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not a new subject - women in electronics and computing?

Giver how few female engineers there are, female mentors will be rare. So if a woman wants to really learn engineering in the trenches, she had better be willing to learn it from a male mentor. As far as teaching the technology side of engineering per se, the sex of the mentor is a minor consideration. The political side is of course another problem.

See? There's not enough critical mass of women in this occupation to make the female-mentor-bootstrap thing work very well. Tell the girls to seek out old farts who have daughters, like me.

Yeah. I hadn't really thought about the androgyne thing before.

John

Reply to
John Larkin
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Who cares? If you want prestige, become a judge and wear a wig to work. Engineers make things.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

On the other hand, they don't have to stitch the sheetmetal together, which can only be done inside out.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

As someone pointed out in another reply, cutting out dressmaking fabric and cutting out steel plate to fit a 3-dimensional shape are similar tasks.

If a dressmaker cuts a piece of material using a pattern as a guide, I would not call him/her an engineer - but if he/she sets out from scratch and designs a piece of clothing or a tent or a hot-air balloon, solving lots of problems along the way and finishing up with something that works properly, I would say that was engineering.

If a shipyard worker flame-cuts a piece of steel plate with a CNC machine by just loading it and pressing a button, does that qualify him/her as an engineer? ...If so, why?

It's not a case of being bad at their job, they could be very good at their job - but is that job really engineering?

Yes - that's a different problem.

I still find myself having to deal with people who have the title "Engineer" who are just book-followers or botchers and have long since lost any real engineering skills they may (or more probably may not) have had.

Just occasionally I get a very pleasant surprise.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
Reply to
Adrian Tuddenham
[snip]
[snip]

Smart daughters can change your whole perspective on life ;-)

Actually, in recent years, the best students I've interviewed for admission to MIT were female... BRIGHT and ARTICULATE!

Though I interviewed a REALLY bright male this year... but he was only two years here, immigrated from the Ukraine.

American high school males are degenerating into bums... I even had one show up for his interview chomping on bubble gum. Guess what? REJECT!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

Sno-o-o-o-ort!

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

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| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Reply to
Jim Thompson

Can somebody point out to me the correlation between being a brilliant student and potential great engineer and chewing bubble gum?

Jim

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Reply to
RST Engineering (jw)

They join the Army, as designed by the withdrawl of education funding over the past 8 years.

Reply to
Donald

Yes :-)

Reply to
richard.mullens

If it is a male, it is a title. If it is a female, it it a tittle.

(Donning asbestos britches {;-) )

Jim

Reply to
RST Engineering (jw)

Hello Team, Your replies have all been good and made me smile!

Just one point, "Electronics is one career - computers is another" I disagree, if you are working on a microcontroller design, you need electronic skills to design and prototype, and then software skills to program and get the device working.

Engineering, and inventing is just part of the rich tapestry of my life, the rest includes normal stuff, seeing friends, like being a mother, I was married for many years , but being single again is fun. I'm NOT into sports, football,fast cars, avoid competitiveness, computer games (men's interests?). My talk will cover positive things in my work like the fun of digital audio design, 3D graphic display, pens that record the words that you write and my current work with a computer that helps with memory loss. Hopefully this will inspire young people that the work is interesting.

The only thing that bothers me about engineering degrees is that a large proportion is maths, calculus etc. I must admit I never used much maths from university. I really do not enjoy abstract thought and prefer tangible useful engineering for people.

Lyn

John Lark> >

Reply to
Lyn

"Lyn"

** Peeeeeeeeeuuuuukkeeeeeeeeeeeee !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
** Fools usually do.

** Still two separate kinds of activity with different skill sets.
** Struth - will saints preserve us from this narcissistic public menace.
** Engineering degrees are an evil necessity to obtain employment.

The brain dead fools who typically decide who gets a technical job and who does not are only impressed by scraps of paper.

Cos they simply have no other way of judging.

** Christ - YOU are one, god awful, PITA stupid bitch.

And a TOP POSTING BITCH as well.

........ Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 14:11:00 -0800, RST Engineering (jw) wrote in Msg.

There is none. However, chewing gum is not a good idea in general when you're having a concersation, at least not if you want to make a favourable impression. From this you can figure out the correlation between chewing gum and successful job interviews.

Personally, I wouldn't even give anybody the time of day if they were chewing gum in my face.

robert

Reply to
Robert Latest

Personally, I don't. I've always been proud to be an engineer, despite the fact that most people clearly don't attach any real value to that.

For me, the satisfaction has always come from starting with a blank page and ending up with a design that does what's required, simply and reliably. I still get a buzz from that even now in my 60s.

As you say, if I'd wanted prestige, (or for that matter a higher salary), I should have chosen another profession. For some reason I've never been able to fathom, this seems to be a peculiarly British thing and engineers on the continent and in the US seem to be held in much higher regard.

The problem with engineering's image in the UK lies in persuading bright young minds to take it up as a career. Engineering degree courses are difficult and youngsters are staying away in droves to take easier subjects like Media Studies FFS!

Anyway, why should I care? I retire at Christmas. :-)

--
T

If it\'s not broken, don\'t fix it.
Reply to
TuT

Lyn wrote: (snip)

I always associated mathematics with lots of drudgery and making one tiny error that invalidated a all of that work; a necessary evil as far as my work was concerned. Then I got Mathcad, a computer program that is just about like having a math assistant to do all the drudgery for me. Since then (something like 20 years ago), I have very much changed my attitude about math. I now explore arcane (for me) mathematical problems, just for the fun of it.

For instance, a month or two ago, I decided to see if I could start with the general quadratic formula that includes all conic sections to see if I could fit it to the curve for a saturating inductor (one asymptote approaching the inductance for the high permeability core, low current part of the curve, and one asymptote approaching the low permeability, high current part of the curve, with two spliced together through zero current to make a symmetrical curve).

The process involved a 5th derivative, and lots of algebraic rearrangement, both to find an optimal solution (that included inventing the figure of merit to be optimized by a search), and finally to come up with formulas that produced a good first approximation for the search, from key points on the graph. This process would have been so much work, without Mathcad, that I simply would not have ever thought of attempting it, unless my life depended on it. With Mathcad, it was a treasure hunt, a thing done for the pure joy of discovery.

Reply to
John Popelish
[snip]
[snip]

Only a leftist weenie can draw a correlation between education quality and funding.... except at the extremes, there is none.

Besides I don't know of ANY "withdrawl" or reduction EVER. It always keeps increasing.

"Educators" want to be treated as professionals, yet belong to unions. Go figure.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

We heard you say the same thing on the TeeVee a few weeks ago, John.

--
  Keith
Reply to
krw

What country, what state, what channel ??

donald

Reply to
Donald

Actually, the correlation is slightly negative.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Except in private schools. Did you note the news item where the Chairman of Intel (Barrett?) gave money to an outstanding Phoenix area charter school to raise teacher salaries to $100K?

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

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