[Edu-sig] Overloading (was Re: more on "variable names")

[kirby urner]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:52 AM, kirby urner<kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:

<< SNIP >>

> OK, time for my first meeting of the day...  I have this "neolithic
> math" component in our place based curriculum.  We keep going back to
> this "cave man" setting, but lo and behold their inner circle know
> quite a bit about world geography and navigation, per recent
> scholarship (anyway Sumerians were "cave men" and calling it
> "neolithic" is maybe more marketing than literal -- it's not
> "prehistoric", not literally).

Sumerians were *not* cave men, meant to say.

We've had lots of cave men on TV ever since the Geiko commercials, not
all of you in USA TV bubble I realize (it's an intense bubble,
actually a foam).  Having Conan the Barbarian types transplanted to a
civilized context, seeing therapists and stuff, is a long-running
humorous thread in popular culture, right up there with "future
civilized" forced to live in the past or our present.

Some of you may be following my proposals to have a Python User Group
on television, with an inevitable Mickey Mouse Club vibe, though
without conscious copying.  That's why I was taking that "let them
sue, good publicity" line on the PSF list, regarding the Pinoy User
Group use of a "mouse ears" motif, which I think was somewhat
unintentional on their part:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/3544467917/

Use of cartoon characters in an intellectual property context was also
one of my themes at Gothenberg Europython (the last one in that city),
as you'll see from my slides (pictures of TinTin, Donald Duck, plus a
complete replica of some USA gas station, straight out of eXistenZ one
might think, but in Liseberg).

Kirby