Lore Sjöberg’s Alt Text column this week is a reductio ad absurdum about easy-to-use technology. Even though he’s being humorous, this line kind of struck me:

Did you know that it’s possible to calculate a cosine even if you think “cosine” is a brand of nasal decongestant? We don’t allow people to walk around with live grenades in their pants, and we shouldn’t allow people who don’t understand math questions to get the answers.

Since Shadow only recently had to physically restrain me from showing up in Shadaughter’s math classroom with a baseball bat,* I’m not laughing at this so much as wondering if I could fit it on a T-shirt.

Given the preeminent position of technology and information in the modern world, I think it’s vastly important that people understand how things work instead of simply taking them for granted.

:::whew::: Now I feel better.


*Long story short: As with all other public schools in Virginia, Shadaughter’s school is in the thrall of SOL testing (which, frankly, is an uncannily accurate acronym). Her math teacher required all students to have a graphing calculator, because he wasn’t teaching them how to do the problems without a calculator. So she wasn’t learning the theory of the problem, she was learning how to punch buttons like a trained monkey. To say that I was annoyed is like saying that the Pacific Ocean is damp.