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What he's saying is that there's no basis for the statement that using a preferred learning style is any more effective than using some alternative or non-preferred. I didn't believe this myself at first (but was told this by a research psychologist who does research in that area) but read some of the literature and as of at least two years ago there was no study that was conducted in a way to allow a person to make that claim. Most of it came down to lack of proper control groups or only examining whether or not students preferred to use a particular learning method (which most people tend to do) over some others.

So there is not evidence to suggest that a learning style works better than others, only that people tend to prefer some over others. There were some researchers who were worried that focusing only on a preferred learning style might ultimately be detrimental, though this was an open question and not something that had been studied. Learning styles are just marketing fluff used by the text book and educational material companies to justify selling yet another set of new books, etc. It's basically a buzzword with no scientific basis. It seems to be another one of those myths that somehow turned into common knowledge and has become an oft repeated lie.

Here's one particular publication on the topic that outlines it nicely: http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/3298/course/section/1174/Do%20Learners%20Really%20Know%20Best.pdf (PDF warning)

like this - http://cisn.metu.edu.tr/2001-1/health.php

That reminds me of this short story by Roald Dahl.

The other approach is to first let the world sort out what features are actually desirable, then standardize what's there and try to get implementers to converge towards the standard... Common Lisp is an example of this from programming languages.

Don't, don't, don't follow Common LISP as an example. Common LISP has been a disaster. There are far fewer people earning their living from LISP now than there were before Common LISP standard was introduced, and far fewer programs in regular use written in LISP.

Common LISP is a very bad standard. As Scott Fahlman wrote:

The result is a language that... not even its mother could love. Like the camel, Common Lisp is a horse designed by committee. Camels do have their uses.

He should know. As he says on his home page:

I was one of the principal designers of the Common Lisp language.

Common LISP essentially destroyed LISP as a usable, productive language. It made an incredible number of simply wrong technical decisions; and too many of those decisions were made by the smaller companies of the eastern United States - Symbolics, LMI, Franz - trying to write a standard which was as different as possible from InterLISP, in order to kill competition from Xerox. I'm not pretending InterLISP was brilliant or the answer to all problems. It wasn't. Like Common LISP, it was a LISP2, making an artificial distinction between data and code; and it was in many ways clumsy and unorthogonal itself. But there was a great deal of creativity coming out of the InterLISP community, which Common LISP effectively killed.

We would have been so much better with a standard based on Portable Standard Lisp, or on EuLisp, or on Scheme. We would have been so much better with no standard at all. Instead, we got a LISP2 with a bizarrely complex lambda-list syntax, with a comment syntax which was incompatible with the LISP reader (so that in-core editing and development were effectively impossible), with so many horrible design errors.

Of course, it succeeded in its primary goal. Xerox was driven out of the LISP marketplace. But the cost for LISP has been horrendous: the language has been effectively destroyed. And for what was and should be the queen of programing languages, that's a disaster.

Oh, yes - I was during the eighties a very junior member of the British Standards Institution's LISP working group. I was there. I still think LISP is the best possible programming language, but these days I use Java.

Yes and no. There is "electromigration" which is a process where the interconnects in CPU's break down. Presumably more use would accelerate the electromigration process. I've only ever seen one CPU die of electromigration in my lifetime, and it was a machine that had literally been on for 10 years since the day it was purchased.

But I agree with you heat is a much more immediate concern:)

I did my back in on one of those normal office chairs. I changed to a posture chair for a few months and my back sorted itself out.

Technically, my company could have been in a bit of trouble because they are responsible for my health and saftey at work.

The posture chairs are quite good - the look funny and need a bit of getting used to (mine looked a bit like this). Additionally, you also have a minor problem with the fact that you slowley lose the hairs on your shins!

However, what works for me might not work for you. Your best bet is to consult a specialist, otherwise you might damage your back further. Remember - your health and saftey at work should be your companies responsibility. Ask them to sort it out.

Steve.

Also... weren't you /not/ supposed to have the acronym within it's own definition? You're right. However see recursion for an example of how we get away with it.

-Sincerely