I would further add, for one of us "lowbies" to ascend, we are at all kinds of risk. Simply thinking what we believe puts us "out", but saying it might actually be illegal, and would be acted upon by that group and the courts, which also come from that type of background. The separation is real. John Ewards' two Americas is nothing like what he spoke of, and he is in that other part. A complete political, social, and economic class... with academia as it's puppet master. The next question is, who or what, precisely, is academia's puppet master?
If I shoot myself, I am a tragic tale. If I shoot lots of others, I screw you guys over by being an example of why we shouldn't have guns. I wouldn't do that to y'all.
McThag: Then use a baseball bat.
Use an aluminum baseball bat 'cause you basically cannot break an aluminum baseball bat and they actually hit harder..And 'cause you can never get the DNA evidence out of a *wooden* baseball bat......
There is a book "The Underground History of American Education" which makes it painfully clear that the intention of public schools was to create a class of people with just enough education to follow a leader, respond to a bell, and work assembly line style all day. It's a good but troubling read.
Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday's upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed.
Of course, that the opposition considers the teaching of evolution comparable to the revisioning of American history, and thus wasted huge amounts of resources combating the former explains why they have failed to stop this trend.
I remember an old episode of Frasier; he'd just found out the station had a new owner. The new guy was from Texas, had a grade-school education, started working at a station when he was 15 and now owned a couple of hundred, was rich as hell and had the world's biggest antique pistol collection. The only thing Fraiser said: "Oh God, I'm working for Yosemite Sam!" Not a word about the work and intelligence needed to get where the guy was, of course; he hadn't gone to ANY college, let alone Holy Hahvahd.
Exactly the attitude we're dealing with: "I don't care what you've accomplished, what you can do; you didn't go to a proper school, so you don't count."
My brother is a machinist. One of his crusty old-time co-workers attempted to tell a bright, young college-educated engineer that his part design had a problem. The youngster reminded the machinist of who had a college education and that the machinist's job was to make the part to spec. So, the next day the machinist walks into the engineering office and drops a bag on the smart-guy's desk. The engineer dumps out the contents - a pile of metal chips. Before he can say a word, the machinist informed him that a part with an inside diameter greater than the outside diameter looks just like that.
I admit, I literally laughed out loud at that story. I'd have loved to have been there. (Because I've met engineers like that. And machinists, too come to think of it.)
Yep - been there and got the T shirt. I have had to treat young graduates like an old IBM mainframe and punch the information into them. "That dimension is NOT 25.73685 mm and I don't care that AutoCAD says that it is ... you can't manufacture it on the lathes we have".
My last employer was a company founded by a man who was not just a figurehead; he was the chief engineer of the company.
Before I started there, he had hired a young mechanical engineer, fresh out of school, who made a drawing for a part, only to have the model shop reject the drawing with the complaint that there were no tolerances shown for any dimension. His response was, "I don't believe in tolerances. When I say a half inch, I mean a half inch."
When the boss said, "You're fired," he meant, "You're fired."
I used to be a mechanical draftsman before I left for the lucrative world of being a stay-at-home dad. I was the valuable translator between the theoretical engineering world and the practical machinist world. I still recall the blank look on an engineer's face when I explained that it mattered if he said 1/2", 0.5", 0.50" or 0.500" because of the block tolerances used and that if he wanted different tolerances then he needed to spec them. He'd come from aerospace and wasn't used to the way things were done in water treatment. He wanted everything as a basic dim and geometric toleranced. The first was impossible for our shop and the second unneeded.
I know next to nothing about machining or engineering either one. But when I saw the phrase, "and I don't care that AutoCAD says that it is", I thought, "Well THERE'S yer problem."
People all too easily forget that no, computers aren't smart. They're only bone-stupid at the speed of light. They can come up with a stupid, incorrect answer that would have taken you hours in a fraction of a second.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/07/quote-of-day-education-edition_17.html (17 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
I would further add, for one of us "lowbies" to ascend, we are at all kinds of risk. Simply thinking what we believe puts us "out", but saying it might actually be illegal, and would be acted upon by that group and the courts, which also come from that type of background. The separation is real. John Ewards' two Americas is nothing like what he spoke of, and he is in that other part. A complete political, social, and economic class... with academia as it's puppet master. The next question is, who or what, precisely, is academia's puppet master?
I think if I read too many more things like that I might just shoot myself. Too many things appear to be broken and beyond my ability to fix.
McT - If you are thinking about shooting yourself, you are pointing your gun in the wrong direction...
And remember, passive aggression is a failure to embrace the joys of open and active aggression. ;)
If I shoot myself, I am a tragic tale. If I shoot lots of others, I screw you guys over by being an example of why we shouldn't have guns. I wouldn't do that to y'all.
McThag: Then use a baseball bat.
Use an aluminum baseball bat 'cause you basically cannot break an aluminum baseball bat and they actually hit harder..And 'cause you can never get the DNA evidence out of a *wooden* baseball bat......
Plus it makes a fair dinkum PING when it hits a skull! OK, I'm in.
There is a book "The Underground History of American Education" which makes it painfully clear that the intention of public schools was to create a class of people with just enough education to follow a leader, respond to a bell, and work assembly line style all day. It's a good but troubling read.
Yes, it's available online, too. I've quoted from it extensively here.
Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday's upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed.
Of course, that the opposition considers the teaching of evolution comparable to the revisioning of American history, and thus wasted huge amounts of resources combating the former explains why they have failed to stop this trend.
I remember an old episode of Frasier; he'd just found out the station had a new owner. The new guy was from Texas, had a grade-school education, started working at a station when he was 15 and now owned a couple of hundred, was rich as hell and had the world's biggest antique pistol collection. The only thing Fraiser said: "Oh God, I'm working for Yosemite Sam!" Not a word about the work and intelligence needed to get where the guy was, of course; he hadn't gone to ANY college, let alone Holy Hahvahd.
Exactly the attitude we're dealing with: "I don't care what you've accomplished, what you can do; you didn't go to a proper school, so you don't count."
My brother is a machinist. One of his crusty old-time co-workers attempted to tell a bright, young college-educated engineer that his part design had a problem. The youngster reminded the machinist of who had a college education and that the machinist's job was to make the part to spec. So, the next day the machinist walks into the engineering office and drops a bag on the smart-guy's desk. The engineer dumps out the contents - a pile of metal chips. Before he can say a word, the machinist informed him that a part with an inside diameter greater than the outside diameter looks just like that.
I admit, I literally laughed out loud at that story. I'd have loved to have been there. (Because I've met engineers like that. And machinists, too come to think of it.)
Yep - been there and got the T shirt. I have had to treat young graduates like an old IBM mainframe and punch the information into them. "That dimension is NOT 25.73685 mm and I don't care that AutoCAD says that it is ... you can't manufacture it on the lathes we have".
My last employer was a company founded by a man who was not just a figurehead; he was the chief engineer of the company.
Before I started there, he had hired a young mechanical engineer, fresh out of school, who made a drawing for a part, only to have the model shop reject the drawing with the complaint that there were no tolerances shown for any dimension. His response was, "I don't believe in tolerances. When I say a half inch, I mean a half inch."
When the boss said, "You're fired," he meant, "You're fired."
I used to be a mechanical draftsman before I left for the lucrative world of being a stay-at-home dad. I was the valuable translator between the theoretical engineering world and the practical machinist world. I still recall the blank look on an engineer's face when I explained that it mattered if he said 1/2", 0.5", 0.50" or 0.500" because of the block tolerances used and that if he wanted different tolerances then he needed to spec them. He'd come from aerospace and wasn't used to the way things were done in water treatment. He wanted everything as a basic dim and geometric toleranced. The first was impossible for our shop and the second unneeded.
I know next to nothing about machining or engineering either one. But when I saw the phrase, "and I don't care that AutoCAD says that it is", I thought, "Well THERE'S yer problem."
People all too easily forget that no, computers aren't smart. They're only bone-stupid at the speed of light. They can come up with a stupid, incorrect answer that would have taken you hours in a fraction of a second.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>