Dear Metoos

"JOF" <jofrancis@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:a464d234-5af5-493e-87b5-1a3192b568c4@d21g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
On Mar 29, 1:55 pm, "Chris Guynn" <chris.gu...@gmail.net> wrote:
> <janus...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:320219c3-c495-49ca-aeb1-c02cf7ee5139@s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Have a nice reading
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html
>
> > I really enjoyed the comments
>
> > Janusz
>
> Well, that was interesting, I guess. Mostly, it just strikes me as more
> American bashing, only this time it seems to be coming from within. I lose
> how they use a segment from "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader" to prove
> their point when, I'd wager, most countrtries probably have similar
> "stupid
> people" shows.
>
> Personally, I was always taught that the facts only matter in so far as
> they
> can be used for the problem at hand. What that means is that while I was
> in
> school, I was basically instructed in how to digest facts to regurgitate
> on
> the exams I would need but not to be concerned about remembering all of
> those facts after they were no longer useful (for my grade). Facts can be
> looked up. There's no real reason to fill up valuable memory space with
> stuff that you can easily find like what country Budapest is the capitol
> of.
> I was taught that it is much more important to think for yourself than it
> is
> to be able to spew useless facts. Of course, I didn't listen to that
> teaching very well and can still spew any number of useless facts, but the
> sentiment remains the same. Also, I've sincec learned that, without regard
> to nationality, race, color, creed, sex, etc..., only about 2% of the
> population ever reaches the stage of development where they actually *do*
> think for themselves. Empirical evidence tends to make me believe that the
> percentage is much lower than that, but I'll defer to the people who did
> the
> studies.

-----------------------------------------------
It's too bad that your education was only centred around what you
needed to know for the exams rather than actually preparing you for a
career and life generally. Sounds like you attended a diploma mill.
Seems to me that's exactly what the article was about. Hopefully your
doctors and other professionals who provide services for you got a
more retention based education.

And I'm pretty sure there are more than a few of your fellows here
who'd argue with you relegating Pearl Harbor to "useless fact".
Admittedly the compendium of wolrd knowledge has grown too large for
any one person to know it all, but surely there are some moments in
history that should stick, if only out of national pride and loyalty.
I think the point of the article is that there's something inherently
lacking in the education or at least the knowledge of presumably
intelligent Americans who aren't even aware of the significance of
Pearl Harbor. That's the "solipsism" thing in microcosm.

I'm not suggesting that America's alone in that failing. We have our
share of self-absorbed empty-headed clowns up here in the frozen north
who are like the human baby mentioned.

JF
-----------------------------------------------

I think that I was not clear in expressing my point.

The circumstances surrounding "Pearl Harbor" are obviously not "useless
fact". The fact that it happened on December 7, 1941 *is* useless fact.

How often do you imagine that, while I'm diagnosing a network communication
error, I'll be like "Hey, this would sure be a lot easier if I could only
remember the exact date of the attack on Pearl Harbor"?

In history, many schools tend to focus on the dates, but I find it much more
interesting (as well as important) to focus on the circumstances, including,
but not limited to, causal effect. The dates, at least in my opinion, are
mostly irrelevant.

The same thing si true for just about every field. There are important
concepts that should be learned and remembered, but there are also useless
pieces of information that can be easily found if they are needed. For
instance, is it really that important from a general standpoint to remember
that Pi can be represented by 22/7? Obviously, if it's something that you
work with on a regualr basis, it is, but generally, do you really think it
is? How important is it from a general standpoint to remember that the
conversion from degrees F to Degrees C is (f-32)*5/9? For those people who
do this conversion on a regular basis, they will remember it. Those of us
who only do it occasionally, can look it up just as easily (if not more so)
than remembering it.

That's what I'm talking about in regards to "useless facts". I'd also like
to point out that there are a lot of people who will find many facts to be
very important that I tend to view as useless. I'm sure that the facts are,
in fact, usefull to those people, but they (the facts) are still useless to
me.

Greg Mossman wrote:
> On Mar 30, 11:38 am, Joe English <joe2aengl...@wisperhome.com> wrote:
>
>> JOF - he wasn't over there longer than 9 months before you were born was?
>>
>> I am just kidding - I mean no disrespect to you, your father, and
>> especially not your mother
>
> Canadian gestation periods are longer when you figure in the
> hibernation time.

That's cold, Greg

On Mar 30, 3:05*pm, "janus...@hotmail.com" <janus...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Interesting. No talks. They simply did their duty and wanted to
> forget, quite opposite to our Metoos, who never saw combat. *IIRC
> majority of Canadian soldiers were volunteers, what's really
> commendable.

Actually, I believe there was some limited conscription but I'm not
sure when it was. For the most part Canucks just went cuz it was the
right thing to do. Some may have gone for the adventure I suppose, but
I doubt it was for the money. Dad left a fledgling business but it was
still okay when he came home.

JF

On Mar 30, 3:40*pm, "Chris Guynn" <chris.gu...@gmail.net> wrote:
> "JOF" <jofran...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:a464d234-5af5-493e-87b5-1a3192b568c4@d21g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> On Mar 29, 1:55 pm, "Chris Guynn" <chris.gu...@gmail.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > <janus...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:320219c3-c495-49ca-aeb1-c02cf7ee5139@s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > Have a nice reading
> > >http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html
>
> > > I really enjoyed the comments
>
> > > Janusz
>
> > Well, that was interesting, I guess. Mostly, it just strikes me as more
> > American bashing, only this time it seems to be coming from within. I lose
> > how they use a segment from "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader" to prove
> > their point when, I'd wager, most countrtries probably have similar
> > "stupid
> > people" shows.
>
> > Personally, I was always taught that the facts only matter in so far as
> > they
> > can be used for the problem at hand. What that means is that while I was
> > in
> > school, I was basically instructed in how to digest facts to regurgitate
> > on
> > the exams I would need but not to be concerned about remembering all of
> > those facts after they were no longer useful (for my grade). Facts can be
> > looked up. There's no real reason to fill up valuable memory space with
> > stuff that you can easily find like what country Budapest is the capitol
> > of.
> > I was taught that it is much more important to think for yourself than it
> > is
> > to be able to spew useless facts. Of course, I didn't listen to that
> > teaching very well and can still spew any number of useless facts, but the
> > sentiment remains the same. Also, I've sincec learned that, without regard
> > to nationality, race, color, creed, sex, etc..., only about 2% of the
> > population ever reaches the stage of development where they actually *do*
> > think for themselves. Empirical evidence tends to make me believe that the
> > percentage is much lower than that, but I'll defer to the people who did
> > the
> > studies.
>
> -----------------------------------------------
> It's too bad that your education was only centred around what you
> needed to know for the exams rather than actually preparing you for a
> career and life generally. Sounds like you attended a diploma mill.
> Seems to me that's exactly what the article was about. Hopefully your
> doctors and other professionals who provide services for you got a
> more retention based education.
>
> And I'm pretty sure there are more than a few of your fellows here
> who'd argue with you relegating Pearl Harbor to "useless fact".
> Admittedly the compendium of wolrd knowledge has grown too large for
> any one person to know it all, but surely there are some moments in
> history that should stick, if only out of national pride and loyalty.
> I think the point of the article is that there's something inherently
> lacking in the education or at least the knowledge of presumably
> intelligent Americans who aren't even aware of the significance of
> Pearl Harbor. That's the "solipsism" thing in microcosm.
>
> I'm not suggesting that America's alone in that failing. We have our
> share of self-absorbed empty-headed clowns up here in the frozen north
> who are like the human baby mentioned.
>
> JF
> -----------------------------------------------
>
> I think that I was not clear in expressing my point.
>
> The circumstances surrounding "Pearl Harbor" are obviously not "useless
> fact". *The fact that it happened on December 7, 1941 *is* useless fact.
>
> How often do you imagine that, while I'm diagnosing a network communication
> error, I'll be like "Hey, this would sure be a lot easier if I could only
> remember the exact date of the attack on Pearl Harbor"?
>
> In history, many schools tend to focus on the dates, but I find it much more
> interesting (as well as important) to focus on the circumstances, including,
> but not limited to, causal effect. *The dates, at least in my opinion, are
> mostly irrelevant.
>
> The same thing si true for just about every field. *There are important
> concepts that should be learned and remembered, but there are also useless
> pieces of information that can be easily found if they are needed. *For
> instance, is it really that important from a general standpoint to remember
> that Pi can be represented by 22/7? *Obviously, if it's something that you
> work with on a regualr basis, it is, but generally, do you really think it
> is? *How important is it from a general standpoint to remember that the
> conversion from degrees F to Degrees C is (f-32)*5/9? *For those people who
> do this conversion on a regular basis, they will remember it. *Those of us
> who only do it occasionally, can look it up just as easily (if not more so)
> than remembering it.
>
> That's what I'm talking about in regards to "useless facts". *I'd also like
> to point out that there are a lot of people who will find many facts to be
> very important that I tend to view as useless. *I'm sure that the facts are,
> in fact, usefull to those people, but they (the facts) are still useless to
> me.-

So it doesn't matter to you that modern Americans might think it was
part of the war in Viet Nam?

JF

On Mar 30, 4:41*pm, Joe English <joe2aengl...@wisperhome.com> wrote:
> Greg Mossman wrote:
> > On Mar 30, 11:38 am, Joe English <joe2aengl...@wisperhome.com> wrote:
>
> >> JOF - he wasn't over there longer than 9 months before you were born was?
>
> >> I am just kidding - I mean no disrespect to you, your father, and
> >> especially not your mother
>
> > Canadian gestation periods are longer when you figure in the
> > hibernation time.
>
> That's cold, Greg

In fact I remember there being a little blip in the Canadian birthrate
9 months after a major power outage a few years back. (or was it the
big ice storm?)

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:40:07 -0500, Chris Guynn wrote:

> The same thing si true for just about every field. There are important
> concepts that should be learned and remembered, but there are also useless
> pieces of information that can be easily found if they are needed. For
> instance, is it really that important from a general standpoint to
> remember that Pi can be represented by 22/7?

Which gives you a false sense of accuracy with the number of decimal
places that it provides you... You might as well remember just 3.14 since
it is the same number of digits and gives you as much accuracy compared to
the 22/7 fraction... Personally, I have no problem remembering enough
digits for my uses without having to look it up -- 3.14159... Probably
because that is the number of digits that you can correctly represent in a
single precision floating point number... If I need a higher precision, I
look it up...

> How important is it from a general standpoint to
> remember that the conversion from degrees F to
> Degrees C is (f-32)*5/9?

One should know that 0C = 32F and 100C = 212F... From there, one should be
able to derive the formulas for the conversion if needed...

> That's what I'm talking about in regards to "useless facts". I'd also
> like to point out that there are a lot of people who will find many
> facts to be very important that I tend to view as useless. I'm sure
> that the facts are, in fact, usefull to those people, but they (the
> facts) are still useless to me.

There are people who go through life without knowing how to convert from
one unit to another... They figure that they can look it up if they ever
need it or that they'll have a calculator that does then conversions... I
have to disagree with this philosophy... There are certain conversion
factors that one should know...

1 mile = 5280 ft
1 ft = 12 in
1 yd = 3 ft
1 pt = 2 cups
1 cup = 8 oz
1 qt = 2 pt
1 gal = 4 qts
1 shot = 1.5 oz
1 in = 2.54 cm
1 meter = approx 39.37 in
1 fathom = 6 ft
1 ton = 2000 lbs
1 cm3 of water at 4C weighs 1 gram
0K = -273.15C
1 lb = 7000 grains
1 sq-mile = 640 acres
acceleration due to gravity is approx 32 ft/sec
speed of light is approx 3E+08 meters/sec (yeah, technically it is defined
as exactly 299,792,458 meters/sec, but it's unreasonable to expect someone
to remember that many digits...

I'm sure there are a few more that I consider that someone should know,
but I can't think of them off the top of my head right now... From these
basic conversion factors, you can do most conversions that people
encounter in their day to day life...

--
See NNTP header field "X-Real-Email-Address" to reply by email.

On 30 Mar, 23:05, JOF <jofran...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 30, 3:05 pm, "janus...@hotmail.com" <janus...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Interesting. No talks. They simply did their duty and wanted to
> > forget, quite opposite to our Metoos, who never saw combat. IIRC
> > majority of Canadian soldiers were volunteers, what's really
> > commendable.
>
> Actually, I believe there was some limited conscription but I'm not
> sure when it was. For the most part Canucks just went cuz it was the
> right thing to do. Some may have gone for the adventure I suppose, but
> I doubt it was for the money. Dad left a fledgling business but it was
> still okay when he came home.
>
Conscription was introduced after 1942 referendum. There were 13000
conscripts deployed overseas in the early 1945 from that number 2463
men reached units in front lines, 79 were killed. - simple conclusion
almost all volunteer force.
Janusz

On 30 Mar, 23:31, Grumman-581 <grumman581-usenet-2...@spambob.net>
wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:40:07 -0500, Chris Guynn wrote:
> > The same thing si true for just about every field. There are important
> > concepts that should be learned and remembered, but there are also useless
> > pieces of information that can be easily found if they are needed. For
> > instance, is it really that important from a general standpoint to
> > remember that Pi can be represented by 22/7?
>
> Which gives you a false sense of accuracy with the number of decimal
> places that it provides you... You might as well remember just 3.14 since
> it is the same number of digits and gives you as much accuracy compared to
> the 22/7 fraction... Personally, I have no problem remembering enough
> digits for my uses without having to look it up -- 3.14159... Probably
> because that is the number of digits that you can correctly represent in a
> single precision floating point number... If I need a higher precision, I
> look it up...
>
> > How important is it from a general standpoint to
> > remember that the conversion from degrees F to
> > Degrees C is (f-32)*5/9?
>
> One should know that 0C = 32F and 100C = 212F... From there, one should be
> able to derive the formulas for the conversion if needed...
>
> > That's what I'm talking about in regards to "useless facts". I'd also
> > like to point out that there are a lot of people who will find many
> > facts to be very important that I tend to view as useless. I'm sure
> > that the facts are, in fact, usefull to those people, but they (the
> > facts) are still useless to me.
>
> There are people who go through life without knowing how to convert from
> one unit to another... They figure that they can look it up if they ever
> need it or that they'll have a calculator that does then conversions... I
> have to disagree with this philosophy... There are certain conversion
> factors that one should know...
>
> 1 mile = 5280 ft
> 1 ft = 12 in
> 1 yd = 3 ft
> 1 pt = 2 cups
> 1 cup = 8 oz
> 1 qt = 2 pt
> 1 gal = 4 qts
> 1 shot = 1.5 oz
> 1 in = 2.54 cm
> 1 meter = approx 39.37 in
> 1 fathom = 6 ft
> 1 ton = 2000 lbs
> 1 cm3 of water at 4C weighs 1 gram
> 0K = -273.15C
> 1 lb = 7000 grains
> 1 sq-mile = 640 acres
> acceleration due to gravity is approx 32 ft/sec
> speed of light is approx 3E+08 meters/sec (yeah, technically it is defined
> as exactly 299,792,458 meters/sec, but it's unreasonable to expect someone
> to remember that many digits...
>
> I'm sure there are a few more that I consider that someone should know,
> but I can't think of them off the top of my head right now... From these
> basic conversion factors, you can do most conversions that people
> encounter in their day to day life...

Mike, as we're (at least should be) divers here it's necessary to add
conversion between kilos and pounds, bars ans psi and that terribly
complicated math for conversion between liters and cubic feet

Janusz

In article <6caad78a-e57b-4e2a-bfe3-494c340d3753
@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com>, mossman@qnet.com says...
-On Mar 30, 11:38*am, Joe English <joe2aengl...@wisperhome.com> wrote:
-
-> JOF - he wasn't over there longer than 9 months before you were born was?
->
-> I am just kidding - I mean no disrespect to you, your father, and
-> especially not your mother
-
-Canadian gestation periods are longer
-when you figure in the hibernation time.

and thus you win "The Laugh of the Day Award"

-

--
Bob Crownfield
crownfield@verizon.net

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:19:52 -0800, "Scott"
<pugetsounddiver@gmail.com> wrote:

>"John R. Macdonald" <scubajohn@remove.claranet.fr> wrote in message
>news:upatu3ldge0imgsfn6bnt33i56o95qtj5m@4ax.com.. .
>
>> You mean like the French did in 1778 for the Thirteen Colonies?
>> Thus allowing you some 200 something years later to spew forth your
>> mindless ignorant drivel
>
>Yeah, you can take credit for a few overt acts, but it was colonization, not
>pure human freedom that the French gave.
>
>We, meaning the US and it's youth and best, had to pick up the chunks of
>what you punks left in Viet Nam.
>
>Don't worry, no one is asking you to do anything but shut the fuck up, or,
>if you have to run your suck, at least do it honestly. which you cant do.
>
>While you are at it, why don't you list the cemeteries where Americans are
>buried in your nation so that you can be free to spit on them.
>
>Any idea how many?
>
>Quick, Google it.
>
>Fucking punk.
>
>The day I or anyone else depends upon the likes of you or "people" like you
>to make and keep them free, we are all fucked.
>
>Jump bad froggy.
>
Well, after reading all this, 'mindless ignorant drivel' seems an
understatement