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Mr. Luddite

On 12/4/2013 3:38 PM, F.O.A.D. wrote:
On 12/4/13, 3:20 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 12:47:14 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 12/4/13, 12:42 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 12:34:49 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

I'm just spitting back here what I've observed over the years from
such
well-trained thinkers as Herring, Robbins, and your junior high
buddy in
Florida.

I seem to be able to keep up with you in the esoteric skills and in
technical skills you don't even get off the starting block..

You're not the junior high school buddy in Florida. My "technical
skills" are where I need them to be. What are the "esoteric skills" to
which you refer?

Abstract thinking and learning new things.

You are free to believe what you want. My opinion is that you spend much
of your abstract thinking time looking for or putting together false
equivalencies. A couple of good college logic courses would have trained
you to avoid that.

I think we both do very well "learning new things." In the 1970s, I
marketed a little-known federal health insurance plan from 20,000
enrollees to 650,000+ enrollees in three years, and served twice on the
negotiating team that gave birth to the largest labor contracts in the
history of the United States. In the 1980s, after IBM introduced its
line of PCs, I managed to learn enough about the little beasties to
become a regular columnist for Ziff-Davis computer publications, a
contributor to BYTE magazine (which is the only such print magazine I
really miss), a penpal of Arthur C. Clarke, and an amateur programmer in
Pascal and Modula, thanks to books I read by Wirth. I had no educational
or technical background in those areas prior to jumping in with both
feet. I've added other personal knowledge milestones since then,
including become fairly proficient in Spanish, which I love.

I'll jump in to make this comment:

Harry, there's no question you are a very accomplished fella and value
your education greatly. I think the problem some of us have is your
condescending attitude about others and your perception that their
backgrounds, schools, talents and/or knowledge is inferior to yours. I
don't think you actually believe that .... it's just the way you come
across.

I guess the real question is, "Do you do it on purpose"?