No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning
It appear that science is never settled. I have to wonder though - perhaps its my human limitation - how something could always be without ever beginning? Interesting position, it kind of makes you wonder about God.
You should be able to test a design, though, learn its weaknesses (structural and design) and correct them before building it. I was CS, I roomed with a mech-e and a civil and next door to a cheg. After I entered the real world I was so happy that comp sci was in the school of engineering. I met so many programmers with BS from the math department and they were usually awful debuggers. I think that having to take hardware design along with software gave me a much better understanding of where things were going wrong. I also was required to take 2 semesters of chemistry, 2 physics, 1 civil eng, 4 calculus, 2 EE and statistics for engineers on top of my CS courses which included hardware design, hardware labs, assembly on IBM 360 and Vax and all the software engineering theory and labs.
A lot of people don't see the creative side of engineering and mine must have run deep because for electives I took creative writing, mythology, 2 or 3 philosophy and 2 semesters of Irish Gaelic (why, you ask? Well, I saw a sign that said Learn Irish! and I said, OK! and signed up.)
Careerwise I like what I do but not always who I do it for! I think next time I'll be a mycologist. Fungi are COOL! If not mythology then horticulture. I'm happiest when my hands are in the dirt.
I live in Connecticut, about 15 miles from Hartford in a little cow town. How little? When "they" wanted to put up a 4th stop light we reached for our pitchforks and torches and those plans were scuttled. I moved here only 15 years ago so I'm still the new guy.
Dinner sounds great, how's last week work for you? I'll put it on one of the calendars although I'm not sure why I bother. They're never right!
The engineers design. They don't just doodle. I was so glad to read that you both laugh now.
It was interesting that your awareness of the interfaces came from abstract concepts of data structures. I first saw it in doing freshman qualitative chemical analysis and observing the interaction of sample with reagent in a test tube. As they say, there are so many ways to skin a cat.
I love engineering. I adopted completely the concept (which I read as a quote) of engineering as THE ART OF THINGS THAT WORK. How beautiful! It is an art. You cannot calculate a design. You can speculate, guess, judge and take a gamble. If it fails, a good analysis can tell you where you overreached. Techne is ancient Greek for art. Whoever decided to call things technique and technical, understood this. If I had to do it again, I would still take pchem, adding philosophy as a second major and than do engineering and entrepreneurship all my (second) life. Being a Timelord, you should be able to instruct me how to come up with a second go-around. Shouldn't you?
I live in Maryland. Where do you live? Any chance for a dinner together?
I better stop.
All the best!
This is a central theme in the life of engineers.
I can only claim 5/8ths of your time on Earth, but my first close inspection of the-edges-of-things came in my undergrad studies, specifically as related to the beginnings and endings of data structures in computer science. Then I started to see all other sorts of edges, conceptual and concrete, and that they almost always presented challenges.
Since I seem to be full of cute anecdotes (what you and I find cute, etc), having been raised in a family with a solid tradition of regaling the world with the tales of our forebears, that reminds me...
My mom, extremely non-rational person that she is, is an artist. (I beg forgiveness, non-mooching-artist!) She's done lots of different kinds but her specialty is portrait sculpture in terra cotta clay. She teaches sculpture at an art center in Florida and I must have been exasperating her in a conversation, something we are very good at doing to each other (although now we laugh about it). I think I was drawing a plan for something on paper, not even a good plan but something to help me see how it would go together. She exclaimed that I was reminding her that a particular kind of sculpture student is difficult to work with - engineers! They always come in with detailed drawings of what they want with precise measurements and all kinds of crazy - stuff that makes perfect sense to us. Unfortunately it's useless overkill with regard to sculpture in clay, especially for beginners.
It was hyperbole, of course, because there's no evidence that psychic mediums or channeling exist! (Just like timelords, right? I mean, we USED to not exist a long time ago but things are OK now. Or the other way around, or maybe just sort of jumbled and twisted. Linearity isn't all it's cracked up to be.)
My first thoughts about this came while undergraduate student, about the time Ayn Rand first published AS. That was purely enjoying physical chemistry and falling in love with it. Later on, I got involved with sophisticated non-metallic composites and there I began to see that it was interfaces where things happened, or refused to. In my 40s, (I read recently that age described as "childhood" in philosophy) when I started being interested in philosophy, the generalization I spewed in that comment began to reveal itself to me. No, at 80 (in a few months) I have no doubt that the analogy holds. Of course, please note the "interesting" in that expression. What is interesting to you and me, probably is completely boring to many others. I do hold that each one of us rational animals should be responsible of developing a personal and consistent philosophy.
It is pleasure to know that we agree at least on two subjects.
Somewhere here on galtsgulchonline I wrote something so similar that we could have been channeling each other. You are the only other person that I have seen articulate this conviction.
The high winds Saturday night brought some trees down onto power lines and started some minor fires, but didn't affect our neighborhood.
Que sera, sera...
Interesting!
I am a physical chemist, but all my life did what is called development engineering and failure analysis.
From that background came my deep conviction that the most interesting things happen in the interfaces. Between phases, between subjects and between people, among others.
I hope that you are keeping warm
First sentence should read:
a group of separate or partially joined carpels
there is also an adj, apocarpous, [apo- and Gr, karpos, fruit
and because I wanted to know:
carpel, n. in botany, a simple pistil, regarded as a modified leaf; also, any of the two or moe carpels that unite to form a compound pistil.
There follow the related words
carpellary, adj.
carpellate, adj. and
carpenter no, that's not right. carpenters do not have pistils at all.
freer now? You can borrow my big fat dictionary any time you want.
He described his background as that of a Chemical Engineer who did so well in his field that he ended up on several corporate Boards of Directors.
He discovered that he needed more knowledge about Corporations so he got an MBA.
Later he found that so much legalese was involved with his professional life, he sought and achieved a Law Degree.
As the class concluded, here was a guy who, at least back in the 70s and 80s, would have No Risk of Unemployment for a Long Time!
I didn't do very well in the class, but I did come away with one key concept about Law... if you're discussing an issue, when the first question gets posed, the Correct Response is: "It Depends."
At that point you can take a while to determine which side you want to take (pro/con or whatever) and collect your rationale for supporting that position. "Right or Wrong" can come later, but if you don't start with "it depends" and look at multiple sides, you're not going to do well...
That epiphany alone raised my final grade in that class by one or two letter grades.
:)))))))))
Mentioning that "hearing" reminds me of something I learned decades ago from one of our sons and would like to share with you. Applying to colleges, neither knew what they wanted to do in life. I suggested engineering, at the time about the only rigorous curriculum left. Nobody will deny entry into medicine, law etc. because the candidate has an engineering degree, i.e. likely decent problem solving skills and some immunity to being snowed by numbers. So, the one I am talking about went to engineering at Columbia. Two years later, he explained his reason to switch to the College and English this way: "To write well, you have to be able to think well. So, if you found somebody who teaches you how to write well, you have really found someone who teaches you how to think well." I wished I had thought of it first. Risking to start another dispute here, at least at that time, many people thought that Columbia's English was the best in the country. I hope you enjoy the story.
I'm just sorry the series ended on that note.
Not that THAT is circular, or any such thing...
:)
Yes, it has been fun playing these games with you, but I'm tired of it now.
I'll have to look into that... I Have had aspirations of Writing, though; I used to think I had no real graphics skills, but in the past few decades, some of that seems to have Appeared (so to speak... )
You mast be either a masochist or an abstract graphic artist ;-)
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