![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sep. 19th, 2010
Catch-up...
Sep. 19th, 2010 05:26 pmI got about as far as I wanted yesterday in The Big Edit™, and today, I increased the edited chunk of the file to just under 50% of its content, leaving more than one day of work, but less than two. Right now, this is the only job on the plate, though one more slug is scheduled for delivery later this coming week.
Hopefully, when the floodgates open - and they will - it will be after I return from my "vacation" next week. (I've never really gotten the feeling that I'm on vacation when I've gone on vacation, but as I used to hear repeatedly back when I was a young engineer, that sounds like a personal problem to me.)
* * * On a technically related front, am I the only one to think there is something uproariously wrong with the following statement:
What Friedman seems unaware of, apparently, is that good scientists and engineers traditionally spend a hell of a lot of time questioning data - both their own and that of others (especially that of others) - in a process called the scientific method.
Then again, Friedman may technically be correct, as scientists and engineers with successful political leadership chops are most likely lousy scientists and engineers to begin with. Too, as many modern government research programs all but specify (in the RFP) the conclusions that research results are expected to support, it's no wonder that the results - provided by scientific workers whose careers are firmly attached the public teat and who are happy to provide "made-to-fit" results if necessary (and apparently, it frequently is) - need not be questioned by the overseeing class.
Friedman goes on to put "green" and "China" in the same sentence not once, but several times, which made me wonder, for a moment, just what it was he was smoking before he wrote the piece. I really don't need to know, but whatever it was must have been quite reality-distorting, that's a cinch.
* * * A hot-air balloon passed nearly overhead this morning during my walk with Shiloh. The craft was probably at an altitude of 200 feet, maybe less, and it was strange to look up through the bottom aperture and see the inside surface of the top of the balloon's envelope. I tried to take a picture with my phone, but the image is not as... dramatic as the one I remember.
Unlike our dearly departed Max, whose sole inducement to start barking energetically was the dull roar of the burner that throws hot air into the balloon envelope (and wasn't that a surprise when Max did that for the first time, after five years of living with us!), Shiloh couldn't care less about balloons or the sounds they make.
The craft seemed intent on making a landing in an area filled with power lines and pine trees, but a deliriously long burn put enough hot gas into the envelope to lift the balloon clear and to let it slowly drift out of sight behind a hillock.
Balloon pilots are, I think, crazy.
Cheers...
Hopefully, when the floodgates open - and they will - it will be after I return from my "vacation" next week. (I've never really gotten the feeling that I'm on vacation when I've gone on vacation, but as I used to hear repeatedly back when I was a young engineer, that sounds like a personal problem to me.)
“China’s leaders are mostly engineers and scientists, so they don’t waste time questioning scientific data.”That's a quote from an op-ed in yesterday's NY Times by a fellow named Friedman.
What Friedman seems unaware of, apparently, is that good scientists and engineers traditionally spend a hell of a lot of time questioning data - both their own and that of others (especially that of others) - in a process called the scientific method.
Then again, Friedman may technically be correct, as scientists and engineers with successful political leadership chops are most likely lousy scientists and engineers to begin with. Too, as many modern government research programs all but specify (in the RFP) the conclusions that research results are expected to support, it's no wonder that the results - provided by scientific workers whose careers are firmly attached the public teat and who are happy to provide "made-to-fit" results if necessary (and apparently, it frequently is) - need not be questioned by the overseeing class.
Friedman goes on to put "green" and "China" in the same sentence not once, but several times, which made me wonder, for a moment, just what it was he was smoking before he wrote the piece. I really don't need to know, but whatever it was must have been quite reality-distorting, that's a cinch.
Unlike our dearly departed Max, whose sole inducement to start barking energetically was the dull roar of the burner that throws hot air into the balloon envelope (and wasn't that a surprise when Max did that for the first time, after five years of living with us!), Shiloh couldn't care less about balloons or the sounds they make.
The craft seemed intent on making a landing in an area filled with power lines and pine trees, but a deliriously long burn put enough hot gas into the envelope to lift the balloon clear and to let it slowly drift out of sight behind a hillock.
Balloon pilots are, I think, crazy.
Cheers...