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Hank©[_3_]

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.

What's your point!

--
Americans deserve better.

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