Son of Random Stuff

[Thomas Kaira]

Nuclear weapons aren't that big because they want to obliterate everything. They are that fucking big because we can't make them any smaller. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was only the size of a basketball.

Sorry, but coming from someone who lives in Manhattan Project territory, that is just not true, not even accurate as a figure of speech. Little Boy was just as long as Fat Man (of which Fat Man was only slightly smaller than a 2-door hatchback. See the bomb in Megaton in Fallout 3, that's about the correct size) and about 1/3 as wide. If we keep the basketball analogy, you could probably fit 30 of them inside that thing.Modern warheads are about half the size of Little Boy, and the fact that those are 50 megatons over Little Boy's 1 megaton... well, let's just say if one of those hit your city, you'd welcome the fires of Hell.

[Arthmoor]

the challenge presented by Newton was for cannonballs flying through the air

True, but the equations used for that are still very much valid and relevant today. Nukes on ICMBs may enjoy resistance-free flight for part of their trip, but they never lose gravity as an influence. Reentry is also going to be a bit of a bitch, and I can't imagine air resistance having no impact on things at that point.I have a feeling this Newton thing is going to have more far reaching effects than a lot of people realize.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Nobody else has said this so I will - pity the poor kid who worked this out at 16 and wasn't savvy enough to wait until her was 22 and doing a PhD in physics.His academic carear is likely toast.

[Arthmoor]

Six years is a long time to sit on this. Suppose he doesn't live to see 22?

[AndalayBay]

Nuclear weapons aren't that big because they want to obliterate everything. They are that fucking big because we can't make them any smaller. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was only the size of a basketball.

Sorry' date=' but coming from someone who lives in Manhattan Project territory, that is just not true, not even accurate as a figure of speech. Little Boy was just as long as Fat Man (of which Fat Man was only slightly smaller than a 2-door hatchback. See the bomb in Megaton in Fallout 3, that's about the correct size) and about 1/3 as wide. If we keep the basketball analogy, you could probably fit 30 of them inside that thing.

Modern warheads are about half the size of Little Boy, and the fact that those are 50 megatons over Little Boy's 1 megaton... well, let's just say if one of those hit your city, you'd welcome the fires of Hell.[/quote']That was the casing. The nuclear core was about the size of a basketball. And with today's refinement processes, that same size bomb has much larger yields.My point was that they aren't making huge nukes so that they can guarantee they hit something, which is what someone suggested earlier. They are used as a deterrent now anyway, so bigger is always better.

the challenge presented by Newton was for cannonballs flying through the air

True' date=' but the equations used for that are still very much valid and relevant today. Nukes on ICMBs may enjoy resistance-free flight for part of their trip, but they never lose gravity as an influence. Reentry is also going to be a bit of a bitch, and I can't imagine air resistance having no impact on things at that point.

I have a feeling this Newton thing is going to have more far reaching effects than a lot of people realize.[/quote']Right. But the postulate that this kid solved is too simple and I don't think it's going to have much effect. When we normally compute this stuff manually, we only take a single factor into account for air resistance, which is grossly inaccurate for large weapons. So we would actually use computer models instead. That's not going to change with this kid's solution. I doubt anything will change at all.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Six years is a long time to sit on this. Suppose he doesn't live to see 22?

Yes, but no academic carear for him now - he'll be considered a spent force.

[Arthmoor]

Considering I don't much care for academia and the harm they do to the world anyway, he's better off if they shun him. I'd rather see him working as an aerospace engineer by the time he's 18.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Considering I don't much care for academia and the harm they do to the world anyway' date=' he's better off if they shun him. I'd rather see him working as an aerospace engineer by the time he's 18.[/quote']Well, thanks for that. :sad:

[AndalayBay]

Haha, yeah, careful there. We've got a school teacher and a few folks working on their PHD's on DC. One guy is just finishing up his PHD in pathology - immunology to be precise. He's working on treatments for food allergies. Really interesting stuff actually.And then at the other end of the spectrum, we've got a guy who didn't even bother getting his high school diploma. He was already a professional web developer and couldn't be bothered.

[Arthmoor]

I would have figured by now everyone knows I have little respect for career academia. Especially given that I consider most forms of college education to be nothing more than high priced institutional indoctrination. We get the free institutional indoctrination in the K-12 system.Those pieces of paper that one gets from one of these places are all worthless, at least here. I know people who have Masters and PHDs that have been out of work for ages and can't find anything. Even if they look outside of California. People who are now wondering exactly why they sunk $300,000 into a degree that's become totally useless. Some of whom only realized they'd been brainwashed after they got out and discovered how the real world actually works.Not a popular opinion, I know that. I usually get some pretty violent reactions to it whenever I have the audacity to express it. God love the 1st Amendment.

[prettyfly]

I find it weird that you hate degree's so much. Yeah, there are some that are useless, but a lot aren't.I'm not going to be able to get to be a lawyer without a law degree, so I'd say that a degree is pretty useful there. And then some. Or in another case, I've got an uncle who works for the family contracting company. He's the only one in the business who went to uni first; he got a degree in 'building site management'. Do you need it to work in the business? No, his brother and father both simply learned by experience. But if you ask him, he'll tell you that its pretty bloody useful. Its probably no co-incidence either that he happens to be the defacto head of the business and be in charge of the most expensive projects. Or I could tell you about my friend (she's Jewish, btw) whose brother got a degree in mining engineering. He made 20 grand a year while doing the course, working with the mines for ten weeks a year and once he left was immediately able to enter a job making 120 grand a year. And he wouldn't be doing that without a degree.I could go on with examples, but anyway, it boils down to this; statistically, people with degree make more money than people who don't. That's not a guarantee that you'll do well with your degree, but you are actually more likely to end up better off than someone who doesn't.

[Arthmoor]

Law degrees and mine engineering degrees are a different beast. In most cases, they largely avoid the issue of institutional indoctrination because the field requires that the specialized knowledge be taught instead of wasting most of the time on propaganda like the vast majority of things do.I'd have a lot more respect for the system as a whole if going to college to learn computer science (for example) didn't involve me having to waste a bunch of time on the impact of Shakespearean Literature on the American Revolution or something equally retarded. If I'm the one paying for the education, it ought to be up to me what I get back in return for that money. Instead, I get forced to fatten some academic's pockets at my expense when I don't want to listen to his communist tripe to begin with.That employers still arbitrarily pay someone more money for having one of these generally useless pieces of paper is just part of the problem. Someone with actual working experience in the field should be given the proper respect that experience deserves. In fact, I find that of the people I know who shunned college educations, more of them are capable of independent thought and creative solutions to problems than those who have had 4 years of "this is just how it is, deal with it" shoved down their throats while not being taught proper critical thinking skills. Thinking "outside the box" as it were.You'd think that would be valued more than a certification that you've been through the brainwashing process and come out the other end thinking what they want you to think.

[Ysne58]

I think agreeing to disagree is probably good regarding "higher education". This is something that I can definitely see all sides of the coin on, and that includes the proverbial fly on the wall observing everything.

[AndalayBay]

Getting a PHD in art is a waste of time in terms of getting a job. Even getting a masters or PHD in engineering isn't worth it if you just want a regular job. If you want a job with some contracting firms, you'll need a masters.Computer science is kind of iffy. It won't help you much in the business world. It is good for research and more institutional settings. Software engineering is much more useful.These are the practical points. Employers pay more for people with college or university education because it shows commitment. The person put a lot of effort into getting that degree. People that get technical degrees also learn how to problem solve, more so from university than college. College is typically guided education more than university, at least here in Canada.When you're getting a technical degree, the curriculum includes humanities courses so that you can communicate with people. It also rounds out your studies. We all hated taking them, but I really needed those writing skills. We were given options in which courses we took. We had to have a humanities credit, but we had a lot of classes to choose from. I actually took a class in what was basically a science fiction English class. We studied King Lear, Gulliver's Travels, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and a couple of others. One of the things we discussed was the human condition.I got my degree in mechanical engineering. I actually decided to switch to computing as a career in my third year. I didn't switch my degree because I knew I could easily get a job with an engineering degree and I did. I did switch my electives to computer and aerospace courses, which were my interests.Calling a college or university degree a waste of time is just plain silly and uninformed. Tough economic times make degrees even more important. As a potential employer looking at two candidates with similar skills and experience, I'm going to pick the guy with the diploma. It's a no brainer.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

I would have figured by now everyone knows I have little respect for career academia. Especially given that I consider most forms of college education to be nothing more than high priced institutional indoctrination. We get the free institutional indoctrination in the K-12 system.

Those pieces of paper that one gets from one of these places are all worthless' date=' at least here. I know people who have Masters and PHDs that have been out of work for ages and can't find anything. Even if they look outside of California. People who are now wondering exactly why they sunk $300,000 into a degree that's become totally useless. Some of whom only realized they'd been brainwashed after they got out and discovered how the real world actually works.

Not a popular opinion, I know that. I usually get some pretty violent reactions to it whenever I have the audacity to express it. God love the 1st Amendment.[/quote']Yeah - that's a pretty jaded opinion.Especially given that the point of a PhD is to add to the sum total of human knowledge - not get a job.Anyone in this game looking a leg up on the ladder to wealth and happiness is wasting their time, but then if that's what you're looking for you're not a carear academic anyway.Now, -1 internets to you for rubbishing my vocation. :sad:

[Dwip]

The college vs. university distinction is, of course, largely interchangable here in the US. Otherwise, everything you just said.And, speaking as one who's spent eight years in some of America's fine state-run educational institutions, the following:1. For as much as Samson likes to rail against the left-wing indoctrination we all suffered as college students, I kind of wish we had actually, you know, seen some. My Republican friends all left as Republicans and not communists. My Christian friends (let me note I hung with the Bible study kids, and if you know my views on religion be amused by that) all left as Christians. My liberal friends, likewise.What we did all learn in our various classes was how to formulate a thesis and then defend same with facts and sources, a skill which seems to me to be important in all walks of life. Or maybe the scientific method is a communist plot. It's hard to tell in these sorts of discussions.It also, as AndalayBay suggests, gave us all a basic understanding of a variety of disciplines, which it would seem would be a fundamental skill for anyone claiming the absence of ignorance, and certainly my forays as a history major into the offerings of the computer science, English, and science faculties have been of great use to me. Maybe that was just me.2. I don't know anyone with a college education that regrets getting it, even those of us who ended up not doing whatever our major was. The economic benefits, obviously, and I have a friend who's a nuclear physics PhD who does quite well for himself, thanks, but also in the enterprise of not being an ignorant savage that lies apart from simply making money.Ask my dad, though, who never finished college but went on to become a very successful electrical/software engineer, who now takes community college writing classes in retirement for the educational value, how much he wishes he had a degree, and how proud he was that I got two of my own? The answer in both cases is, a lot.3. All of that having been said, it is, in my experience, a true thing that not everyone actually needs a 4 year degree, and that in my generation some of us are indeed victims of having been pushed unnecessarily into the 4 year track. It is also, in my experience, a true thing that humanities departments do a rather poor job at preparing their graduates for the actual workforce, which was not such a problem for my engineering and science major friends. Milage may vary.

[AndalayBay]

And on the other hand, we have America's Got Talent. Or not, as the case my be... The early rounds are hilarious. And very very sad.

[Arthmoor]

You're all more or less making my point though. Hard sciences and technical fields = worth it. Otherwise, not so much. I'm sorry though, I see zero value in giving a rat's ass what some dead playwright who rotted away to ash 300 years ago had to say. George Washington? Abraham Lincoln? Yes, very much so. What world leaders in the past have done has a profound impact on our lives today. Dead poets serve no purpose, yet that's all most of these colleges and universities seem to be churning out anymore.I simply don't have the patience to put up with that level of indoctrination. If I could go to school to study something I'm interested in making a career of without having to deal with the rest of all that bullshit, I'd have done it by now. I had my fill of being forced to put up with it in K-12. No way in hell I'm going into $300,000 of debt to have that forced on me because some state bureaucrat says I should.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Then you have no soul.Kit Marlowe was one of the greatest literary artists who ever lived.That language you use? Pretty much Shakespeare and the King James Bible invented it for you, after Geoffrey Chaucer laid the groundwork.A university degree has value beyond the economic - it has social value and civilising value.That's not to say that American BA degrees from State Colleges aren't a pile of crap - they are, but they aren't the standard of education.A degree from Harvard, Princeton, Duke... Something else entirely.As to indoctrination - well, most academics are left-leaning, but not all. I'm not, for starters.

[Arthmoor]

Sorry, my soul doesn't exist or not exist on the basis of whether I like dead English authors or not.That version of English isn't in use today, so it isn't of much value for me to care to study it.Degree has more than just economic value? Social value and "civilizing" value = indoctrination. You're at least man enough to admit it even if you don't realize it. If you're aware of the fact that academia is largely left leaning, then I truly hope you can do something about that for future generations so that it's not all one big block of group-thinkers.If I had to sit through 4 years of left-leaning college professors pounding their dangerous viewpoints into my head on a daily basis I'd probably end up pulling a VTech.Also, in case it wasn't already patently obvious, I hated pretty much every day of my life in school for probably 6 of the 12 years one must endure of it.

[AndalayBay]

There are two reasons for post secondary education. Number one is a means to an end. Get a degree so you can get a better job. That's why I went. I hated school, especially university. The other reason is the pursuit of an interest, a passion. And I guess there are the fortunate ones that go for both reasons.Arthmoor, forget the indoctrination bullshit. You had no choice in high school. You took what they damned well told you to take. College and uni are different deals. Like you said, you're paying for it. You choose what you want to study.One thing I might look at doing is taking some modelling courses. That would be interesting and useful to me at this stage.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Sorry' date=' my soul doesn't exist or not exist on the basis of whether I like dead English authors or not.

That version of English isn't in use today, so it isn't of much value for me to care to study it.

Degree has more than just economic value? Social value and "civilizing" value = indoctrination. You're at least man enough to admit it even if you don't realize it. If you're aware of the fact that academia is largely left leaning, then I truly hope you can do something about that for future generations so that it's not all one big block of group-thinkers.

If I had to sit through 4 years of left-leaning college professors pounding their dangerous viewpoints into my head on a daily basis I'd probably end up pulling a VTech.

Also, in case it wasn't already patently obvious, I hated pretty much every day of my life in school for probably 6 of the 12 years one must endure of it.[/quote']Calling it "indoctrination" is disingenuous, it's "indoctrination" in the same way teaching a child to speak is.All learning is about the transformation of understanding - if you don't want to learn, then fine.However - teaching a student Shakespeare is the same as persuading a modder that Giskard is wrong and you should clean your mods.Transformation of understanding and assimilation of new information.As far as universities being places of "left wing" indoctrination?Nope. Good academics teach critical thinking and theories of practice as well as current scholarship.Bad academics are cranks. People take their classes for their own amusement, few want to sit at their feet and become their disciples.

[Arthmoor]

Arthmoor' date=' forget the indoctrination bullshit. You had no choice in high school. You took what they damned well told you to take. College and uni are different deals. Like you said, you're paying for it. You choose what you want to study.[/quote']If only that were actually possible. Maybe they don't have this in Canada, but in ever US university I'm aware of, you have mandatory core classes every student must take. "General education" they call it. They justify it under the false pretense of "well rounded individuals" when all it is is the propaganda machine making sure they have one more crack at you.I can't go study programming without getting tons of irrelevant crap thrown at me no matter how much money I wave in their faces. So I've simply chosen not to do it. I'm dead serious when I said I hated school. Many times I wondered why the hell I was bothering. Why any parent would put their child through it all. Then when I told my parents I wanted time off after high school to get away from all that for a year or two, they responded by throwing me out of the house for being "lazy and worthless".So no. I've never had any desire to give a fuck, because the further things got, the worse things ended up in them all. Perhaps my parents knew that the shitstorm we call academia today was coming. If so, they did a terrible job of explaining that to me in terms I would have understood. There's no way in hell I'd put myself through the torture of it now. I'd be more likely to want to off myself instead. Or off the professor. Perhaps both.

Calling it "indoctrination" is disingenuous' date=' it's "indoctrination" in the same way teaching a child to speak is.[/quote']If schools today were teaching children to read, write, and be competent in math and science, I'd agree. This isn't what's happening anymore though. Schools today in the US have become indoctrination facilities for every measure of immoral act you can think of. Anti-American hatred runs rampant among educators, and it's basically bordering on a 1984 scenario where nobody questions the State. Oh, and capitalists are all evil pigs and Republicans rape babies and slaughter old people.

All learning is about the transformation of understanding - if you don't want to learn, then fine.

You are assuming much. Learning isn't at issue here. It's the bullshit they foist on people in the name of learning.

However - teaching a student Shakespeare is the same as persuading a modder that Giskard is wrong and you should clean your mods.

Ever consider there might be a reason for that? We get told all our lives "Go to college. Get degree. Get job. Retire rich." One does not do this studying Shakespeare, so nobody gives a rat's ass about him.

As far as universities being places of "left wing" indoctrination?Nope. Good academics teach critical thinking and theories of practice as well as current scholarship.

Then I'm afraid there are no good academics left in the US beyond a scant few right-leaners who are bold enough to speak out against the system. They tend to find their careers destroyed though once they do. Places of diversity of thought? Not hardly. It's either toe the party line or GTFO with these people.Even the science disciplines are infested with cranks who shove unproven junk theories at you in hopes you'll just accept it. Question them, and you get flunked. It's been documented more times than I care to count here. Bottom line is that the behavior to conform is reinforced. Thinking how they want you to think is adopted because it gets you the grades to get you that degree they lied to you about in the first place.It should be pretty obvious I'd never survive such an environment because I'd never be able to swallow the horseshit these asshole professors shovel.

Bad academics are cranks. People take their classes for their own amusement, few want to sit at their feet and become their disciples.

Methinks you need to come see how it is here before assuming this statement to be true.

[AndalayBay]

As I said, when you are studying to get a technical degree here, like computer science or engineering, there is a core curriculum, but that's only for the basics that you have to take. It's stuff like algebra, physics, mechanics, chemistry etc. for engineering. You have to take a humanities elective, but you pick what it is. I tried Russian for crying out load. That lasted all of one month since it turned out all the Slavic students took it as a bird course (as we call easy credit courses) so I couldn't keep up. I think I choose an economics course instead.This is all pointless anyway. You're not about to change your mind and start taking college courses now. You might think about taking individual courses on specific things that interest you if they'll improve your employment opportunities. That's my suggestion.

[Dwip]

I do so love the persecution act. Very endearing. And you say it so convincingly, too, just like it was actually true.Only it's never been so in just about any college classroom I've ever been in. It's like all the professors I've known take academic freedom seriously or something. Because, you known, Stalin.You either understand what a hypothesis is, understand what critical thinking is, or you don't. I can assure you that professors generally do.

Arthmoor' date=' forget the indoctrination bullshit. You had no choice in high school. You took what they damned well told you to take. College and uni are different deals. Like you said, you're paying for it. You choose what you want to study.[/quote']In short, this. You go off about core classes, but honestly, for most people in my experience core wasn't all that rough, and it was mostly math, science, writing, speech, and maybe a history or poli sci course if you wanted. The most objectionable part of that whole thing was that Writing 121 just wasn't all that hard.This list is more or less unchanged from what I did 8-10 years ago, for the curious.And your actual major? Really flexible. Within some very broad guidelines, you can pretty much take what you want, or at least that was my experience. The engineering types maybe less so, but I wasn't one.Which is all to say that your argument would appear to boil down to "I never really wanted to go to college in the first place and I watch too much Fox News, so this is how I'm going to rationalize."Furthermore, this:

A university degree has value beyond the economic - it has social value and civilising value.

This. And, fun fact here, most western universities started life back in the day as what amounted to liberal arts schools. Theology, philosophy, rhetoric, literature, history, and what have you. And of course people, our founders very much included, used to recognize very much the value of the classical education and its emphasis on those sorts of things in creating well-rounded people.Math and science, for all of their worth, have never created a culture. For that, you need your philosophers and your poets and your theorists. These things have value.