blauman

I've never known the details of the kidnapping, I'd seen the song & interview but never read about the case. I decided to read the wiki article on the whole kidnapping and I started tearing up and couldn't finish it, I try again but fail. It's detailed in such an unsuspectingly cold way; I start a sentence and have no idea it would describe something so painful.

How did you realise that you had Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension?

When did your doctor decide that you need this surgery?

How much did this surgery cost/how are you paying for it?

(sorry if it's a bit intrusive, feel free not to answer)

Damn straight. I went through school and an engineering degree without appreciating the tools at all.

But recently, after watching a few documentaries & taking coursera physics courses, it's made me consider that the tools of physics (laws, units...), and maths (numbers, equations...) are a definitive & powerful way of describing the physical phenomena around us. E.g. they can help you answer questions you may have regarding the phenomena - like what will happen if, when will something happen, etc.

By manipulating & rearranging equations, it can blow your mind, it stimulates your mind to look at the physical situation being explored, differently & consider new relationships.

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After taking those physics courses, it changed my viewpoint from thinking math as a chore, to almost being in tears when seeing how beautiful it can be in revealing how nature works - as a result, it inspired me to want to teach & convey this to younger teens at school.

I've reflected on this bizzare change of mine and I realised 3 tools that were vital in learning:

1. Observational experience (through a video, real experiment or a VERY clever virtual experiment, or sometimes both because the virtual experiment can do things like stop time & graph things for you!)

2. Origin of discovery & History (who & how was it discovered? why was it? meaning of word?)

3. Contextual application of concepts (how has the concepts been used & why is it used? i.e. for engineering purposes, like conservation of angular momentum being used for the Hubble telescope, how you can find the speed of a car from skid marks, how the speed of a bullet hitting a target can be found)

Or another way of putting it.

1. How does it work (it must be experienced in a way that which allowed the original discovers brains to think of the concepts in the first place)

2. How/why did it come about?

3. What is it used for?

Big question here (it's an AMA after all :P):

What do you think could be done in society to reduce suffering & conflict? (I'd love to hear your expert opinion on this question because I'm a young engineering designer looking to communicate values of benignity in society)

Many people in this thread are just uninformed. It is a bit of an alarming thing to compare human trafficking to (fashion?) modelling, so I think she's gotta work a bit to help raise awareness.

This is a good opportunity to altruistically inform us of an issue she feels strongly about. I guess she's busy, but she's gotta make her responses more accessible with more details (instead of linking to an interview regarding her story & career) in order to raise awareness.

Maybe the right questions haven't been asked, I dunno, just trying to help because I think she may know a lot of things many of us don't, but her responses don't feel like it :/ Maybe she should copy & paste some things from her interviews or something.