I was with you until you started talking about rib removal. That's been debunked over at Snopes. That comment sort of throws a bad light over the rest of your post. Though, I don't doubt that working in the adult entertainment industry does suck some of your soul away.
It's funny you mention the "Everyday Math". I live in the Chicago suburbs, so it seems every person I know that has a kid in grade school in the area is using this series of books for math. I have gone over my sisters house and there have been times where I have been asked to help my niece with her homework because my sister didn't know how to solve the problem since it is so different than how we were taught.
This is one of the great weaknesses of Everyday Math. If the teacher doesn't use skill sheets (a method for tracking student comprehension and achievement) and ensure that every kid knows how to do the homework and doesn't send home the parent letters that accompany each unit to ensure that teachers understand what is being taught, parents are going to struggle to help students. This comes back to being a good teacher and ensuring that you aren't just "presenting" material, but rather actually teaching.
I figure this is a good start to see what has been covered so far. She is unable to provide one, because it seems that everything is a worksheet.
Ideally, there isn't a need for the textbook to come home with the kids for younger kids as skills are presented in tiny chunks and the worksheets should be spiraled reviews of already mastered concepts. Again, if kids aren't actually taught and they aren't on the road to mastery, they're going to struggle with the homework.
I still remember the problem. It goes something like this: "People are on the phone in the US for a total of 123 billion minutes each day. If there are 200 million people with phones, what is the average amount of time each person is on the phone". I am sure for you and I this is a trivial problem, but here is what I have issue with it. First, I asked my niece if she knew what an average was. She said no. Ok, not a big deal so I tried to explain to her what an average was.
Once again, the teacher probably didn't make sure that her kids knew how to average. Averaging is a HUGE part of EDM as is factoring and division. I don't want to rag on a teacher I've never observed, and I certainly have made similar mistakes, but it sounds like once again this is a failing of the teacher and not necessarily a failing of EDM.
So that leads me to my issue with this problem and with "Everyday Math" in general. What is that they are trying to teach in this problem?
They were probably trying to review finding an average and the process associated with that.
I can understand wanting to cross apply different math techniques to solving problems, but if neither concept has been taught then is either concept really being taught by the cross application? If anything, my impression from Everyday Math based on what I have seen is a removal of formalism to math.
EDM is less formal than the way I was taught, but there is definitely some good thinking behind it. Once again, if the teaching is good, there is a logic, rhyme and reason behind the way the material is taught. If the teacher just passes out the homework and continues along blindly without checking in with the students, you end up with a situation like you had with your niece.
I know, how boring is it to talk about the associative property or commutative property, but if you have those tools under your belt then everyone is speaking the same language when it comes to math.
Everyday Math does struggle with this as well. It could be stronger here. It doesn't put a lot of emphasis on terminology, but it does do alright in general, when once again taught properly.
Just like so many other things, the best tools in the world aren't the only factor in determining the quality of the product produced. Having good tools just helps you spend less time faffing around and more time getting the job done. A master of education like Jamie Escalante (of Sta
The way math is taught in schools is atrocious. Most math texts that I've used with 5th and 6th graders emphasize learning processes and methods for solving a set of problems. The texts do not hold all of the blame, however. The texts are written to follow state and national standards. The standards are written in such a way to emphasize process and not necessarily apprehension of greater concepts. For example:
5th Grade Level Expectation 1. Differentiate between the term factor and multiple, and prime and composite (N-1-M)
While these vocabulary items are important and these skills are definitely useful, learning this skill in isolation (which most texts teach) is pretty useless as students do not connect these skills to a greater picture.
A revision of mathematics standards and teaching methods will go a long way to improving the quality of mathematics education. A holistic approach that includes some wrote learning of basic skills and lots of real application problems. Real application problems are not word problems. How many "real" word problems have you had to solve in the last ten years?
Some texts such as Every Day Math from the University of Chicago does a much better job at integrating all sorts of skills and teaching in a much more holistic method. It includes some excellent modeling exercises, games that rely on a real understanding of mathematical principals for mastery and interesting lessons. But even the best text can't help a kid if they don't have a good teacher that really understands mathematics. Watching an uniformed teacher try to explain what a prime number is, or a different method for division (such as repeated subtraction) is painful. They simply can't do it. Unfortunately, in my experience most of the teaching candidates that were in my classes thought that math was "hard" and "didn't really matter." They scraped by with the lowest possible scores in the required math classes and one even told me she "wasn't going to bother teaching math." While this is pure anecdotal evidence, the declining math scores in the US show that we really do suck and producing math teachers.
The problem stems from bad math teachers badly teaching math which of course leads to more poorly instructed math teachers. Placing a real emphasis on reading and mathematics, with highly qualified and well-supported specialists is the only way we're going to solve this problem. Unless we have some real political will akin to that found during the space race, we're not going to solve this problem any time soon. We'll just keep cranking out kids that think that math is done by computers and a few nerds that wave their magic math wand over problems to find solutions.
How does that work with incremental backups, though? Does that mean if you have 50GB of encrypted data, you would need to upload the entire 50GB every time you change a single file?
Jungledisk can do file level encryption on the fly. This probably isn't a great solution if you're dealing with something like 50GB truecrypt volumes.
Some S3 clients (jungledisk) can send up only the changed parts of files. Of course, if a huge chunk of the 50G has changed, then you're boned. If you are regularly changing huge files of that kind, then another backup solution is probably better suited for you than S3. Either that, or a really fast connection.
Any realistically reliable backup process for home users can't depend on the user doing something daily/weekly such as swapping media. That's a realistic option for people that are very process oriented, or for a business situation where it's your job to swap media. For home users, it's unrealistic to expect people to swap media when they're hardly motivated to install regular system updates.
A solution that maintains its self and is off site is by far the best option. As far as the complaints about slow connections, a few days of saturated connection is hardly a large price to pay for having your data off site. Once the initial backup is done, incremental backups are typically trivial. My daily average is about 4MB. Occasionally I have to jam up a few gigs of photos and it takes all day, but I'm willing to suffer that by scheduling the backup for 3:00am.
Whenever I see family/friends/co-workers using external drives for "backup" I have to repress the urge to launch into a lecture on the absurdity of relying on a local, always mounted backup.
WesternDigital and all the other purveyors of external hard disks should be ashamed of themselves for promoting their products as a reasonable backup solution. The ONLY kind of calamity that such devices protect you from is accidental deletion or hardware failure. An external drive provides absolutely no protection from any kind of malicious attack or catastrophic disaster (flood, fire, theft). The only real backup solution is an off-site backup. Considering how cheap Amazon S3 is, off-site backups are finally a real solution for the average person.
Apple's Time Machine and Fly Back is a step in the right direction, but without a real off-site backup solution kiss your data goodbye, because when it falls into a river of molten rock, man, it's gone.
It baffles me that the networks' left and right hands don't know what the other are doing. With one hand they gleefully provide online versions of the shows and with the other, they smack down anyone (Boxee, Google) that tries to make the consumption of those products easier.
People that choose to watch the shows over the internet are actively choosing to not make regular network TV a part of their day. They aren't willing to sit down at 8 pm, 7 central to watch Chuck; they want to watch it at 6:00 am before work. 10 years ago, they would have been lost viewers. All that advertising revenue would have vanished with their choice. Today, the networks have an option to recapture some of that lost revenue via internet viewers. Granted, they don't show as many adverts, and that ad space (for the moment) is worth less than TV ad time, but they still get money.
Why are they getting upset when google/boxee/whoever drives MORE users to their product? Or are they just afraid that people will choose to eschew network TV in favor of internet TV? If that's the case, they've already lost the battle by offering shows on the internet. Some networks have come up with reasonable solutions though: Fox shows House a week late on the internet for example. Why not offer extra content on TV to encourage TV watching over internet watching. Or, resolve cliff-hangers on the air and make internet viewers sweat it out for an extra two weeks.
What other reasons can/. think of for the networks behavior? Why are they so afraid of internet content aggregators?
I'm not sure why I would want this feature. What are the advantages? Would I not have already sought out my "expert" friends for their opinions? Then again, I hate the like features of Facebook. It's the least "social" gesture one can make.
Or, he really does care about his rights and truly believes that he should not be compelled to divulge this password. You're probably right, but it is possible.
Based on the amount we pay for trash pickup, the 40% tax rate, Norwegian's compulsive honesty I'm pretty sure it's being dealt with appropriately. Every large kommune also has a bio-gas plant where a good deal of the gas-able materials go. As for the E-Waste, I don't rightly know. In the USA, a good deal of the E-Waste is just dumped in third world countries.
But again, based on the typical Norwegian compulsive and inescapable honesty, they probably recycle the computer bits using a method that is five times more expensive and six times cleaner than the international "standard".
The most environmentally unfriendly thing Norwegians do is hunt whales.
But it's hard to remember all those special characters after they beat you with a wrench. Be sure to choose a password that's easy to remember under bludgeoning to limit the number of times they have to hit you in the head.
In Norway we have plastic, glass, metal, electronic, paper and food scrap recycling and it's pretty popular. I think most everyone just does it because it's the 'right thing' to do. It doesn't hurt that there's curbside for most of it.
I wonder if we will see landfill mining in our lifetimes? It seems like we'd need a pretty astounding shortage of Cu and Fe before it would be energy efficient to start digging through the landfills for old TVs and washing machines
Movies that properly use the 3D format to enhance the experience, rather than simply chuck crap out of the screen are stunning. Avatar was filmed in 3D, properly, but really was just a gimmick to draw in crowds and immerse them in a spectacular alien world without much substance. The film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, on the other hand, was astounding. There were only a few instances of stuff jumping out of the screen and it never felt forced. Instead, the film allowed you to more naturally live the in the world of Coraline. For much of the movie, the 3D takes a back seat to the actual story. It only becomes apparent in some truly stunning moments. In one incredible shot, the camera follows a circus mouse on a ball down a ramp. The shot is filmed entirely through the perspective of the mouse. The subtle beauty, craftsmanship and incredible detail of that scene was definitely enhanced by the use of 3D.
I'd like to see more moving making where 3D enhances the film rather than depends on it. I can't see how the original Star Wars movies will be enhanced, other than more crap flying out of the screen. I can already see the Death Star lazer beam shot at Alderan: Interrior of death star with hokey enhanced laser beam and artificially (poorly) deepened beam chamber; cut to exterior and newly rendered death star (poorly mapped onto a sphere); cut to shot looking right into dish-of-death as the beam flies out into the audience.
Vomit.
Though, Luke's bombing run might not completely suck if they go back and re-render the whole thing so it is actually in 3D rather than 3D-ifeyed.
So, with the advent of this new 'white hole' technology, we're really just a few short years from sucking matter through them to create our own custom luxury planets. I really want one of those rubber planets with lots of earthquakes.
Here comes Clippy, Cell Phone edition! It's a new extortion strategy. Clippy senses your anger at it's inability to do anything and offers you a sweet deal: $9.99 to automatically shut him off.
I just finished working at an urban school that has a gardening program as part of the daily curriculum for the entire school. We don't just garden, we teach biology, ecology and earth science, but there's a good chunk of time devoted to digging and exploring. Our school also offers an extended day (semi manditory) from 1530-1700 where students take dance, art, read comics, gardening, and sports. Our directors feel that this sllightly structured time both keeps kids out of trouble after school and provides them with time to process what they've learned surfing the day.
Not only does this kind of thinking teach preparedness, but it opens up discussions. This would be an amazing opportunity to talk about what terrorism is, why it happens and who is involved. Students that understand the whole package are less likely to lash out at minority groups and deal with future terrorism more sanely. That being said, As a teacher, I would definitely write a carefully worded curriculum plan and be ready to defend it. It wouldn't hurt to have the department head on my side either. People tend to freak out whenever teachers try something new...
I really value my exercise time for this 'down time.' I can't stand running with headphones because I can't get lost in the moment. Going out for a nice long run (or a walk) on Sunday morning when you have a problem to mull over is just about the greatest way to find some insight and a new angle on it. I've composed term papers and had some wonderful insights into my life and relationships while on runs.
As I get older, I also find that I need to turn off more and more distractions if I really want to get anything serious done. I close the web browser, turn off the IM and silence the phone (I'd turn it off, but it takes so freaking long to reboot, it's obnoxious). I remember a time in my youth that I'd have 12 things going on at once, watching TV, playing video games and maybe even music running somewhere. I think I was being productive, but looking back, I question that. Perhaps my abilities to 'multi-task' have diminished as I've aged, but I think that I've just become more adept at recognizing shoddy work. What about you all? Have you fond that as you get older, you need more quite time to think than you did when you were younger? Do little distractions like email and IMs really cut into your productivity?
Slashdot Mirror
I for one look forward to meeting our new Whale Loving overlords.
I was with you until you started talking about rib removal. That's been debunked over at Snopes. That comment sort of throws a bad light over the rest of your post. Though, I don't doubt that working in the adult entertainment industry does suck some of your soul away.
It's funny you mention the "Everyday Math". I live in the Chicago suburbs, so it seems every person I know that has a kid in grade school in the area is using this series of books for math. I have gone over my sisters house and there have been times where I have been asked to help my niece with her homework because my sister didn't know how to solve the problem since it is so different than how we were taught.
This is one of the great weaknesses of Everyday Math. If the teacher doesn't use skill sheets (a method for tracking student comprehension and achievement) and ensure that every kid knows how to do the homework and doesn't send home the parent letters that accompany each unit to ensure that teachers understand what is being taught, parents are going to struggle to help students. This comes back to being a good teacher and ensuring that you aren't just "presenting" material, but rather actually teaching.
I figure this is a good start to see what has been covered so far. She is unable to provide one, because it seems that everything is a worksheet.
Ideally, there isn't a need for the textbook to come home with the kids for younger kids as skills are presented in tiny chunks and the worksheets should be spiraled reviews of already mastered concepts. Again, if kids aren't actually taught and they aren't on the road to mastery, they're going to struggle with the homework.
I still remember the problem. It goes something like this: "People are on the phone in the US for a total of 123 billion minutes each day. If there are 200 million people with phones, what is the average amount of time each person is on the phone". I am sure for you and I this is a trivial problem, but here is what I have issue with it. First, I asked my niece if she knew what an average was. She said no. Ok, not a big deal so I tried to explain to her what an average was.
Once again, the teacher probably didn't make sure that her kids knew how to average. Averaging is a HUGE part of EDM as is factoring and division. I don't want to rag on a teacher I've never observed, and I certainly have made similar mistakes, but it sounds like once again this is a failing of the teacher and not necessarily a failing of EDM.
So that leads me to my issue with this problem and with "Everyday Math" in general. What is that they are trying to teach in this problem?
They were probably trying to review finding an average and the process associated with that.
I can understand wanting to cross apply different math techniques to solving problems, but if neither concept has been taught then is either concept really being taught by the cross application? If anything, my impression from Everyday Math based on what I have seen is a removal of formalism to math.
EDM is less formal than the way I was taught, but there is definitely some good thinking behind it. Once again, if the teaching is good, there is a logic, rhyme and reason behind the way the material is taught. If the teacher just passes out the homework and continues along blindly without checking in with the students, you end up with a situation like you had with your niece.
I know, how boring is it to talk about the associative property or commutative property, but if you have those tools under your belt then everyone is speaking the same language when it comes to math.
Everyday Math does struggle with this as well. It could be stronger here. It doesn't put a lot of emphasis on terminology, but it does do alright in general, when once again taught properly.
Just like so many other things, the best tools in the world aren't the only factor in determining the quality of the product produced. Having good tools just helps you spend less time faffing around and more time getting the job done. A master of education like Jamie Escalante (of Sta
The way math is taught in schools is atrocious. Most math texts that I've used with 5th and 6th graders emphasize learning processes and methods for solving a set of problems. The texts do not hold all of the blame, however. The texts are written to follow state and national standards. The standards are written in such a way to emphasize process and not necessarily apprehension of greater concepts. For example:
5th Grade Level Expectation 1. Differentiate between the term factor and multiple, and prime and composite (N-1-M)
While these vocabulary items are important and these skills are definitely useful, learning this skill in isolation (which most texts teach) is pretty useless as students do not connect these skills to a greater picture.
A revision of mathematics standards and teaching methods will go a long way to improving the quality of mathematics education. A holistic approach that includes some wrote learning of basic skills and lots of real application problems. Real application problems are not word problems. How many "real" word problems have you had to solve in the last ten years?
Some texts such as Every Day Math from the University of Chicago does a much better job at integrating all sorts of skills and teaching in a much more holistic method. It includes some excellent modeling exercises, games that rely on a real understanding of mathematical principals for mastery and interesting lessons. But even the best text can't help a kid if they don't have a good teacher that really understands mathematics. Watching an uniformed teacher try to explain what a prime number is, or a different method for division (such as repeated subtraction) is painful. They simply can't do it. Unfortunately, in my experience most of the teaching candidates that were in my classes thought that math was "hard" and "didn't really matter." They scraped by with the lowest possible scores in the required math classes and one even told me she "wasn't going to bother teaching math." While this is pure anecdotal evidence, the declining math scores in the US show that we really do suck and producing math teachers.
The problem stems from bad math teachers badly teaching math which of course leads to more poorly instructed math teachers. Placing a real emphasis on reading and mathematics, with highly qualified and well-supported specialists is the only way we're going to solve this problem. Unless we have some real political will akin to that found during the space race, we're not going to solve this problem any time soon. We'll just keep cranking out kids that think that math is done by computers and a few nerds that wave their magic math wand over problems to find solutions.
How does that work with incremental backups, though? Does that mean if you have 50GB of encrypted data, you would need to upload the entire 50GB every time you change a single file?
Jungledisk can do file level encryption on the fly. This probably isn't a great solution if you're dealing with something like 50GB truecrypt volumes.
Some S3 clients (jungledisk) can send up only the changed parts of files. Of course, if a huge chunk of the 50G has changed, then you're boned. If you are regularly changing huge files of that kind, then another backup solution is probably better suited for you than S3. Either that, or a really fast connection.
Any realistically reliable backup process for home users can't depend on the user doing something daily/weekly such as swapping media. That's a realistic option for people that are very process oriented, or for a business situation where it's your job to swap media. For home users, it's unrealistic to expect people to swap media when they're hardly motivated to install regular system updates.
A solution that maintains its self and is off site is by far the best option. As far as the complaints about slow connections, a few days of saturated connection is hardly a large price to pay for having your data off site. Once the initial backup is done, incremental backups are typically trivial. My daily average is about 4MB. Occasionally I have to jam up a few gigs of photos and it takes all day, but I'm willing to suffer that by scheduling the backup for 3:00am.
Jungledisk, one of several S3 clients, offers several encryption options. It's a pretty decent service but lacks robust logging.
Whenever I see family/friends/co-workers using external drives for "backup" I have to repress the urge to launch into a lecture on the absurdity of relying on a local, always mounted backup.
WesternDigital and all the other purveyors of external hard disks should be ashamed of themselves for promoting their products as a reasonable backup solution. The ONLY kind of calamity that such devices protect you from is accidental deletion or hardware failure. An external drive provides absolutely no protection from any kind of malicious attack or catastrophic disaster (flood, fire, theft). The only real backup solution is an off-site backup. Considering how cheap Amazon S3 is, off-site backups are finally a real solution for the average person.
Apple's Time Machine and Fly Back is a step in the right direction, but without a real off-site backup solution kiss your data goodbye, because when it falls into a river of molten rock, man, it's gone.
It baffles me that the networks' left and right hands don't know what the other are doing. With one hand they gleefully provide online versions of the shows and with the other, they smack down anyone (Boxee, Google) that tries to make the consumption of those products easier.
People that choose to watch the shows over the internet are actively choosing to not make regular network TV a part of their day. They aren't willing to sit down at 8 pm, 7 central to watch Chuck; they want to watch it at 6:00 am before work. 10 years ago, they would have been lost viewers. All that advertising revenue would have vanished with their choice. Today, the networks have an option to recapture some of that lost revenue via internet viewers. Granted, they don't show as many adverts, and that ad space (for the moment) is worth less than TV ad time, but they still get money.
Why are they getting upset when google/boxee/whoever drives MORE users to their product? Or are they just afraid that people will choose to eschew network TV in favor of internet TV? If that's the case, they've already lost the battle by offering shows on the internet. Some networks have come up with reasonable solutions though: Fox shows House a week late on the internet for example. Why not offer extra content on TV to encourage TV watching over internet watching. Or, resolve cliff-hangers on the air and make internet viewers sweat it out for an extra two weeks.
What other reasons can /. think of for the networks behavior? Why are they so afraid of internet content aggregators?
I'm not sure why I would want this feature. What are the advantages? Would I not have already sought out my "expert" friends for their opinions? Then again, I hate the like features of Facebook. It's the least "social" gesture one can make.
Skinner: We unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the ferrets.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Or, he really does care about his rights and truly believes that he should not be compelled to divulge this password. You're probably right, but it is possible.
Try finding your AC heat exchanger coils anywhere in New Orleans. Those suckers just vanish these days.
Based on the amount we pay for trash pickup, the 40% tax rate, Norwegian's compulsive honesty I'm pretty sure it's being dealt with appropriately. Every large kommune also has a bio-gas plant where a good deal of the gas-able materials go. As for the E-Waste, I don't rightly know. In the USA, a good deal of the E-Waste is just dumped in third world countries.
But again, based on the typical Norwegian compulsive and inescapable honesty, they probably recycle the computer bits using a method that is five times more expensive and six times cleaner than the international "standard".
The most environmentally unfriendly thing Norwegians do is hunt whales.
REMEMBER, in the intertubes, no one can hear you shout unless you use ALL CAPS.
But it's hard to remember all those special characters after they beat you with a wrench. Be sure to choose a password that's easy to remember under bludgeoning to limit the number of times they have to hit you in the head.
In Norway we have plastic, glass, metal, electronic, paper and food scrap recycling and it's pretty popular. I think most everyone just does it because it's the 'right thing' to do. It doesn't hurt that there's curbside for most of it.
I wonder if we will see landfill mining in our lifetimes? It seems like we'd need a pretty astounding shortage of Cu and Fe before it would be energy efficient to start digging through the landfills for old TVs and washing machines
Movies that properly use the 3D format to enhance the experience, rather than simply chuck crap out of the screen are stunning. Avatar was filmed in 3D, properly, but really was just a gimmick to draw in crowds and immerse them in a spectacular alien world without much substance. The film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, on the other hand, was astounding. There were only a few instances of stuff jumping out of the screen and it never felt forced. Instead, the film allowed you to more naturally live the in the world of Coraline. For much of the movie, the 3D takes a back seat to the actual story. It only becomes apparent in some truly stunning moments. In one incredible shot, the camera follows a circus mouse on a ball down a ramp. The shot is filmed entirely through the perspective of the mouse. The subtle beauty, craftsmanship and incredible detail of that scene was definitely enhanced by the use of 3D.
I'd like to see more moving making where 3D enhances the film rather than depends on it. I can't see how the original Star Wars movies will be enhanced, other than more crap flying out of the screen. I can already see the Death Star lazer beam shot at Alderan: Interrior of death star with hokey enhanced laser beam and artificially (poorly) deepened beam chamber; cut to exterior and newly rendered death star (poorly mapped onto a sphere); cut to shot looking right into dish-of-death as the beam flies out into the audience.
Vomit.
Though, Luke's bombing run might not completely suck if they go back and re-render the whole thing so it is actually in 3D rather than 3D-ifeyed.
So, with the advent of this new 'white hole' technology, we're really just a few short years from sucking matter through them to create our own custom luxury planets. I really want one of those rubber planets with lots of earthquakes.
Here comes Clippy, Cell Phone edition! It's a new extortion strategy. Clippy senses your anger at it's inability to do anything and offers you a sweet deal: $9.99 to automatically shut him off.
I just finished working at an urban school that has a gardening program as part of the daily curriculum for the entire school. We don't just garden, we teach biology, ecology and earth science, but there's a good chunk of time devoted to digging and exploring. Our school also offers an extended day (semi manditory) from 1530-1700 where students take dance, art, read comics, gardening, and sports. Our directors feel that this sllightly structured time both keeps kids out of trouble after school and provides them with time to process what they've learned surfing the day.
Not only does this kind of thinking teach preparedness, but it opens up discussions. This would be an amazing opportunity to talk about what terrorism is, why it happens and who is involved. Students that understand the whole package are less likely to lash out at minority groups and deal with future terrorism more sanely. That being said, As a teacher, I would definitely write a carefully worded curriculum plan and be ready to defend it. It wouldn't hurt to have the department head on my side either. People tend to freak out whenever teachers try something new...
Ahh - Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.
I really value my exercise time for this 'down time.' I can't stand running with headphones because I can't get lost in the moment. Going out for a nice long run (or a walk) on Sunday morning when you have a problem to mull over is just about the greatest way to find some insight and a new angle on it. I've composed term papers and had some wonderful insights into my life and relationships while on runs.
As I get older, I also find that I need to turn off more and more distractions if I really want to get anything serious done. I close the web browser, turn off the IM and silence the phone (I'd turn it off, but it takes so freaking long to reboot, it's obnoxious). I remember a time in my youth that I'd have 12 things going on at once, watching TV, playing video games and maybe even music running somewhere. I think I was being productive, but looking back, I question that. Perhaps my abilities to 'multi-task' have diminished as I've aged, but I think that I've just become more adept at recognizing shoddy work. What about you all? Have you fond that as you get older, you need more quite time to think than you did when you were younger? Do little distractions like email and IMs really cut into your productivity?