MIT Radiation Lab series on CD-ROM?

Does this statement bother anybody else - Bell Labs' technical library getting shut down? Maybe they've digitized everything they want or the old stuff is no longer current enough to be useful, but it just sounds like a bad idea. Solar cells and Unix have turned out to be pretty handy; I hope there is still somebody around thinking stuff up.

Matt Roberds

No, not shut down, but consolidated. There was duplication between the main Murray Hill one and those in Holmdel and Whippany and presumably Indian Hill.

They are under noticible pressure, though, and there is probably loss of material.

Dennis

In particular, I ended up with several cast-offs from Holmdel: a couple of the Radiation Lab series, a copy of Clark and Hess which I'd been searching for years for, some metallurgy books, some books about relay switching and logic, etc. A real win for me!

Tim.

Tell it to the IEEE. My major professor and I have had many discussions about how much of what didn't work should be included in journal papers, and his experience (as a reviewer and occasional special sections editor) is that spending anything more than a fleeting moment discussing techniques that failed is a good way to get your paper rejected. There are notable exceptions for authors who are recognized authorities in the field (i.e., they really can't say "no" to them! :-) ), at least.

---Joel Kolstad

Dennis answered this later just in case you didn't see it.

I worry and am working on trying to preserve existing knowledge. There is a lot getting thrown away because "old-fashioned" implies incorrect and, if it's incorrect, it needs to be obliterated. There is tons of value in keeping knowledge about what didn't work.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

When I was at Tulane they had a subcritical reactor. It was a roughly hot-tub-sized stainless tank, maybe 4 feet high, full of water, open on the top, located in the ricketey old wooden Physics building in the center of the campus. When I was there, all the fuel rods were stacked on a table, and we were allowed to pick them up and pass them around.

They also had a vicious hard x-ray generator, a big heap of hv stuff. They had tape on the floor to delineate the safe-dose operating distance.

John

I was cited by Cambridge's finest ;-)

Maybe out in the suburbs, where you live, it wasn't an issue, but in Cambridge you couldn't buy anything on Sunday except milk and eggs, and only after 1:00PM; and "working" was forbidden, except cabbies, bus drivers, etc.

I think if you research it, Massachusetts had a poll tax until at least 1964.

Remember I was living in Cambridge from August 1958 until June 1962, Burton House freshman year, Goodale sophomore year, corner of Magazine St. and Tufts (third floor of a house) junior and senior years... it was there that I was cited for pounding nails, conduit hangers... I traded wiring the landlord's barn for a month's rent.

I'll look around and see if I still have the warrant, although my aging memory cells say I sent it to Voo Doo magazine (the now defunct MIT humor magazine) and they wrote an amusing article around it.

...Jim Thompson

At the U. of Minnesota, there's a tower-looking thing a couple of stories tall and maybe about 20 ft. in diameter, with a round top. (well, it was there in 1968 - I don't know if it's still there.) Everyone I talked to said it was a reactor. When I finally enrolled there, it turned out it was a big Van Der Graaf generator. )-;

Cheers! Rich

No, I lived in Cambridge until 1970. Most likely you riled up a close neighbor, who wanted peace and quite, and who complained to the police. Townies who didn't like Harvard or MIT students.

Are you using the term "poll tax" as per the definition above, having to do with being able to vote, despite unpaid bills? Ahem.

Yep. It had to do with voting. And the town clerk wouldn't accept that I was just a student, and really a resident of WV. Probably because I was renting a floor of a house. They even sent someone around to personally serve me... guess I've always been popular ;-)

...Jim Thompson

But don't students have to use absentee ballots and vote in their home state? I'm trying to remember. I had only been here two or three years before I changed my residence from California to Mass. But I do remember voting for Goldwater, when was that?

UIUC had a 1.5MW research reactor in the middle of the campus. AIUI it's recently been decommissioned, or is in process.

UIUC too. It's underneath the front steps at the Materials Research Lab with a good hunk of a battle ship hull inbetween. The observation window was a couple of feet thick, made out of some exotic material that I can't remember.

Yes. But the Massachusetts establishment, for some reason, decided I was a resident and wouldn't renege. I wish I could find the warrant. It was hilarious... authorizing the Sheriff of Middlesex (whatever sex THAT is :) County to seize all my property for non-payment of poll tax.

That was 1964. In your heart you know he's RIGHT ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Of course he was right, I remain a big Goldwater fan. Bush, by contrast, is a massive big asshole.

I do, too! He was our Senator for MANY years, and a damned good one. He was always his own man.

You just don't like Texans. That's alright. Texans don't like East'ners ;-)

...Jim Thompson

No, I've liked most Texans I've known, and I have enjoyed all of my dozen or so visits to various places in Texas. But, I really do dislike Bush and his crowd. You should as well.

In article , Winfield Hill writes:

It is so interesting that the most incompetent and unwise people tend to make strong suggestions as to what OTHER people should think. Instead, those people who seem to complain about what other people think should best reconsider their own defective reasoning. The arrogance from the left (especially those who are so dishonest that don't admit to their leftism) only helps to diminish their credibility. It is definitely true that not all leftists (including those who don't admit to their leftism) are incompetent, but those who make impositions against other peoples beliefs (e.g. telling people how/what they should think) seem to be the generally most intellectually incompetent. Perhaps you should consider revisiting your own thinking -- even trying to develop some political intellectual integrity instead of imposition against others beliefs. (The saddest cases are those who show some intellectual capacity, but lose all credibility with their leftist and/or hateful blather.) Geesh, the ex-president who left the international political (Korea/Saddam/etc) mess and the economy on the trajectory into a recession, the same person who abused an underling at work, does deserve some criticism, but NOT the same kind of misguided vehement hatred that comes from the emotionally immature and apparent vacuous integrity of typical Bush haters. (Al Frankenish people, and those who don't admit it.) (The depth of Clinton hatred was only based upon his behavior -- the Bush hatred is obviously genned up from the dishonest left, and the mind numbed robots/those without integrity are good little followers.)

With integrity and honesty (so limited on the left), it only makes sense to disagree with ideas, and not to make grossly general (and essentially logically incorrect) blathering statements -- much worse than what happened from the typical Clinton critic. (There certainly were some vehement Clinton haters, but those don't even include Rush Limbaugh when comparing the idiocy/limited integrity that even comes from the Senate Democrat leader.)

John

Why is that? Elaborate. What is it about Bush that has you so torqued?

...Jim Thompson

When I was a student up there, it was an ancient holdover, taxing ONLY males, IIRC.

Knowing Taxa2shits, they probably just renamed it... they never had a tax they didn't want to keep.

I suspect Win blames Bush for the high taxes in Taxa2shits ;-)

...Jim Thompson