My wife pointed out to me a couple of years ago that I was simultaneously the oldest person on our Dev team, and the youngest person in our church.

There was certainly a plug-in or something that made Reddit look like an Excel spreadsheet, so reading Reddit made you look like you were doing important calculations!

A nation of people so advanced that they decide their dictatorial ruler through a trial by combat.

In a sense, yes. If you are trying to get an international volunteer visa, most developing countries have no interest in more unskilled labor coming into their country. You need some kind of qualification, whether it's a degree or a carpenter's certification.

In the same way, to teach English in Japan you need a "Specialist in Humanities" visa. It's easy to get one, as long as you have a university degree.

A lot of the education and engineering seems to be about the area you are studying, like chemistry or electronics or buildings. But in fact, the most valuable part of it is learning problem-solving skills in the middle of all of those courses. In that sense, I still use my engineering education all the time. But not the degree itself.

When I went into university to do chemical engineering, in 1981, I had never even touched a computer. I didn't know until I got there that you could even do computers as a career.

I graduated, and then volunteered as a teacher in Africa for 3 years. I came back to Canada, and then taught English in Japan for 3 years.

But after my first year of university, my family got a computer (a Commodore Vic 20, with 3.5 kB of memory) and I was obsessed from that woman onward.

Leaving Japan, I went back to school and did a diploma in computer science. Unlike chemical engineering, where I dutifully learned things that I was told I needed to learn, I was delighted to have the chance to learn about software, operating systems, databases, graphics, etc. The difference was astonishing, and I found it easy to maintain a GPA just under 4.0.

I have been working as a programmer for more than 25 years, and although it has been stressful at times, the joy is still there. I'm not an artist by any means, but I do feel like a craftsman, and I enjoy the opportunity to continue learning everyday.

I have never, ever, in my life enjoyed running. I never got up to long distances, but used to be able to do about 5k without too much trouble. An hour of swimming? No problem. 30 minutes of high intensity rowing? Happy to do that. Cycling 50k? I'm all over that. But running just makes me feel bad.

I'm willing to bet that there are millions of teen parents who would have a different view of this. The problem is that teens often don't have access to birth control, or are manipulated, or plain stupid because their brains haven't finished developing yet.

I'm sure that some people would have regrets about not getting laid as teens. But it's hardly a hard and fast rule.

It's not just that we have billionaires, is that they are extracting most of the value out of our economy, and that proportion is only increasing. They have rigged the system in their favor, and it is working perfectly (for them).

the richest 0.02% of Canadians now possess more wealth than the bottom 80%

Is it intentional exploitation? Well, it could just be a coincidence that the influx of international students has helped keep wages down and put an almost unbearable pressure on rental housing, much of which is owned by investment corporations. It might be helpful to look at who is funding the lobbyists walking the quarters of power in our provincial and National capitals.

Captain Sensible. He was the guitarist for the punk band The Damned, but had a #1 hit in the UK with "Happy Talk", a song from the 1949 musical South Pacific.

Obviously you haven't seen that fine documentary The Man in the High Castle.

It doesn't look like it. It might be worth suggesting it to the man behind Language Transfer, he probably just doesn't know about f-droid.

Yes, Language Transfer doesn't have as many languages as Duolingo. Hardly surprising, since the entire system and all the language lessons were created by one man!

For me, the most important thing is to learn to think in the other language. Everything else follows from that.

Language Transfer makes a conscious effort not to get you to memorize things, but to internalize them and understand the system. That works perfectly with my own way of learning.