There you have it. Jim knew everything he thought that needed to know before he ever went to MIT. The idea that there might be other information around that he could use was - for him - unthinkable, and still seems to be unthinkable.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Yes, I've never read that one. I looked at the summary and thinking about "Leftists I Have Known":
"Class prejudice. This is real and it is visceral. Middle-class socialists do themselves no favours by pretending it does not exist and?by glorifying the manual worker?they tend to alienate the large section of the population that is economically working-class but culturally middle-class."
Most 20 and 30-something students who profess to be part of the Left 'round these parts seem to be some of the most class-prejudiced people I've ever encountered. Not only do they not make any pretense towards pretending it doesn't exist, they kind of revel in it. If you didn't go to the right school or know the right people, you're not "in", you're not cool, don't waste my time.
"Machine worship. Orwell finds most socialists guilty of this. Orwell himself is suspicious of technological progress for its own sake and thinks it inevitably leads to softness and decadence. He points out that most fictional technically advanced socialist utopias are deadly dull. H. G. Wells in particular is criticised on these grounds."
I don't know any people on the left who use technology because they worship it or think it's going to be the savior of humanity, indeed most seem quite skeptical of it on the whole. They use it because some of it is expedient at helping out their daily lives, like sending text messages or getting good deals on hotels.
They say they approve of electric vehicles and carbon credits, but still drive the same inefficient junker they've had for 12 years. Actually show up at a party in a Chevy Volt and you're definitely thought a little weird. Tell the average Boston socialite that you work in electronics or software - even more so.
Christa McAuliffe was going to take a ride to the stars on that big white bird to usher in a new age of progress in our earliest memories, and it all blew up right before our eyes. The skepticism is kind of understandable.
"Among many other types of people Orwell specifies people who have beards or wear sandals, vegetarians, and nudists as contributing to socialism's negative reputation among many more conventional people."
Heh, that's true.
He hasn't even revealed his darkest secret yet - being a master electronics designer is only a cover story for being a master French chef. He's had us fooled all along. Viola!
Autocorrect is a great technology.
Well, I can't speak of his command of electronics (which I assume to be way above mine since I'm a mere hobbyist) but when it comes to literature and economic theory it's as if he's cutting and pasting from online articles rather than coming up with anything original from himself at all
- and that kind of cheating requires no brains at all. Come to think of it, his remarks about the Smith Chart could easily have been lifted from Chris Bowick's book, too. I'd take a look at my copy but I really can't be bothered.
[snip]
"Viola!" ???
Another demonstration of Massa2shits "intellectualism >:-} ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| STV, Queen Creek, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Thinking outside the box... producing elegant solutions.
"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that
is the secret of happiness." -James Barrie
Nothing, except that I never cared about money. When I was a kid, I fixed radios and TVs for free, and I bought Heathkits, built them, and sold them at cost.
If you design good electronics, money seems to happen by accident.
My favorite course at Tulane was Beginners Tumbling. Next was Signals and Systems.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Some people enjoy playing the money game for its own sake. Bankers, brokers, real estate agents, VC types.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
As you probably still use a Jitterbug flip phone, you might be unaware that sometimes modern electronic devices believe they know what you want to say better than you do. ;-)
I'm having difficult distinguishing that statement from a statement that would be made by someone with a /deliberately/ closed mind.
I see no more reason to listen to such people than I do to anti-vaxers, evangelicals and radical islamists.
It's true, I don't have a lot of original insight into the Smith chart. I thought Wes Hayward's book was more thorough, though it's not for the faint-of-heart in math.
Don't read books, get accused of being illiterate, read books, get accused of being unoriginal.
Tough crowd.
Sounds like a curriculum for bartenders, aside from the acrobatics class.
Have you taken a Signals and Systems course? It was a startling experience for me. I'd been intuitively fooling around with electronics since I was a kid, and all that stuff suddenly came together. Fourier transforms, impulse response, transfer functions, correlation, convolution, filtering, modulation, the sampling theorem, just astounding ideas. Sort of one giant idea seen from different directions.
Tumbling, and later skiing, gave me a lot of confidence in my body, and spills over into psychology and design. It's like, think as long as you want, but if you finally decide to do something, go for it 100% or you'll land on your head.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Yes, it's essentially a course on "Applied Functional Analysis" but that's probably not how they referred to it, and probably didn't present the big-picture-mathematical theory stuff so much in an applications-oriented engineering class.
I don't have an engineering degree, but the kids these days definitely can get their fill of math at some of those crunchy liberal arts schools if they want, don't you worry.
The alternative is to go to uni to do womens studies, because you don't care about money, but since you now can't get a job with such a qualification, you will now sponge welfare of those that did go to uni to make money.
-- Kevin Aylward
are
but you don't have to feel guilty about it because that after a degree in womens studies you know that all bad things are caused by the hetero-normat ive white Judeo-Christian capitalist patriarchy ;)
That sounds a bit more abstract than S+S.
It's not just liberal arts schools that are crunchy. Many EE schools have made electromagnetics and S+S electives, and they are hard, so the kids don't take them. They learn to code or save corals from bleaching or something instead. I get intern applicants who can't figure out a deliberately simple voltage divider, and who clearly didn't understand their own senior projects.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Now, don't go calling me names.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Should women not be studied? Seems like an important gender to investigate!
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