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F.O.A.D.

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.

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

F.O.A.D.

On 12/4/13, 3:39 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 14:39:10 -0500, HankÂ©
wrote:

On 12/4/2013 12:37 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 11:48:05 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

I wonder why being universally taught how to think abstractly or
learning well established "critical thinking" skills in universities is
any different than what military schools offer.

If you haven't attended one, I guess you wouldn't k

Military schools are taught with a particular practical application in
mind. They want people who can analyse problems and fix them,
sometimes without the proper parts and possibly under a lot of
pressure. That is not a "theory" type skill.

I did see the two philosophies side by side. In the 70s IBM
experimented with hiring EEs because we could not find enough vets to
handle the system 360/370 surge.
It was a disaster. They may have been great in abstract thinking but
we wanted guys who could think about the problem in front of them, not
how we should have designed it,
Of the 4 we had, 2 were simply fired, one moved on to management and
the 4th went off to be a design engineer, where he was actually quite
effective. That is the guy I visited on my Colorado trip. (also the
guy with the Solar house in Manassas)

Some of those guys spend much too much time contemplating and not enough
time doing.

This was one of the smartest guys I know ... but he also did 4 in the
USAF after he went to college. That 1A you get the day you graduate
was a scary thing in the 60s.

Gee. You almost have me feeling bad for not doing more than supplying
change of addresses when appropriate to my local draft board. I could
have been drafted and sent to Vietnam to burn villages, women and
children. That would have been...so contemplative, eh?

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

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"?

F.O.A.D.

On 12/4/13, 4:07 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
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"?

Perhaps I am just responding to the anti-intellectual, anti formal
education bias that so pervades this newsgroup. Neither I nor any of my
close friends from high school went to college to "learn a useful
trade." Several of those posters here have no apparent skills in
anything, yet they put down those who have tried to improve their
intellectual lots in life through formal education.

I wasn't a child of leisure. I paid for most of my first degree with
summer jobs and academic year jobs, and got lucky with a fellowship for
my M.A., which only required me to be a grad student instructor.

I went to college to expand my knowledge base of what I thought and
think was important to me, to learn and sharpen thinking skills, to
become a true student of the liberal arts. After I met physical
chemistry in college and it nearly killed me (

) ,I gave up my
pursuit of becoming an M.D., a profession that interested me not in the
least because it was a way to make decent money. Hell, I've got an adult
kid who is a tenured professor of a hard science at MIT, something I
could *never* attain.

My wife didn't go through four years of undergrad school to get her
B.S., a year of grad school (accelerated placement) to get her M.S., and
five years of post-grad school to get her Ph.D, so she could simply
learn a trade. She did it to become more of an expert on helping people
with serious mental and emotional problems.

I certainly respect the talents and knowledge of others. I've worked
with lots of highly skilled union craftworkers over the past few
decades, and I am blown away by their abilities in their trades. I spent
some time on my own learning a lot more about welding than I picked up
at the summer job at a boiler factory in New Haven, enough so that after
a few years of messing around, I was able to pass a journeyman's week of
projects and exams and become a "full-patch" member of my union. It
wasn't easy for me, but it certainly was for some of the guys which whom
I attended apprenticeship classes.

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Califbill

"F.O.A.D." wrote:
On 12/4/13, 11:48 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 12/4/2013 11:34 AM, wrote:

On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 07:52:22 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

I suppose the sort of rote memorization and spitback of instructional
materials is what the military wants and prefers, because independent,
creative thought is not really an attribute it wants in its soldiers,
sailors, et cetera.

Again you are just demonstrating your ignorance. If anything the
military training is more practical than what you get in a university
that stuffs your head with things you forget by the next semester and
never use again.

When the ship is sinking or under attack from a guy who wants to kill
you, creativity and the ability to use the information you got in
school is a matter of life or death for everyone on board.

It is not like some art history class you took to fill out your
transcript.

I wonder why being universally taught how to think abstractly or
learning well established "critical thinking" skills in universities is
any different than what military schools offer.

If you haven't attended one, I guess you wouldn't know.

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.

Bull****. You were trying to promote yourself as superior. You have a
college education, where from studies, you actually use less than 5% of
what you studied. Whereas Engineering majors use about 20%. Much better
return on investment.

F.O.A.D.

On 12/4/13, 4:47 PM, Califbill wrote:
"F.O.A.D." wrote:
On 12/4/13, 11:48 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 12/4/2013 11:34 AM, wrote:

On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 07:52:22 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

I suppose the sort of rote memorization and spitback of instructional
materials is what the military wants and prefers, because independent,
creative thought is not really an attribute it wants in its soldiers,
sailors, et cetera.

Again you are just demonstrating your ignorance. If anything the
military training is more practical than what you get in a university
that stuffs your head with things you forget by the next semester and
never use again.

When the ship is sinking or under attack from a guy who wants to kill
you, creativity and the ability to use the information you got in
school is a matter of life or death for everyone on board.

It is not like some art history class you took to fill out your
transcript.

I wonder why being universally taught how to think abstractly or
learning well established "critical thinking" skills in universities is
any different than what military schools offer.

If you haven't attended one, I guess you wouldn't know.

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.

Bull****. You were trying to promote yourself as superior. You have a
college education, where from studies, you actually use less than 5% of
what you studied. Whereas Engineering majors use about 20%. Much better
return on investment.

How would you possibly know what percentage of what a particular
individual studied was "used"? Or even when it was used or how often?

I think that fall off the roof you sustained caved in what little was
left of your brain after your infatuation romance with Zell Miller.

- -

Religion: together we can find the cure.

Califbill

"F.O.A.D." wrote:
On 12/4/13, 4:47 PM, Califbill wrote:
"F.O.A.D." wrote:
On 12/4/13, 11:48 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 12/4/2013 11:34 AM, wrote:

On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 07:52:22 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

I suppose the sort of rote memorization and spitback of instructional
materials is what the military wants and prefers, because independent,
creative thought is not really an attribute it wants in its soldiers,
sailors, et cetera.

Again you are just demonstrating your ignorance. If anything the
military training is more practical than what you get in a university
that stuffs your head with things you forget by the next semester and
never use again.

When the ship is sinking or under attack from a guy who wants to kill
you, creativity and the ability to use the information you got in
school is a matter of life or death for everyone on board.

It is not like some art history class you took to fill out your
transcript.

I wonder why being universally taught how to think abstractly or
learning well established "critical thinking" skills in universities is
any different than what military schools offer.

If you haven't attended one, I guess you wouldn't know.

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.

Bull****. You were trying to promote yourself as superior. You have a
college education, where from studies, you actually use less than 5% of
what you studied. Whereas Engineering majors use about 20%. Much better
return on investment.

How would you possibly know what percentage of what a particular
individual studied was "used"? Or even when it was used or how often?

I think that fall off the roof you sustained caved in what little was
left of your brain after your infatuation romance with Zell Miller.

- -

Religion: together we can find the cure.

Not my guess as to the percentages. That is what the studies show. And I
bet most do the studies were done by liberal arts grads. And I see you
revert to slanderous remarks when you can not show facts.

F.O.A.D.

On 12/4/13, 5:06 PM, Califbill wrote:
"F.O.A.D." wrote:
On 12/4/13, 4:47 PM, Califbill wrote:
"F.O.A.D." wrote:
On 12/4/13, 11:48 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 12/4/2013 11:34 AM, wrote:

On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 07:52:22 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

I suppose the sort of rote memorization and spitback of instructional
materials is what the military wants and prefers, because independent,
creative thought is not really an attribute it wants in its soldiers,
sailors, et cetera.

Again you are just demonstrating your ignorance. If anything the
military training is more practical than what you get in a university
that stuffs your head with things you forget by the next semester and
never use again.

When the ship is sinking or under attack from a guy who wants to kill
you, creativity and the ability to use the information you got in
school is a matter of life or death for everyone on board.

It is not like some art history class you took to fill out your
transcript.

I wonder why being universally taught how to think abstractly or
learning well established "critical thinking" skills in universities is
any different than what military schools offer.

If you haven't attended one, I guess you wouldn't know.

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.

Bull****. You were trying to promote yourself as superior. You have a
college education, where from studies, you actually use less than 5% of
what you studied. Whereas Engineering majors use about 20%. Much better
return on investment.

How would you possibly know what percentage of what a particular
individual studied was "used"? Or even when it was used or how often?

I think that fall off the roof you sustained caved in what little was
left of your brain after your infatuation romance with Zell Miller.

- -

Religion: together we can find the cure.

Not my guess as to the percentages. That is what the studies show. And I
bet most do the studies were done by liberal arts grads. And I see you
revert to slanderous remarks when you can not show facts.

Frankly, Bill, when you came out as a fan of Zell Miller years ago, I
thought you had gone over the deep end. You've been consistently over
that end politically ever since. Oh, and once again, you have no idea
what percentage of what I studied in college I "use," no matter what you
may have read somewhere.

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Mr. Luddite

On 12/4/2013 4:32 PM, F.O.A.D. wrote:
On 12/4/13, 4:07 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
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"?

Perhaps I am just responding to the anti-intellectual, anti formal
education bias that so pervades this newsgroup. Neither I nor any of my
close friends from high school went to college to "learn a useful
trade." Several of those posters here have no apparent skills in
anything, yet they put down those who have tried to improve their
intellectual lots in life through formal education.

I wasn't a child of leisure. I paid for most of my first degree with
summer jobs and academic year jobs, and got lucky with a fellowship for
my M.A., which only required me to be a grad student instructor.

I went to college to expand my knowledge base of what I thought and
think was important to me, to learn and sharpen thinking skills, to
become a true student of the liberal arts. After I met physical
chemistry in college and it nearly killed me ( ) ,I gave up my
pursuit of becoming an M.D., a profession that interested me not in the
least because it was a way to make decent money. Hell, I've got an adult
kid who is a tenured professor of a hard science at MIT, something I
could *never* attain.

My wife didn't go through four years of undergrad school to get her
B.S., a year of grad school (accelerated placement) to get her M.S., and
five years of post-grad school to get her Ph.D, so she could simply
learn a trade. She did it to become more of an expert on helping people
with serious mental and emotional problems.

I certainly respect the talents and knowledge of others. I've worked
with lots of highly skilled union craftworkers over the past few
decades, and I am blown away by their abilities in their trades. I spent
some time on my own learning a lot more about welding than I picked up
at the summer job at a boiler factory in New Haven, enough so that after
a few years of messing around, I was able to pass a journeyman's week of
projects and exams and become a "full-patch" member of my union. It
wasn't easy for me, but it certainly was for some of the guys which whom
I attended apprenticeship classes.

That's all fine. You are a fan of academia. Nothing wrong with that.
I know many people who share similar quests for general knowledge.

The issue at hand here is how you come across to others whose
backgrounds, experience and schools are as important to them as yours is
to you. Everyone deserves respect for what they do honestly and
everyone has a right to have a sense of accomplishment. You seem to
delight in finding fault with any path that was different from yours.

Or ... do you do it on purpose?

Boating All Out

In article ,
says...

On 12/4/2013 4:32 PM, F.O.A.D. wrote:

That's all fine. You are a fan of academia. Nothing wrong with that.
I know many people who share similar quests for general knowledge.

The issue at hand here is how you come across to others whose
backgrounds, experience and schools are as important to them as yours is
to you. Everyone deserves respect for what they do honestly and
everyone has a right to have a sense of accomplishment. You seem to
delight in finding fault with any path that was different from yours.

Or ... do you do it on purpose?

Of course he does. And why not? He catches nonsense from others here.
Who knows who started it?
But it's gotten old long ago.
How many times have you heard the same old stories about Krause's
getting a job for a KC newspaper, or Gregs's ET school?
Jesus H. Christ.

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