Brilliant Blunders

Any brilliant idea sounds really stupid until you've got your head around all the detail.

Oh, sorry, I didn't know you would see my post. Dear legg, this is not a video that you would have any interest in.

Mikek

You couldn't summarize, in a few lines?

RL

I watched it all and was completely captivated. Thanks for that link, Mike.

John

Glad you enjoyed it, the Perimeter Institute sounds like a neat place.

Mikek

Would have to cram the 75minutes into allowed idiot box time. This computer is turning into a television set, which I've managed to get by without for many years.

Making time go quick isn't on my list of objectives...

RL

What part of, "Dear legg, this is not a video that you would have any interest in." did you not understand? Why did you waste your time? I hope you didn't watch all 75 minutes.

To others, I'm sure you can't touch the high intellectual level of legg, so you will find interest in the talk.

Mikek

Mikek

Hubble himself? I think it was the telescope named after him.

Bye

Reinhard

Pop Science with hind-sight.

Darwin wasn't happy with speciation. Pauling wasn't happy with the triple helix model. Einstien wasn't happy with the cosmological constant. This is not blundering.

.....but Hubble needed corrective lenses, which was just plain incompetence.

....but let's all think outside the box, tra la la.

RL

Sorry,the book author's name has been somehow missed. Mario Livio was with the Hubble project.

Didn't mean to disparage the astronomer. Livio, on the other hand....

RL

The overpriced parasites at Perkin-Elmer cut the lens wrong, and NASA did their usual overpriced incompetent testing. So overpriced incompetence x2 =0.

I thought the most interesting part was his remarks after, on the effects of multiple-choice question testing.

He's right.

Picking one of four choices is an utterly difference prospect than expressing something you've learned in your own words (or symbols).

That radically alters the student-teacher interaction, for the worse, and the student's learning process too.

Talk about 'in the box thinking,' there are few boxes smaller than one which reduces the solution space for every problem into one of four or five choices.

Cheers, James Arthur

Of course James Arthur's political choices are even narrower. Far-right is right, and the farther and more psychopathic the better.

He thought Ted Cruz was a viable candidate, when Ted Cruz's only real function was to make Donald Trump look like the least of the evils on offer.

There is never a box that allows 'this is a really stupid question' choice of response. Want the job? ....then toe the line. The latter is a military term....presentation, inspection or formal greetings, for the use of......

The only reason I hung in, was the hope that there would be some kind of useful conclusion that did not rely on the poorly chosen 'blunder' theme, making up for the previous hour.

The 'progress is not linear, think outside the box, benefit from your mistakes' summary could have applied to a preschool tag football analogy.

There is a whole mess of pop science that goes a little farther - placing it's cornerstones on pure random accident.

My own sympathy is with the legendary slogger who notices the little things that generate powerful applications, further insight and widespread benefit. Latter effects also usually being purely random luck.

We all have to make do with the idiocy of the times in which we find ourselves. Some do it better than others. Some just take advantage of the 'follow the dog with the really stinky stick in his mouth, that is surely the best, stinkiest and most desirable stick ever to have existed'.

RL

Not exactly. My boss of some years ago worked at PE when the Hubble optical system was being made, and he told me the story:

They had two Null Correctors made, one a fancy and exact one built from scratch, and a second made from stock optical components.

A Null Corrector is an optical system that cancels the effect of the system bring manufactured, such that when one brings the system plus corrector to null, the optical system is perfect.

Well, the two Null Correctors gave conflicting answers, and NASA chose to believe the fancy one. Turns out it was built slightly wrong. Oops.

PE had proposed to perform a full up test of the Hubble optics, which would have revealed the problem (and any other), but NASA declined the proposal - wanted to save the $20 million. Oops again.

Joe Gwinn

Adopted willingly by commerce and industry, the ticket purchase or bank teller (even when automated) queue, the metal detector......

Slaughter houses dispense with such frivolity. I'me sure you'll find good literary references, or boobtube clips to cover all cases.

RL

You could have moved the little ball to the conclusion and made a judgement there. You didn't have to watch the whole thing.

So, you don't explore new inspirations (think outside the box)?

Such as?

Can we assume from this paragraph that you are a slogger?

So, can you make do? Are you the stinky stick or the dog?

Robert, try to relax and don't take everything so seriously. Just enjoy the moment without picking things apart and finding fault. Maybe you will live longer than you have so far.

Just a suggestion.