Bespoke Advanced Terraform Training

Initially, I assumed this was spam.  I have more than a passing interest in all things scientific, so I have always had a vague interest in the concept of terraforming.  I now know enough about it to know that a) it's going to be a while before we get to try it on another planet, and b) it's probably a *really* bad idea to try and use our current understanding of it to fix some of the problems we have on *this* planet.

But I have a professional interest in spam anyway, so I figured that I'd have a look at the message because it was an oddity, and might demonstrate some new developments in spam.

It isn't and wasn't spam.

I have facilitated the CISSP seminar for a number of companies, and this was one.  I taught one of their CISSP seminars.  Once.  And, ever since, I have been receiving, sporadically but fairly often, requests to teach *other* courses for them.  Of late, the seminars they are trying to get me to teach have somewhat diverged from the security mainstream.

This isn't entirely surprising.  Thirty-five years ago, when I started teaching technical seminars, those who were doing them tended to have experience in the field that they were teaching.  However, even then, there were a lot of companies with "professional" teachers, who could teach *anything*!  Whether they understood it, or not.  And, over the years, I have taught with a number of them, and I have also noticed that they are, now, very much the majority.  Those of us who know what we are teaching (or even talking) about have been crowded to the margins.

I must say that I'm tempted to take the gig.  I can do the professional teaching thing.  I can stand up in front of a group and speak confidently.  And I'm pretty sure that, whatever material they have thrown into this course, I have built up enough background to warn people against the worst excesses.  I might even do some good.  (I doubt that they would actually hire me: they'd have to pay travel, and I remember these guys as pretty cheap.)

But it's rather sad to see what "teaching" has come to.  I am a teacher, and I tend to agree with Asimov that knowledge isn't just power, but also happiness, and therefore being taught is the intellectual analogue of being loved.  Pooling ignorance isn't teaching.