To continue on the serious note, everyone, I mean everyone, complains that boys don't read. The fact is that if a boy is brought up int he average school, he is given nothing, and excuse my language, but chick lit to read. The only reason I read was because my father read and it was stuff interesting to boys. Heinlein, Pohl, etc. It was pulp, but it got me into the habit of reading so i could read more of the conventional and socially acceptable stuff.
My kid had no interest in reading until I got him started on Ben Bova's Orion series. He's 11 and loves it. Yes it's full violence, and sex, and "porn" - I mean, sex with a goddess while covered with animal entrails amid a stone age civilization? It doesn't get any better!
The early Card stuff is next; Planet Called Treason, Ender's Game, you name it. Those are boy books!
I mean school is so screwed up that when we read the Canterbury Tales, the cool tales were the ones that could not be assigned.
Hehe... I read The Wife Of Bath with my 14 year old daughter. Nothing like the prologue where she rants about the uselessness of virginity. Again, want to hold a teenager's attention while reading the classics? Show then the classics!
Once a month we do a brownbag where people come in and do presentations. It's voluntary and fun.
The best thing to do is to have toys to show off. Just recently I walked around with a "coupon", an 8" diameter chunk of steel cut from a pipe. This let me talk about water pressure, safety (there's 4,000 lbs of force behind that coupon in a waterline) and give everyone a visual of that thing coming loose and whacking someone in the face. Perhaps not related, but it let me segue into our control system, and 25 miles of fiberoptic cable, and control infrastructure that lets us control our water delivery throughout 250 miles of waterlines.
Tell stories, illustrate your points with real world events. Don't dwell on statistics or numbers; talk about what those numbers mean and why they're important.
Yes, you are an entertainer. At least if you want to keep your audience from falling asleep.
I am bilingual in English and another language. When I go to that country, many of the tourist attractions have price lists in English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, you name it. Then they have one in the local language. The prices on that one are half of what they are for the tourists. And they're written out in words, not numbers, so if you can't read them you're SOL.
So yup, you don't need to speak the other guy's language, if you're willing to play by his rules.
I've never been up a wind turbine tower; I've been up inside water towers. Even out of the wind, you're surrounded by cold steel and it gets downright miserable even after a short while. It just sucks the heat out you.
But the whole "take the cut for now because something better will come along" doesn't scale.
Exactly. Once an employer knows that they can hire someone from a cheaper pool, they will happily lay off the well-paid workers and hire form the cheap pool. And along the way strip benefits.
It doesn't go the other way, though - employers won't raise wages as long as there's any hope of hiring from the cheap pool. That's why middle class wages have been stagnant for 20 years, while the wealthiest have seen their income skyrocket.
So yes, if you're qualified, hold out for the higher paying job if you can.
Oh, and the Empire State thing? They could not get white workers to do that work; they ended up with Mohawk Tribe workers because even in the depression good ole white Americans refused to do the work for any price.
I work in a manual labor industry. It's no joke. These guys and gals work hard, and it's not an easy job. The only time you see them is when it's sunny and nice, because that's when you're out walking your dog. How about when it's 31 degrees, freezing rain, and you're knee deep in freezing water? For an 8 hour shift? You're not out there because it's too miserable; you're at home under the blanket watching TV. They're out there working.
Try getting out there, and working at the top of even a 60' bucket truck, in high wind. Now try it at the top of a 300' tower, in freezing cold wind.
If these were union jobs, they'd be going for $40+. The $20/hour thing tells me they're not union.
ISTR that Mercedes Benz postponed bringing anti-lock brakes into the US for a few years after they had them in Europe for fear of litigation. In other words, it's cheaper to let people die with a known hazard than to prevent a bunch of deaths and get sued by some bonehead.
So yes, unless we curb litigation we won't see a lot of public autonomous vehicles.
I learned to program at a time when structured programming was just coming into view. There was a huge amount of experimentation going on. I still think fondly of languages like SNOBOL, which was absolutely awesome in its text handling. Most of the regex concepts were tried and tested in SNOBOL.
Seems like a lot of the new languages are scripting languages, written to scratch an itch; sometimes they stick. NASAL comes to mind. Great scripting, limited applicability.
I really wish that people would take off their blinders and really, really *try* radical new concepts.
Everything that can be invented has been invented. Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899 (He didn't really say that but it's a great quote anyway).
Arachne and one that followed it, what ever it was called by Lisa Mason. Phenomenal dystopia of the future. Mirabile by Janet Kagan. Absolutely a gem; if you don't laugh out loud while being absolutely stumped you're dead.
If you're looking for developer distros, pick one that has the developer tools; I'd go with Debian just because it's stable as a rock and about as exciting.
If you're going with end-user eye candy, I'd go with Ubuntu. That way you still have the underlying Debian base with a lot of windows-like fluff.
Most ranchers I know live *and* work in the middle of nowhere. So yes, they live close to where they work. Ditto for the farmers. The problem comes only for the "pretend" farmers and ranchers who live on a "mini-farm" in the burbs and commute to work in the City. It got so bad for Klamath County they published a guide for the wannabe ranchers: http://klamathcounty.org/depts/cdd/planning/downloads/Code%20of%20the%20West.pdf
Seems to me you've chosen where you want to live. I don't have any issues with anyone living where they want. I have a problem with people who move waaaay out of the city, fight tooth and nail against any taxes, public transit and alternate transportation funding, and bitch about the length of their commute and demand that "someone" do something about their inconvenience and the high price of gas.
You choose where you live. The percentage of Americans living in remote areas is tiny. I live in Oregon, one of the least populous places in the US (and possibly the civilized worlds - where else do you have densities of 1 person per square mile????) But the vast majority of our population lives in Willamette Valley. So you could point to Joe in Wheeler County having to drive 150 miles to see the doctor, but the fact is that even in Oregon the majority of Joes live where they could potentially walk to their doctor's office.
We chose to live where we are within 2 miles of most of our daily trips. Our kids can walk to school until they graduate high school. We go to the local rec center rather than drive across town.
The problem is that most Americans want to live in the exurbs in large homes outside of the cities, and then bitch and moan about "killer commutes" and high price of gas. Give up that fancy home 30 miles outside of town, and buy an older home in the City center where things are within walking distance.
Long ago I learned that the best way to be invisible is to walk in dressed in overalls with a toolbelt, and announce "Plumber!" to everyone in earshot. You can walk into a women's bathroom, yell "Plumber!" and none of the women will even notice as you walk around....
In my experience the people who want money enough to be "morally corrupt" also put in a lot of hours to the exclusion of their families. To them money becomes the driving force. I've seen guys break up with girlfriends, walk away from a wedding and get divorced because they loved money and work more than people. That to me is "morally corrupt".
Anyway, I don't begrudge him his money; he's earned it and I hope he's happy with the life he's picked. I am with mine.
He loved what he did. So did I. We both met our own personal definition of success. I like to believe that I am happier but as I don't keep in touch with him at all I have no idea where he is ATM.
ISTR that some country (Sweden?) sets fines as a percentage of wealth/income, so that the impact is the same. Someone earning $20K/yr might pay $100; someone earning $20M/yr might pay $100,000 for that traffic ticket.
But in the US, the rich would just buy a few politicians and get the law changed.
A little bit. Just my own $0.02.... I used to own an engineering company. We were mostly based on repeat business and word of mouth, and had a steady clientele. We did OK. Our typical hours were four 9s and a 4 and most of us would be gone by Friday afternoon. We had a reputation for being fair to our clients and charging a fair price. I would not accept shady clients or do anything that was unethical.
One of my major competitors was a workaholic with the instincts of a jackal; you were a disappointment if you worked less than 60 hours a week, for which he paid you your base salary. He worked probably 80 to 100 hours a week and took his laptop on vacations. He spent 3 hours a week with his kids; one hour per child. He had a reputation for being voraciously money hungry and would skirt the law on almost everything as long as there was profit in it. He had no problem cheating clients, employees, or the government.
He consistently made far more money than I did. He didn't care what his reputation was or how much damage he did to his family or the lives of his employees or the community. He had no friends that I know of.
I on the other hand still keep in touch with my former employees, sleep well at night, and live a modestly successful life.
So yes, from my own limited experience, you get richer than me by being morally corrupt.
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To continue on the serious note, everyone, I mean everyone, complains that boys don't read. The fact is that if a boy is brought up int he average school, he is given nothing, and excuse my language, but chick lit to read. The only reason I read was because my father read and it was stuff interesting to boys. Heinlein, Pohl, etc. It was pulp, but it got me into the habit of reading so i could read more of the conventional and socially acceptable stuff.
My kid had no interest in reading until I got him started on Ben Bova's Orion series. He's 11 and loves it. Yes it's full violence, and sex, and "porn" - I mean, sex with a goddess while covered with animal entrails amid a stone age civilization? It doesn't get any better!
The early Card stuff is next; Planet Called Treason, Ender's Game, you name it. Those are boy books!
I mean school is so screwed up that when we read the Canterbury Tales, the cool tales were the ones that could not be assigned.
Hehe... I read The Wife Of Bath with my 14 year old daughter. Nothing like the prologue where she rants about the uselessness of virginity. Again, want to hold a teenager's attention while reading the classics? Show then the classics!
Once a month we do a brownbag where people come in and do presentations. It's voluntary and fun.
The best thing to do is to have toys to show off. Just recently I walked around with a "coupon", an 8" diameter chunk of steel cut from a pipe. This let me talk about water pressure, safety (there's 4,000 lbs of force behind that coupon in a waterline) and give everyone a visual of that thing coming loose and whacking someone in the face. Perhaps not related, but it let me segue into our control system, and 25 miles of fiberoptic cable, and control infrastructure that lets us control our water delivery throughout 250 miles of waterlines.
Tell stories, illustrate your points with real world events. Don't dwell on statistics or numbers; talk about what those numbers mean and why they're important.
Yes, you are an entertainer. At least if you want to keep your audience from falling asleep.
Gingrich switched parties?
And then explain that to everyone who asks.
Hehe....
I am bilingual in English and another language. When I go to that country, many of the tourist attractions have price lists in English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, you name it. Then they have one in the local language. The prices on that one are half of what they are for the tourists. And they're written out in words, not numbers, so if you can't read them you're SOL.
So yup, you don't need to speak the other guy's language, if you're willing to play by his rules.
I've never been up a wind turbine tower; I've been up inside water towers. Even out of the wind, you're surrounded by cold steel and it gets downright miserable even after a short while. It just sucks the heat out you.
But the whole "take the cut for now because something better will come along" doesn't scale.
Exactly. Once an employer knows that they can hire someone from a cheaper pool, they will happily lay off the well-paid workers and hire form the cheap pool. And along the way strip benefits.
It doesn't go the other way, though - employers won't raise wages as long as there's any hope of hiring from the cheap pool. That's why middle class wages have been stagnant for 20 years, while the wealthiest have seen their income skyrocket.
So yes, if you're qualified, hold out for the higher paying job if you can.
Oh, and the Empire State thing? They could not get white workers to do that work; they ended up with Mohawk Tribe workers because even in the depression good ole white Americans refused to do the work for any price.
Tell me again how we lost our way?
Ever done manual labor?
Climb up a 300' tower with tools?
I work in a manual labor industry. It's no joke. These guys and gals work hard, and it's not an easy job. The only time you see them is when it's sunny and nice, because that's when you're out walking your dog. How about when it's 31 degrees, freezing rain, and you're knee deep in freezing water? For an 8 hour shift? You're not out there because it's too miserable; you're at home under the blanket watching TV. They're out there working.
Try getting out there, and working at the top of even a 60' bucket truck, in high wind. Now try it at the top of a 300' tower, in freezing cold wind.
If these were union jobs, they'd be going for $40+. The $20/hour thing tells me they're not union.
Ever watch DeathRace 2000?
ISTR that Mercedes Benz postponed bringing anti-lock brakes into the US for a few years after they had them in Europe for fear of litigation. In other words, it's cheaper to let people die with a known hazard than to prevent a bunch of deaths and get sued by some bonehead.
So yes, unless we curb litigation we won't see a lot of public autonomous vehicles.
I learned to program at a time when structured programming was just coming into view. There was a huge amount of experimentation going on. I still think fondly of languages like SNOBOL, which was absolutely awesome in its text handling. Most of the regex concepts were tried and tested in SNOBOL.
Seems like a lot of the new languages are scripting languages, written to scratch an itch; sometimes they stick. NASAL comes to mind. Great scripting, limited applicability.
I really wish that people would take off their blinders and really, really *try* radical new concepts.
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899 (He didn't really say that but it's a great quote anyway).
Arachne and one that followed it, what ever it was called by Lisa Mason. Phenomenal dystopia of the future.
Mirabile by Janet Kagan. Absolutely a gem; if you don't laugh out loud while being absolutely stumped you're dead.
Anyone else thought this cheetah is running ass-backwards? I kept waiting for the treadmill to reverse....
That.
If you're looking for developer distros, pick one that has the developer tools; I'd go with Debian just because it's stable as a rock and about as exciting.
If you're going with end-user eye candy, I'd go with Ubuntu. That way you still have the underlying Debian base with a lot of windows-like fluff.
uneducated != stupid
Most ranchers I know live *and* work in the middle of nowhere. So yes, they live close to where they work. Ditto for the farmers. The problem comes only for the "pretend" farmers and ranchers who live on a "mini-farm" in the burbs and commute to work in the City. It got so bad for Klamath County they published a guide for the wannabe ranchers: http://klamathcounty.org/depts/cdd/planning/downloads/Code%20of%20the%20West.pdf
Seems to me you've chosen where you want to live. I don't have any issues with anyone living where they want. I have a problem with people who move waaaay out of the city, fight tooth and nail against any taxes, public transit and alternate transportation funding, and bitch about the length of their commute and demand that "someone" do something about their inconvenience and the high price of gas.
You choose where you live. The percentage of Americans living in remote areas is tiny. I live in Oregon, one of the least populous places in the US (and possibly the civilized worlds - where else do you have densities of 1 person per square mile????) But the vast majority of our population lives in Willamette Valley. So you could point to Joe in Wheeler County having to drive 150 miles to see the doctor, but the fact is that even in Oregon the majority of Joes live where they could potentially walk to their doctor's office.
We chose to live where we are within 2 miles of most of our daily trips. Our kids can walk to school until they graduate high school. We go to the local rec center rather than drive across town.
The problem is that most Americans want to live in the exurbs in large homes outside of the cities, and then bitch and moan about "killer commutes" and high price of gas. Give up that fancy home 30 miles outside of town, and buy an older home in the City center where things are within walking distance.
Long ago I learned that the best way to be invisible is to walk in dressed in overalls with a toolbelt, and announce "Plumber!" to everyone in earshot. You can walk into a women's bathroom, yell "Plumber!" and none of the women will even notice as you walk around....
In my experience the people who want money enough to be "morally corrupt" also put in a lot of hours to the exclusion of their families. To them money becomes the driving force. I've seen guys break up with girlfriends, walk away from a wedding and get divorced because they loved money and work more than people. That to me is "morally corrupt".
Anyway, I don't begrudge him his money; he's earned it and I hope he's happy with the life he's picked. I am with mine.
He loved what he did. So did I. We both met our own personal definition of success. I like to believe that I am happier but as I don't keep in touch with him at all I have no idea where he is ATM.
ISTR that some country (Sweden?) sets fines as a percentage of wealth/income, so that the impact is the same. Someone earning $20K/yr might pay $100; someone earning $20M/yr might pay $100,000 for that traffic ticket.
But in the US, the rich would just buy a few politicians and get the law changed.
A little bit. Just my own $0.02.... I used to own an engineering company. We were mostly based on repeat business and word of mouth, and had a steady clientele. We did OK. Our typical hours were four 9s and a 4 and most of us would be gone by Friday afternoon. We had a reputation for being fair to our clients and charging a fair price. I would not accept shady clients or do anything that was unethical.
One of my major competitors was a workaholic with the instincts of a jackal; you were a disappointment if you worked less than 60 hours a week, for which he paid you your base salary. He worked probably 80 to 100 hours a week and took his laptop on vacations. He spent 3 hours a week with his kids; one hour per child. He had a reputation for being voraciously money hungry and would skirt the law on almost everything as long as there was profit in it. He had no problem cheating clients, employees, or the government.
He consistently made far more money than I did. He didn't care what his reputation was or how much damage he did to his family or the lives of his employees or the community. He had no friends that I know of.
I on the other hand still keep in touch with my former employees, sleep well at night, and live a modestly successful life.
So yes, from my own limited experience, you get richer than me by being morally corrupt.
Because America hates itself? Look at our presidential candidates for god's sake!