I mean I was watching some program with that idiot and it basically took a guy with a Phd in physics to explain to him why the car they were developing was so fuel efficient. (Answer it was really light. Of course the moron didn't ask them how they were going to reduce the cost of the carbon fiber needed to make the thing because he's a moron.)
then I remind myself plumbers have to work with shit. Not figurative shit but literal excrement when they snake the main drain. Man I was happy to pay the plumber to do that about a year ago since I wouldn't have wanted to do that.
I would have been appalled by this except for the fact that those dirt bags are dealing with admissions douche bags. I might point out those are the same scum balls that said I wasn't serious when I applied even though I basically blew in excess of 100 grand to try to live out my dream of getting into med school. (True story btw. I went back to school when I was older and to take a chance for once in my life and go for the brass ring. I put in a couple years of my life and the opportunity cost was well north of $100K. I suppose I could also mention the same fellow also said that I didn't know what I was getting into less than 2 weeks after my dad died and yes I was there when he died and yes I helped take care of him in his last few months at home.) I say more power to them.
You might be right. I admit that it's just an anecdote.(So there's no proof that would satisfy a serious academic of this) However it was my understanding (which may be very wrong) that mental illness is more commonly diagnosed amongst college students than the general population of the same age. Of course this could be because college could in some cases cause it.(Which is the contention of my scenario). Of course to be totally fair it could be that traits that allow you to go to college are also associated with mental illness. (The mad artist scenario) Finally it could simply be a case where people who don't go to college are underdiagnosed with mental ill.(And of course there's other scenario that I haven't thought of)
With that all said of course there are a few differences if the same scenario had played out and I didn't go to college. For one I wouldn't have blown 16K+ on my school.(Which sucked that I went through that and had a debt on top of it.) The other difference would be that at least for part of that time I would have had some employment so I'd hope that I'd have a little more money plus experience that would at least let me land a job or 2. (Not like actual reality where I had those loans, couldn't get a job because of the mental illness and then ended with a track record of unemployment which continued to screw me over until I got a job in tech support. Too bad the expected level of experience for that was an associates degree which of course meant a reduced salary.)
On top of that did they do any sort of research on those of us that ended becoming literally crazy because of college. You'd be surprised even if you have the right degree(Computer Science) at the right time (mid 90's) how hard it is to get a job when you're an absolutely mess psychologically. (Oh, and not getting a job makes a depression worse but hey, I'm bitter.)
I mean I know carbon in SP3 hybridization is a non-conductor(think diamond) but graphene/graphite is SP2. It's a conductor because of that electron sharing. (Hey, I still remember a little of my organic chemistry.)
Like my title says, I wonder what percentage take these courses to fill some stupid requirement.(I know, I'll probably lose some karma points for stating this.) I mean I look at how it was when I went to university. We had a 4 semester foreign language requirement. So a great many of the students in those courses weren't taking these courses because of some "love of language" but because some nitwit just had to shove his pet area of study down our figurative throats regardless of any real results. (Yes, I'm very bitter about the undergrad torture requirement. Before anybody chimes in it completely screwed up my education and has brought no benefit to me which you'd think it would have by now, I graduated almost 20 years ago.)
Anyway my point is that I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of the students in CS101 and CS102 are there to fill a requirement my yet another pencil pushing faculty member who had a stupid idea of "Wouldn't be great if all our students were interested in modern technology, lets shove it down their throats."(Since this amounted to a 2 semester math/science requirement if you weren't a math/science major. I be some of the students in my CS courses were there because they didn't want to do a lab or a math class. Of course this screwed me over as a math/science guy because I ended up having to do 6 semester of humanties and social science which I were also worthless. I just didn't hate them as much as the undergrad torture requirement.) They might take the first one because "Maybe it could be cool." and then figure "I might as well do the second semester and get this claptrap out of the way." Basically creating their own problem and then turn around and complain about the problem they caused in the first place. (But hey, I'm cynical.)
Use a simple example of a digital medium, text IE a novel. For example if someone tried to sell you a copy of Camus' "The Stranger" and claimed that by using better paper and ink it turns from a plot-less, pointless mess of a book that makes many glad he got killed in a car wreck to a wonderful masterpiece of literature you'd think he was nuts. You'd say to yourself all that matters is the printing is good enough for me to make out the words. Any less isn't good enough and any more is a waste.(Using better paper isn't going to improve that horrible piece of trash.) The same is true with an HDMI signal. (Because both are digital. Once it's good enough to get the signal you can't get "more" signal by doing anything.)
So it is hard to gauge if it's truely common or not with a couple pieces of data. However I'd like to think I'm not that unusual and my life is probably typical so given the 2 options are either A:It's not that uncommon or B:You're really unlucky to find one of the very few nut job priests I'm going to go with A until I have more data.(But like they say, an anecdote is a starting place to come up with a hypothesis or 2.) Admittedly I could just be unlucky.(Hell, I'm the guy who had a teacher in first grade that hated smart kids.)
I know theoretically the Church has been cool with evolution since at least the 50's. However that didn't stop me from getting yelled at by a priest because I talked about it during a CCD class when I was a kid in the late 70's and got ratted out by the CCD teacher. (I guess that means at least 2 people working in some capacity for the RCC in my personal experience were creationists. So I have to think it was still quite common at that time to be a creationist even if you were a Roman Catholic. Before anybody asks I didn't get yelled at for simply talking, I got yelled at for bring up evolution which these 2 had a hair across their ass about.)
I mean look at chemistry at how many symbols are really just from the latin/greek name for stuff. IE lead(Pb), Gold(Au), Silver(Ag), Sodium(Na), and Iron(Fe).
Well one cost was to my company when I accidently rendered GIS using a projection that was in feet. (I mean it's newish technology, who the hell does feet in that? I guess I wasted a day or 2 on that which was money my company basically flushed down the drain.) Oh well, once I picked a projection that used meters everything worked out correctly.
Or SI (which I hear is technically different) is how they have screwy prefixes. I mean take 10^3 which is kilo. You'd think that'd be upper case 'K' and that the inverse would be 'k'. Actually it's 'k' and 'm' respectively.(You wouldn't believe how many times I confused milli with micro. Yes I know milli is latin for a thousand but why did they use that then turn around and use Greek kilo?) Yet for other prefixes, yotta for example, they do exactly this. (Doing a quick look on wiki it looks like they used latin for the negative powers and greek for positive powers but why they got rid of all those weird imperial gotchas that were known by common folk just to turn around and start chucking in latin/greek gotchas is beyond me.) To be even more confusing Mega (10^6) is M which makes you think upper case means positive powers.
but it has killed people in the US.(Not saying his overall point is wrong since it pretty much isn't.) Admittedly I only know of one incident, SL-1, but that killed 3 people. (But it might have been suicide. Of course it's kind of hard to forget that one when you hear one of the deceased accidently got nailed to the ceiling.)
I mean based on my experience a large portion of the population here (Massachusetts) has no idea what you mean if you use those 3 letters. Usually my spiel about my mom went like this
She has ALS
What's that?
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
What's that?
Have you ever heard of Lou Gherig's disease?
Most people say oh that's horrible at this point. Actually in one case someone wasn't familiar with Lou Gherig's disease. (Admittedly that was understandable since the fellow was an immigrant. He was familiar with Stephen Hawking though so I mentioned it was the disease he had although I'm not sure if that's technically correct.)
The design for the Sega d-pad that they used for the Genesis 6-button pad and the japanese Saturn controller. That was by far the best d-pad I've ever used.(Yes, better than the Nintendo d-pad which is no slouch.) Actually come to think of it Sega for some reason that would only make sense to them dumped that pad when they made the Dreamcast. (I don't know how many times I wished Sega would have just made an adapter so I could use my Saturn analog controller with my DC.)
I mean I agree Kaku is a blight on science. (I mean his explanation of why E=MC^2 on the science channel basically amounted to "That's what Stone Cold Al Einstein said so.") Still Tyson? I mean we are talking about a guy who romanticizes so much how black holes suck everything down around them. Honestly, the way he puts it he makes it seem as though if a black hole were to go through the solar system getting sucked in would be the major concern. (You know, not mentioning that you'd have to get fairly close for that extreme gravity effect to take place at all. The real concern is it completely messing up the orbit of earth and causing us to freeze or fry. Of course he doesn't say that because it doesn't sell books. Oh well, at least they weren't as bad as when I saw Kip Thorne on one of those channels explaining quantum entanglement. (He was technically correct and yet he would have totally confused any lay person who didn't know anything about it. He made it sound like the screwed up version of quantum entanglement.)
Not renaming their portable music player to anything else when Zune didn't do that well. I mean how well would Win7 do if they marketed it as Vista 2.0.
I mean I've told this story before but I had an advisor(who was a physics professor) tell me during orientation to take the freshman physics for physcists because I did well on the physics placement test.(Which basically just repeated checked to see if you got Newton's first law. I mean honestly, it's not that hard.) So what was the problem? I took a calc test at the same time which he saw and it said my calc was fairly weak. The course was basically one big applied applied math course where they expected that you knew calculus to start with and the course made no sense if you didn't know calculus. (It was a figurative train wreck and only got worse when they broke out the linear algebra that I wouldn't see for years afterwards, let alone those weird ass integrals for center of mass that nobody understood.) Now that was the worst advising I've ever seen.
I suppose I could bring up the fact the thing I absolutely despised as a CS major wasn't the math requirement but the foreign language requirement that the school had as a general requirement but that'll be for another time. (Lets just say all the reasons they gave me for it are horseshit and they know it's horseshit.)
Slashdot Mirror
I mean I was watching some program with that idiot and it basically took a guy with a Phd in physics to explain to him why the car they were developing was so fuel efficient. (Answer it was really light. Of course the moron didn't ask them how they were going to reduce the cost of the carbon fiber needed to make the thing because he's a moron.)
then I remind myself plumbers have to work with shit. Not figurative shit but literal excrement when they snake the main drain. Man I was happy to pay the plumber to do that about a year ago since I wouldn't have wanted to do that.
I would have been appalled by this except for the fact that those dirt bags are dealing with admissions douche bags. I might point out those are the same scum balls that said I wasn't serious when I applied even though I basically blew in excess of 100 grand to try to live out my dream of getting into med school. (True story btw. I went back to school when I was older and to take a chance for once in my life and go for the brass ring. I put in a couple years of my life and the opportunity cost was well north of $100K. I suppose I could also mention the same fellow also said that I didn't know what I was getting into less than 2 weeks after my dad died and yes I was there when he died and yes I helped take care of him in his last few months at home.) I say more power to them.
With that all said of course there are a few differences if the same scenario had played out and I didn't go to college. For one I wouldn't have blown 16K+ on my school.(Which sucked that I went through that and had a debt on top of it.) The other difference would be that at least for part of that time I would have had some employment so I'd hope that I'd have a little more money plus experience that would at least let me land a job or 2. (Not like actual reality where I had those loans, couldn't get a job because of the mental illness and then ended with a track record of unemployment which continued to screw me over until I got a job in tech support. Too bad the expected level of experience for that was an associates degree which of course meant a reduced salary.)
On top of that did they do any sort of research on those of us that ended becoming literally crazy because of college. You'd be surprised even if you have the right degree(Computer Science) at the right time (mid 90's) how hard it is to get a job when you're an absolutely mess psychologically. (Oh, and not getting a job makes a depression worse but hey, I'm bitter.)
I mean I know carbon in SP3 hybridization is a non-conductor(think diamond) but graphene/graphite is SP2. It's a conductor because of that electron sharing. (Hey, I still remember a little of my organic chemistry.)
Like my title says, I wonder what percentage take these courses to fill some stupid requirement.(I know, I'll probably lose some karma points for stating this.) I mean I look at how it was when I went to university. We had a 4 semester foreign language requirement. So a great many of the students in those courses weren't taking these courses because of some "love of language" but because some nitwit just had to shove his pet area of study down our figurative throats regardless of any real results. (Yes, I'm very bitter about the undergrad torture requirement. Before anybody chimes in it completely screwed up my education and has brought no benefit to me which you'd think it would have by now, I graduated almost 20 years ago.) Anyway my point is that I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of the students in CS101 and CS102 are there to fill a requirement my yet another pencil pushing faculty member who had a stupid idea of "Wouldn't be great if all our students were interested in modern technology, lets shove it down their throats."(Since this amounted to a 2 semester math/science requirement if you weren't a math/science major. I be some of the students in my CS courses were there because they didn't want to do a lab or a math class. Of course this screwed me over as a math/science guy because I ended up having to do 6 semester of humanties and social science which I were also worthless. I just didn't hate them as much as the undergrad torture requirement.) They might take the first one because "Maybe it could be cool." and then figure "I might as well do the second semester and get this claptrap out of the way." Basically creating their own problem and then turn around and complain about the problem they caused in the first place. (But hey, I'm cynical.)
Use a simple example of a digital medium, text IE a novel. For example if someone tried to sell you a copy of Camus' "The Stranger" and claimed that by using better paper and ink it turns from a plot-less, pointless mess of a book that makes many glad he got killed in a car wreck to a wonderful masterpiece of literature you'd think he was nuts. You'd say to yourself all that matters is the printing is good enough for me to make out the words. Any less isn't good enough and any more is a waste.(Using better paper isn't going to improve that horrible piece of trash.) The same is true with an HDMI signal. (Because both are digital. Once it's good enough to get the signal you can't get "more" signal by doing anything.)
So it is hard to gauge if it's truely common or not with a couple pieces of data. However I'd like to think I'm not that unusual and my life is probably typical so given the 2 options are either A:It's not that uncommon or B:You're really unlucky to find one of the very few nut job priests I'm going to go with A until I have more data.(But like they say, an anecdote is a starting place to come up with a hypothesis or 2.) Admittedly I could just be unlucky.(Hell, I'm the guy who had a teacher in first grade that hated smart kids.)
I know theoretically the Church has been cool with evolution since at least the 50's. However that didn't stop me from getting yelled at by a priest because I talked about it during a CCD class when I was a kid in the late 70's and got ratted out by the CCD teacher. (I guess that means at least 2 people working in some capacity for the RCC in my personal experience were creationists. So I have to think it was still quite common at that time to be a creationist even if you were a Roman Catholic. Before anybody asks I didn't get yelled at for simply talking, I got yelled at for bring up evolution which these 2 had a hair across their ass about.)
NASA did a sub orbital rocket plane and it first flew over 50 years ago. (The X-15 is anybody cares.)
I mean look at chemistry at how many symbols are really just from the latin/greek name for stuff. IE lead(Pb), Gold(Au), Silver(Ag), Sodium(Na), and Iron(Fe).
Well one cost was to my company when I accidently rendered GIS using a projection that was in feet. (I mean it's newish technology, who the hell does feet in that? I guess I wasted a day or 2 on that which was money my company basically flushed down the drain.) Oh well, once I picked a projection that used meters everything worked out correctly.
Or SI (which I hear is technically different) is how they have screwy prefixes. I mean take 10^3 which is kilo. You'd think that'd be upper case 'K' and that the inverse would be 'k'. Actually it's 'k' and 'm' respectively.(You wouldn't believe how many times I confused milli with micro. Yes I know milli is latin for a thousand but why did they use that then turn around and use Greek kilo?) Yet for other prefixes, yotta for example, they do exactly this. (Doing a quick look on wiki it looks like they used latin for the negative powers and greek for positive powers but why they got rid of all those weird imperial gotchas that were known by common folk just to turn around and start chucking in latin/greek gotchas is beyond me.) To be even more confusing Mega (10^6) is M which makes you think upper case means positive powers.
I mean the withdrawal symptoms for water are worse and hit quicker. Oh, and don't get me started on how bad the withdrawal from O2 is.
but it has killed people in the US.(Not saying his overall point is wrong since it pretty much isn't.) Admittedly I only know of one incident, SL-1, but that killed 3 people. (But it might have been suicide. Of course it's kind of hard to forget that one when you hear one of the deceased accidently got nailed to the ceiling.)
She has ALS
What's that?
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
What's that?
Have you ever heard of Lou Gherig's disease?
Most people say oh that's horrible at this point. Actually in one case someone wasn't familiar with Lou Gherig's disease. (Admittedly that was understandable since the fellow was an immigrant. He was familiar with Stephen Hawking though so I mentioned it was the disease he had although I'm not sure if that's technically correct.)
That he could do that. Of course ALS sucks. (Which I would be familiar with since I took care of my mom when she was dying of it.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap#Fact_vs_Fiction
It is known today that even the CIA's estimate was too high; the actual number of ICBMs, even including interim-use prototypes, was 4.
The design for the Sega d-pad that they used for the Genesis 6-button pad and the japanese Saturn controller. That was by far the best d-pad I've ever used.(Yes, better than the Nintendo d-pad which is no slouch.) Actually come to think of it Sega for some reason that would only make sense to them dumped that pad when they made the Dreamcast. (I don't know how many times I wished Sega would have just made an adapter so I could use my Saturn analog controller with my DC.)
core and irradiating themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
I mean I agree Kaku is a blight on science. (I mean his explanation of why E=MC^2 on the science channel basically amounted to "That's what Stone Cold Al Einstein said so.") Still Tyson? I mean we are talking about a guy who romanticizes so much how black holes suck everything down around them. Honestly, the way he puts it he makes it seem as though if a black hole were to go through the solar system getting sucked in would be the major concern. (You know, not mentioning that you'd have to get fairly close for that extreme gravity effect to take place at all. The real concern is it completely messing up the orbit of earth and causing us to freeze or fry. Of course he doesn't say that because it doesn't sell books. Oh well, at least they weren't as bad as when I saw Kip Thorne on one of those channels explaining quantum entanglement. (He was technically correct and yet he would have totally confused any lay person who didn't know anything about it. He made it sound like the screwed up version of quantum entanglement.)
that rockets don't work in space and that a physics professor knew less physics than what was taught in a high school?
Not renaming their portable music player to anything else when Zune didn't do that well. I mean how well would Win7 do if they marketed it as Vista 2.0.
I mean I've told this story before but I had an advisor(who was a physics professor) tell me during orientation to take the freshman physics for physcists because I did well on the physics placement test.(Which basically just repeated checked to see if you got Newton's first law. I mean honestly, it's not that hard.) So what was the problem? I took a calc test at the same time which he saw and it said my calc was fairly weak. The course was basically one big applied applied math course where they expected that you knew calculus to start with and the course made no sense if you didn't know calculus. (It was a figurative train wreck and only got worse when they broke out the linear algebra that I wouldn't see for years afterwards, let alone those weird ass integrals for center of mass that nobody understood.) Now that was the worst advising I've ever seen. I suppose I could bring up the fact the thing I absolutely despised as a CS major wasn't the math requirement but the foreign language requirement that the school had as a general requirement but that'll be for another time. (Lets just say all the reasons they gave me for it are horseshit and they know it's horseshit.)