OT: "...four years older and considerably dumber."

Really, you don't have to constantly demonstrate how stupid you are. WE GOT IT, already.

Dick?

I don't know why so many Republicans do. Maybe they don't think the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War, or unionized civil servants are so bad.

Yes but today he'd support gay marriage and everything else in their modern platform. They are compelled to change their position.

Today's education system doesn't churn out graduates whose skills match Joh n Larkin's. What a surprise. John Larkin took a fairly selective approach t o the stuff he was willing to learn during his time as an undergraduate - i f he couldn't see a way of making money out of it, he didn't bother.

The implication is that modern graduates know a lot about stuff that John L arkin couldn't care less about, and don't know as much as he does about stu ff that he finds to be important. This isn't unusual, but you have to have as high opinion of yourself as John Larkin does to find it a reason to crit icise universities.

One of the great composers (Mahler IIRC?) taught music but refused to teach composition. He said it couldn't be taught.

Sturgeon's Law is that 90% of everything is rubbish. Randomly selected soci ology texts are unlikely to be much good. Some sociologists ask good questi ons and get interesting answers, but newspapers like the ones that ask flam boyant questions and claim to come up with answers that ought to change soc iety.

Neither John Larkin - who seems to get his news from the Murdoch media, nor Cursitor Doom, who gets his from the Express - are likely to pick a non-se nsational sociology test. John Larkin's opinion on sociology is going to be a well-informed as his opinion on climate change.

Not so sure about that. He was Catholic.

Not sure what you are trying to say exactly. Certainly Trump would be right in there building the Berlin wall, no? He seems to think walls solve a lot of problems.

I think in any field it's largely a matter of asking what if questions, poking around the topic, looking at things from odd angles. And making a habit of it. It makes learning fun, interesting.

NT

They won't end up at Sbux, EE grads who don't learn anything probably have Mom & Dad's trust fund to fall back on, anyway.

Even in our so-called "welfare state" poverty is still a pretty fantastic motivator to actually learn something.

In my experience even the artsy-fartsy kids who went to my liberal arts college that came from middle and lower-middle class backgrounds ended up obtaining pretty solid careers from their "useless" anthropology and creative writing degrees - novel authors, teachers, graphic artists, web site designers, restaurant owners, all things that apparently enough people are willing to pay for to make worthwhile.

Yep, tech guys who aren't good with people and lack social skills/calibration are a dime a dozen; the younger ones tend to get angry about the fact that women don't give them the time of day and spew a bunch of misogynist bile across the Internet, moaning how girls won't date them because they're only interested in money and other silly provably untrue nonsense.

I got my degree and did not understand signals electro-magnetics control sy stems etcetera. But I had courses in all of them. I knew that to be a real engineer I had to understand those things and so I've spent the last 35 yea rs tooling away at these fundamental concepts.

On Saturday, April 15, 2017 at 1:45:55 AM UTC+10, snipped-for-privacy@columbus.rr.com w rote:

systems etcetera. But I had courses in all of them. I knew that to be a rea l engineer I had to understand those things and so I've spent the last 35 y ears tooling away at these fundamental concepts.

Since my degree was in chemistry, I didn't even get the courses, but there are text-books and published papers. At times I've tried to pass off tricky technical stuff to junior engineers who should have been taught it, but pr etty much every time I've had to make do with the text-book they were taugh t it from. Laplace transforms were intimidating for a bit ...

Real engineers eat transformers for breakfast? I wish I had learned more of the fundamentals when in school, but my career has not suffered in the least and I have worked on some very state of the art systems. I had a lot of fun helping to build the ST-100 array processor when I was still wet behind the ears. Some of the spook gear was truly impressive. Even the commercial gear was pretty interesting.

Nope, I don't think the lack of having taken E&M theory has been any problem really.

As an impediment to making money I am sure that not understanding electromagnetic theory has not been a problem for you. But for me it is problematic to say I'm an electrical engineer and not grasp it. That's an In My Soul Thing

I never said I don't "understand" E&M. I just didn't take the class and may not know it to the core of my being. I don't identify with being an engineer. That is, I don't get my sense of self worth from it. I just enjoy it.

JFK was a disaster.

You can't compare a wall that keeps people out to a wall that keeps people in.

Huh? They both do the same job. The Berlin Wall stopped low-paid East Germa ns from moving to get higher paid jobs in West Germany, and Trump's wall is supposed to stop lower-paid Mexicans from getting better paid jobs in the USA.

Since a lot of those better paid jobs are going to be Trump's hotels, the M exican Wall is likely to be whole lot less effective than the Berlin Wall ( if it ever gets built - Trump is being selective about the campaign promise s on which he delivers, but since he had a habit of contradicting himself d uring the campaign, this is unavoidable.)

So how do you rate Obama as compared to JFK?

Why? Certainly you can compare cost per mile, number of people required to monitor, number of people that manage to cross the line anyway.

Dan