And to think I did not take the job with the NASA subcontractor (I would have been working on the development of expolding titanium bolts, so it was a tough call; I mean, how cool is that? I would have had to move to Daytona Beach though, and I hate Florida. As I sit here decades later in upstate NY looking at the first snow of the year flying it occurs to me I may have made a mistake).
Seems to me I would have fit right in.
In the Feynman "Lost Lectures" recording there's an ammusing passage where he becomes totally confused for a minute or so, by his own diagram.
Turns out he drew an arrow backwards.
Everyone drops a sign, inverts things, uses the wrong units now and again. The trick is to catch it before you launch the rocket or build the library.
Are often wrong, at least when attributed to the space program. Take Tang, for instance. I was born before Sputnik, but I drank Tang as a child. It is the product of General Foods, invented by the same man who brought us Cool Whip and Pop Rocks (died, 2004). The motivation for inventing all of these was purely civilian profit.
Other things that didn't come out of the space program, Velcro (invented by a Frenchman picking burrs off his dog, circa 1940) and Teflon (invented at Dupont in 1938 while researching refrigeration units).
Electronic computers got a kick in the pants from the Manhatten Project (not the space program), but this came mainly in the form of money and a deadline for machines already in development for use in civilian business (it's IBM, afterall).
Gunpowder, invented for toys (like rockets). High explosives, invented for civilian tunneling/mining operations.
For the most part (there are exceptions) the military takes preexisting civilian technology and spurs its development a bit by adding funding and pressure. We'd still have the stuff without it, it would just take a little longer for the market to provide the capital. They actually refused funding for the development of the automobile and airplane. Even guns have mostly been developed purely in the private sector in the hopes of selling them to the military at some later date. Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson were big players in providing actual government funding to spur the development of existing gun technologies, creating the market for inventing on speculation.
Overall, prizes are often the most effective means the military uses to spur development. Civilians will spend their entire lives inventing to collect a prize of lower value than they simply could have made working in an office somewhere; without all the capital outlay - but inventors aren't that sort of person, are they?
The military/space program is a good customer, but only rarely do anything directly and it's even rarer for them to prompt the discovery of something we wouldn't have gotten in time anyway.
Maybe the microwave oven (invented by accident while working on radar) - maybe.
They have certainly provided a good practicum for accelerated development of treatments/surguries of catastrophic injuries though; ya gotta hand it to the military for that.
Oh, I don't know. I think a "city" with enough of a sense of humor to name itself after a typo would get a giggle out of a 50 foot skyscraper that rotates to follow the sun; where right now the Sun can't quite make it up by noon and rushes to be down again before four.
2. Apple computer announces the iPod Uno. The size of a match stick with no screen or controls, the iPod Uno plays one song in a constant loop. Despite its limited capabilities, the tiny device becomes an instant hit and a cultural icon.
Well, considering that's what my desktop is usually doing I might actually buy that. A while ago an upstairs neighbor knocked on my door and rather sheepishly asked if I'd mind turning the music down a bit. She admited it was quite lovely, but it had been the same bloody song for three hours and it was getting to be a bit much.
Traditional musicians do not learn music from notation, they pick it up by osmosis. I can only assume that this prediction is a secondary effect and not the primary; in 2007 everyone takes up Celtic whistle/fiddle.
He comes at the issue from a particular mindset, so I don't always agree with him on minor bits of philosophy, but he's got the gist of it and has researched the history well.
See also the writings of John Holt; who after 20 years of trying to reform the system finally figured out that it was irredeamable by design and founded the modern home schooling movement:
I was home schooled before John had his conversion and my family actually fled the country for the better part of a school year while the lawyer worked things out. One of the best experiences of my life.
And in a bit of seredipity, the current Slashdot FOTD is:
"Did you hear that two rabbits escaped from the zoo and so far they have only recaptured 116 of them?"
Only two, only two, oooooooooonly two!
. ..we were playing barefoot on a big pile of dirt excavated for a new cellar, when I stepped on a broken bottle.
. ..ooooooh, maybe a little gash here and there, but that's alright. And then the grownups came and moved in . ..the monkey bars. We lost a hundred and fourty seven kids in one day.
I would have kicked the shit out of him when I first saw that if it was not for the fear of the parents, lawsuits and such crap
Well yes, for someone who is inherently violent, such as yourself, a BB gun might be something they shouldn't be allowed to handle. Thanks for being the reason cops need to exist. Thanks a fucking lot.
I guess that's how you build up a card carrying NRA member.
I'm a Zen Buddhist. I do have card envy though. We don't use them. I think it's because there are no documents pockets in the robes or something. Anyway, I'm told this is just my ego, but actually it's because that now that I've conquered my ego I could occasionally use something to remind me who I am. Like when asked by a cop. Most of them aren't Zen Buddhists and don't understand.
Around here they also have real guns, which are certain leave a mark. I don't like guns.
But it's still fun to plink tins cans now and again; a nice change from traditional, nonviolent Zen Buddhist pursuits, like armor piercing archery.
Sure wouldn't have wanted people with these attitudes today back when me and my friends played chicken in the park with our ever present pocket knifes.
I used to carry mine to school. Not only was I not considered armed and dangerous, but I was considered one of the "good little boys," who didn't stir up any trouble; unless a grownup did something downright stupid. Then they were in trouble. I homed right in on stupid.
Frankly we have been going downhill for years.
Ya wanna know how the terrorists are going to win? Well, oddly enough, I'm willing to tell you how they're going to win.
No dirty nukes, no poisoning the water supply.
They're just going to sneak into all of our homes and place a pea under each mattress; after which we will simply whine ourselves to fucking death.
Why yes, I did take an extra spoonful of curmudgeon this morning. Why do you ask?
I can't tell you how many times I've been shot, intentionally, with a BB gun. No, literally, I can't.
It's rather more than one, something less than a gross. Stings right good. Might even leave a mark. For a long time if you were one of the Indians (no shirt, that's how you could tell the Indians. We didn't have Native Americans. We had Apaches and Comanches; and one weirdo who thought it was cool to be a Blackfoot).
Teaches you the first lesson of not being seen right quick.
Considering the target market is between 4 and 10 years of age, I think expecting a constant level of common sense IS a bit much to ask. That's why children are treated like children.
i.e. the supid ones need to be weeded out early. It's not like we don't have fun making more of the little bastards. Wanna put some common sense into little Johnny's head, assuming his head is capable of holding such?
Just look him right in the eye and say, "Go right ahead. It's not like you're my only one."
Knowing that mommy and daddy not only will not always be able to protect you, but knowing that they won't even necessarily try teaches you to bloody well look out for yourself.
Maybe we were just funny that way, but back in the day we thought that being able and willing to take care of yourself was something of a survival trait.
Well, that is why people should be responsible for their reporting.
Dude, it's a think tank "report." They deal in the amorphous and write it in weasel; 'cause it's a living paid for by the brainless. Put it under a rhetorical microscope and there's little there to be responsible for.
The real title of this story should be "Think Tanker admits he shits for money."
Hey KFG! I have something on my slashdot journal now that might interest you! (and any other curious slashdotters who can spell well).
Dude, have you actually read my posts? I have been the actual poster child for dyslexia ( a magazine article in which I was the focus subject once won the American Optimetric Society's Best Magazine Article of the Year Award). While it's true that I don't spell in 133t text I can't actually spell for crap.
This is compounded by the fact that I read more archaic text than modern, so current standards do not get reinforced by my reading; although that does make me a bit more suitable for proofing archaic works than a spelling nazi. I understand that spelling is half arbitrary; half fashion and half phonemes of the way way words were pronounced at a particular time and place.
And did you ever notice that pi+e statistics don't even add up?
I live just a few blocks from where the first commercial color broadcast was made. Came in on my B&W set just fine thank you. Which is a good thing because they didn't "switch" to color, they added color a show at a time:
"The wonderful woooooooooorld ooooooooooof color!"
It's not at all like back in the day when my neighbor brought home a car and my horse stopped working.
Slashdot Mirror
And to think I did not take the job with the NASA subcontractor (I would have been working on the development of expolding titanium bolts, so it was a tough call; I mean, how cool is that? I would have had to move to Daytona Beach though, and I hate Florida. As I sit here decades later in upstate NY looking at the first snow of the year flying it occurs to me I may have made a mistake).
Seems to me I would have fit right in.
In the Feynman "Lost Lectures" recording there's an ammusing passage where he becomes totally confused for a minute or so, by his own diagram.
Turns out he drew an arrow backwards.
Everyone drops a sign, inverts things, uses the wrong units now and again. The trick is to catch it before you launch the rocket or build the library.
KFG
The obvious examples are. . .
Are often wrong, at least when attributed to the space program. Take Tang, for instance. I was born before Sputnik, but I drank Tang as a child. It is the product of General Foods, invented by the same man who brought us Cool Whip and Pop Rocks (died, 2004). The motivation for inventing all of these was purely civilian profit.
Other things that didn't come out of the space program, Velcro (invented by a Frenchman picking burrs off his dog, circa 1940) and Teflon (invented at Dupont in 1938 while researching refrigeration units).
Electronic computers got a kick in the pants from the Manhatten Project (not the space program), but this came mainly in the form of money and a deadline for machines already in development for use in civilian business (it's IBM, afterall).
Gunpowder, invented for toys (like rockets). High explosives, invented for civilian tunneling/mining operations.
For the most part (there are exceptions) the military takes preexisting civilian technology and spurs its development a bit by adding funding and pressure. We'd still have the stuff without it, it would just take a little longer for the market to provide the capital. They actually refused funding for the development of the automobile and airplane. Even guns have mostly been developed purely in the private sector in the hopes of selling them to the military at some later date. Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson were big players in providing actual government funding to spur the development of existing gun technologies, creating the market for inventing on speculation.
Overall, prizes are often the most effective means the military uses to spur development. Civilians will spend their entire lives inventing to collect a prize of lower value than they simply could have made working in an office somewhere; without all the capital outlay - but inventors aren't that sort of person, are they?
The military/space program is a good customer, but only rarely do anything directly and it's even rarer for them to prompt the discovery of something we wouldn't have gotten in time anyway.
Maybe the microwave oven (invented by accident while working on radar) - maybe.
They have certainly provided a good practicum for accelerated development of treatments/surguries of catastrophic injuries though; ya gotta hand it to the military for that.
KFG
No, the truly rich build skyscrapers such that Earth revolves around them.
The truely rich would never even conceive of that, since the universe already does.
KFG
. . .a giggle out of a 50 foot skyscraper . . .
Come to think of it, I'd get a bit of a giggle out of a 50 foot "skyscraper" myself.
Although, perhaps in Nome that would be.
This is my brain on gluten. It is not a pretty sight; although it can be amusing.
KFG
Oh, I don't know. I think a "city" with enough of a sense of humor to name itself after a typo would get a giggle out of a 50 foot skyscraper that rotates to follow the sun; where right now the Sun can't quite make it up by noon and rushes to be down again before four.
KFG
2. Apple computer announces the iPod Uno.
The size of a match stick with no screen or controls, the iPod Uno plays one song in a constant loop. Despite its limited capabilities, the tiny device becomes an instant hit and a cultural icon.
Well, considering that's what my desktop is usually doing I might actually buy that. A while ago an upstairs neighbor knocked on my door and rather sheepishly asked if I'd mind turning the music down a bit. She admited it was quite lovely, but it had been the same bloody song for three hours and it was getting to be a bit much.
Traditional musicians do not learn music from notation, they pick it up by osmosis. I can only assume that this prediction is a secondary effect and not the primary; in 2007 everyone takes up Celtic whistle/fiddle.
Except the bodhran players.
And they never listen to music anyway.
KFG
. . .it explains it in such a way that you don't need a degree in topology to understand it.
Oh, great. Nooooooow you tell me.
KFG
wow you're old. . .
Yes, it happens if you just wait long enough.
. . . is tht why you're so grumpy?
No. It's people pointing out that my initials are almost the same as KFC that do that.
KFG
The entire book is worth the time it takes to read it:
t m
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.h
He comes at the issue from a particular mindset, so I don't always agree with him on minor bits of philosophy, but he's got the gist of it and has researched the history well.
See also the writings of John Holt; who after 20 years of trying to reform the system finally figured out that it was irredeamable by design and founded the modern home schooling movement:
http://www.holtgws.com/index.html
I was home schooled before John had his conversion and my family actually fled the country for the better part of a school year while the lawyer worked things out. One of the best experiences of my life.
KFG
Do you like KFC?
No.
your handle is so close to 'KFC' tht I think of it everytime I see one of your posts.
Q.E.D. The fact that I was also born the same year as the Bucket-O is pure coincidence; I swear.
KFG
How much more sense can you put into Johnny's head when you spend the rest of your life wiping drool off his chin because of Johnny's brain injury?
What do you think God invented mountaintops for?
KFG
Ah yes, just one step short of the Bill Cosby
.we were playing barefoot on a big pile of dirt excavated for a new cellar, when I stepped on a broken bottle.
.ooooooh, maybe a little gash here and there, but that's alright. And then the grownups came and moved in . . .the monkey bars. We lost a hundred and fourty seven kids in one day.
And in a bit of seredipity, the current Slashdot FOTD is:
"Did you hear that two rabbits escaped from the zoo and so far they have only recaptured 116 of them?"
Only two, only two, oooooooooonly two!
. .
. .
KFG
Plinking cans is fine. Plinking frogs, birds and assorted critters for the hell of it isn't.
Thou shalt not harm any sentient being, but you just try splainin' that to the sentient beings.
KFG
I would have kicked the shit out of him when I first saw that if it was not for the fear of the parents, lawsuits and such crap
Well yes, for someone who is inherently violent, such as yourself, a BB gun might be something they shouldn't be allowed to handle. Thanks for being the reason cops need to exist. Thanks a fucking lot.
I guess that's how you build up a card carrying NRA member.
I'm a Zen Buddhist. I do have card envy though. We don't use them. I think it's because there are no documents pockets in the robes or something. Anyway, I'm told this is just my ego, but actually it's because that now that I've conquered my ego I could occasionally use something to remind me who I am. Like when asked by a cop. Most of them aren't Zen Buddhists and don't understand.
Around here they also have real guns, which are certain leave a mark. I don't like guns.
But it's still fun to plink tins cans now and again; a nice change from traditional, nonviolent Zen Buddhist pursuits, like armor piercing archery.
KFG
Might?
Yeah, especially if you had to dig one out with a pocketknife. That might leave a mark for life.
KFG
Look at the laws being enacted, the charges and/or suits being filed and the way our school system is run.
t m
http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.h
Sure wouldn't have wanted people with these attitudes today back when me and my friends played chicken in the park with our ever present pocket knifes.
I used to carry mine to school. Not only was I not considered armed and dangerous, but I was considered one of the "good little boys," who didn't stir up any trouble; unless a grownup did something downright stupid. Then they were in trouble. I homed right in on stupid.
Frankly we have been going downhill for years.
Ya wanna know how the terrorists are going to win? Well, oddly enough, I'm willing to tell you how they're going to win.
No dirty nukes, no poisoning the water supply.
They're just going to sneak into all of our homes and place a pea under each mattress; after which we will simply whine ourselves to fucking death.
Why yes, I did take an extra spoonful of curmudgeon this morning. Why do you ask?
KFG
I can't tell you how many times I've been shot, intentionally, with a BB gun. No, literally, I can't.
It's rather more than one, something less than a gross. Stings right good. Might even leave a mark. For a long time if you were one of the Indians (no shirt, that's how you could tell the Indians. We didn't have Native Americans. We had Apaches and Comanches; and one weirdo who thought it was cool to be a Blackfoot).
Teaches you the first lesson of not being seen right quick.
KFG
While you have a point. . .
Exactly.
When your mother laid your egg, did she leave you to fend for yourself completely?
Leaving my egg on a mountaintop taught me to fight off the wolf cubs for best tit and made me the man I am today. A flea bitten cur.
KFG
Considering the target market is between 4 and 10 years of age, I think expecting a constant level of common sense IS a bit much to ask. That's why children are treated like children.
i.e. the supid ones need to be weeded out early. It's not like we don't have fun making more of the little bastards. Wanna put some common sense into little Johnny's head, assuming his head is capable of holding such?
Just look him right in the eye and say, "Go right ahead. It's not like you're my only one."
Knowing that mommy and daddy not only will not always be able to protect you, but knowing that they won't even necessarily try teaches you to bloody well look out for yourself.
Maybe we were just funny that way, but back in the day we thought that being able and willing to take care of yourself was something of a survival trait.
But what did we know.
KFG
I've injured myself with airsoft guns many times and I'm pretty careful and since you're actually shooting at other people with them unlike BB guns
Pussy.
KFG
Well, that is why people should be responsible for their reporting.
Dude, it's a think tank "report." They deal in the amorphous and write it in weasel; 'cause it's a living paid for by the brainless. Put it under a rhetorical microscope and there's little there to be responsible for.
The real title of this story should be "Think Tanker admits he shits for money."
KFG
Hey KFG! I have something on my slashdot journal now that might interest you! (and any other curious slashdotters who can spell well).
Dude, have you actually read my posts? I have been the actual poster child for dyslexia ( a magazine article in which I was the focus subject once won the American Optimetric Society's Best Magazine Article of the Year Award). While it's true that I don't spell in 133t text I can't actually spell for crap.
This is compounded by the fact that I read more archaic text than modern, so current standards do not get reinforced by my reading; although that does make me a bit more suitable for proofing archaic works than a spelling nazi. I understand that spelling is half arbitrary; half fashion and half phonemes of the way way words were pronounced at a particular time and place.
And did you ever notice that pi+e statistics don't even add up?
KFG
Specifically DEATH.
I smell a comeback for Henry Gibson.
KFG
I live just a few blocks from where the first commercial color broadcast was made. Came in on my B&W set just fine thank you. Which is a good thing because they didn't "switch" to color, they added color a show at a time:
"The wonderful woooooooooorld ooooooooooof color!"
It's not at all like back in the day when my neighbor brought home a car and my horse stopped working.
KFG
Nice definition of "integer".
One must always insure that one's intergers are sufficiently large.
KFG