! One Hundred of these little newsletters have gone out into the world and hopefully given you some stuff to work with you might not have ever found otherwise. I hope they’re helpful, interesting, and amusing. Like me, right?
Onward!
Free Speech in Schools
I’ve always been interested in (and simultaneously confused by) students’ rights as they do (or don’t) exist around a school. I assumed this was due to my own ignorance in part (it was), but I’ve come to understand that it’s also a super complicated bit of law that’s genuinely difficult to follow. So, when I found this article form 2015 written by a favorite lawyer of mine (what, you don’t have favorite lawyers? You should get some) the opportunity finally came for me to address my ignorance. I’m not sure it’s all done much good, as the law is murky and unclear, but at least I’m not wholly ignorant anymore. At a minimum, this article is well written, informed, and entertaining. Heck, if you’re looking for a bit of non-fiction (and who isn’t, really), this might be your ticket. Mind yourself, however, as it has some naughty language in it.
Sigle Blog Platform
Blogging platforms have felt somewhat static for a bit- Blogspot, Wordpress, tumblr(RIP), etc. But it’s been difficult to put your data somewhere where it’s still yours, and not be overly dependant on some large tech company that’s doing god-knows-what with your data. So: this is a lovely low-friction replacement for Medium (which has been doing this awful paywall thing with other people’s writing…). If you’re looking for a place to write and put that writing out there (and have that experience not be terrible for you or your readers), this might be a decent option to look into. Blogging is back in 2019. You’ll see!
Taking Notes Digitally in Math
https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/
Alright, this is pretty overkill as a specific thing, but it’s the notion of using as fairly basic tool (LaTeX and vim, respectively) to make a very complicated task (taking typed notes in college level math classes) workable. I’ll mention here that I’m a fan of paper and notebooks for note taking, but that I’m just this guy and there are loads of people for whom typing notes on a computer works better. Anyway: this is a detailed breakdown of one student’s setup for taking notes on a computer for high level math classes- a thing that’s notoriously difficult to do. His notes are… beautiful. I’ve no idea what to do with most of the math they show, but they’re undeniably lovely things. And he’s built an efficient process to make them, and I’m always a big fan of that. This might be a useful thing to show upper level students when they’re thinking about what “good notes” means.
Xoxo
Tim