cool book

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Ambrose was a really good historian and writer.

One key character was Theodore Judah, who conceived and surveyed a track across the Sierras. My company grew for years on Judah Street, and I was skiing on Mt Judah yesterday. Not many engineers get that sort of fame.

"In England and Europe, after George Stephenson launched the first locomotive in 1829, little of significance in design change took place for the next thirty years. In America nearly everything did, because of the contempt for authority among American engineers, who invented new ways to deal with old problems regardless of precedent."

Neat: Design is rooted in contempt for authority.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin
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Sometimes it's genius, sometimes it's just hubris...

"The 2018 indictment against Schlitterbahn writes that Henry and Schooley 'lacked technical expertise to design a properly functioning water slide' and did not perform standard engineering procedures or calculations on how the slide would operate. Instead they used 'crude trial-and-error methods' to test its performance out of haste to launch the ride. According to court documents, Schooley conceded that 'If we actually knew how to do this, and it could be done that easily, it wouldn?t be that spectacular.'"

That is to say I guess it worked in the sim.

Reply to
bitrex

se+nothing+like+it

Unfortunately, it's hard to distinguish between contempt for authority, and ignorance of the way the existing solution was supposed to work. It's easy to be contemptuous of something you don't actually understand, and ignoran t engineers fall for the temptation all too often.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

I'm reading this,

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Because I read somewhere it was a decent laymans introduction to the Langlands Program. (Langlands just won some math prize.) I'm only a few chapters in, a little fluffy at the beginning, but getting meatier.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

One such guy that comes to mind was the early surveyor of lots of Virginia (discovered Natural Bridge, as I recall), who is currently remembered on items of currency, the colloquial name of the District of Columbia, and my state of Washington, especially the little town of George, Washington. Even a few universities (one hopes they have civil engineering programs to live up to the name).

Reply to
whit3rd

se+nothing+like+it

The most innovative 'American' engineers were either immigrants or highly d ependent on their skill sets. Get off of cloud 9. Next thing you'll be spou ting this delusional 'American exceptionalism' nonsense. Anyone who believe s in that crap should be committed.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

You are making the point that America was and is a good place to innovate. So good that people come here from all over the world to escape from authority and do it.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

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y dependent on their skill sets. Get off of cloud 9. Next thing you'll be s pouting this delusional 'American exceptionalism' nonsense. Anyone who beli eves in that crap should be committed.

ze-winners/

Being better than Nazi Germany wasn't all that difficult. The US was the la rgest advanced industrial country at the time, and got it's fair share of t he bounty.

Since then US universities have been spending big on hiring Nobel prize win ners and potential Nobel prize winners - it helps them suck in more fee-pay ing undergraduates. Less mercenary universities in other countries lack the motivation (and cash-rich alumni to fund the hires).

Escaping from authority rarely comes into it. Iranian researchers may be mo tivated by that to some extent, but the extra money on offer is probably mo re influential (as it is with the Russians).

Trump wants to block the Iranians (which makes him exactly the kind of arbi trary authority that Iranians are trying to get away from).

Chinese researchers get sent ... and Trump doesn't like them either.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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bill.sloman

Trump only likes himself...

Reply to
Robert Baer

America is a good place to _hustle_. Sometimes hustling involves above-board genius and innovation and sometimes it doesn't; at the low end of hustling are the dime-a-dozen con men, hucksters, and snake oil salesmen whose only innovations are sometimes new fashions of hustling.

Might not be what some would define as "innovative" but can't deny there's often great creativity at work in thinking up new types of swindle and scam.

Reply to
bitrex

Speak for yourself. Most of the real people that I know are honest and productive.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

The definition of "hustling" was generalized and broadened over time from strictly illegal activities to essentially any kind of productive commercial activity that involved the promise of fast dollars without being tied down to a salaried 9-5 office or factory job working for someone else.

See "gig economy" as synonym

Reply to
bitrex

like e.g fixing up old cars to turn around at a profit or flipping real estate could be considered the above-board variety.

Reply to
bitrex

ambrose+nothing+like+it

ce

ghly dependent on their skill sets. Get off of cloud 9. Next thing you'll b e spouting this delusional 'American exceptionalism' nonsense. Anyone who b elieves in that crap should be committed.

prize-winners/

One has to keep in mind that John Larkin is the kind of gullible sucker who believes what he reads about climate change on denialist web-sites.

It's likely that he is being ripped off on a regular basis on a scale that isn't quite noticeable. Don't up set the goose who is laying the golden egg s ...

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Right, but it's actually the climate scientists working for relative peanuts who are selling out in a vast conspiracy to make themselves a whole ONE...MILLION...DOLLARS, not the folks writing the party line of the fossil fuel biz who have about a half a trillion bucks to play with at any given time.

They're not in it for fortune at all . They're ah, after the truth! Yeah that's it, the truth

Reply to
bitrex

"Most of the real people I know are honest"

When I get married I plan on telling my wife I intend to be "mostly monogamous" I wonder how that will go over

Reply to
bitrex

Obama's favorite word was "I". He would refer to himself a hundred times in one speech.

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Trump is actually pretty good about giving other people credit.

People make up so much nonsense about him.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

Nobody is forcing you to buy gasoline or NG or electricity, or to ride on airplanes, or to eat food produced by farm machinery and fertilizers. Just stop doing all that.

Al Gore has made about $300 million off "climate change."

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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Reply to
John Larkin

Don't let logic interfere with your lifestyle.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

Envious, are you? Others envy the Nobel prize, or the academy award, or the best-seller book. You decided to just look at money.

Reply to
whit3rd

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