Obama interview on 60 minutes

[ViRedd]

~lol~ .... Well thanks for that response. Much appreciated.

There are four basic personality types, but they are combined somewhat, with one dominating over the others. Its my job as a salesperson to figure out what the dominating personality trait is, in order to serve my clients best.

You may seek out and ask for criticism and feel disappointed when its not forthcoming ... but remember, that wasn't unsolicited criticism. I suspect, based upon your response, that you wouldn't be the biggest pain in the ass I've ever worked with. Oh ... and that's a compliment.

Vi

 

[Doctor Pot]

~lol~ .... Well thanks for that response. Much appreciated.

There are four basic personality types, but they are combined somewhat, with one dominating over the others. Its my job as a salesperson to figure out what the dominating personality trait is, in order to serve my clients best.

You may seek out and ask for criticism and feel disappointed when its not forthcoming ... but remember, that wasn't unsolicited criticism. I suspect, based upon your response, that you wouldn't be the biggest pain in the ass I've ever worked with. Oh ... and that's a compliment.

Vi

Thanks... I guess. I thought about it, and I think you're wrong about engineers' greatest fear. It sounds like you might be misinterpreting defensiveness as fear of being wrong. So what is an engineer's greatest fear? Honestly, I don't think engineers are afraid of much, other than the usual. It's not that we're fearless, we just aren't affected as much by base emotions so much as things like curiosity and logic. What am I afraid of? I guess I'm afraid the cops will bust my grow op, that I won't live up to my full potential, or that some day when I'm married and have kids, my wife will run off with them and make it hard for me to ever see them. But I don't think that fear motivates engineers to the extent that it motivates other types.

As for Atlas Shrugged, here's as good a place as any to list my grievances. Rearden metal was supposed to be cheaper, stronger, lighter, and tougher than steel, and it was supposed to have a higher melting point and better corrosion resistance. It was also supposed to be green because of the copper it used. But copper is MUCH more expensive than steel. Heck, every metal in the world is much more expensive than steel/iron. So it can't exist. Also, in the book nobody wanted to use Rearden metal at first, because they were so tied to the old ways of doing things. Everyone that did use Rearden metal was wildly successful, thus proving that the only thing holding the world back was its backwards philosophy. But this is wrong too. Even if Rearden metal had all these amazing properties, factories would have to figure out how to use it. It's twice as tough as steel? Run it through a punch press and all your punches will snap in half. Think you can cut it with a saw? Good luck with that! The higher melting point would necessitate all new furnaces. Plus, there are all these properties that you wouldn't even know about. Maybe it corrodes in the presence of some commonly-used chemical? Maybe it becomes extremely brittle at winter temperatures? All it takes is one of those super high speed trains exploding and the company has a massive lawsuit on its hands. Provided a metal like Rearden metal became available, companies would be slow on the uptake not because of a backwards philosophy, but because they'd have to spend a lot of time and money figuring out how to use the stuff properly, without even knowing whether it would work better than whatever they were already using. Thus, this premise in Atlas Shrugged is invalid. And when you make a point using an invalid assumption, then your point cannot be stated as truth.

So yeah, those are just the issues I had with Rearden metal. All the other technologies had similar problems. Ayn Rand fell victim to the same trap that plagues most philosophers: they simplify the world to an extent that it can't be simplified to. The world is EXTREMELY FUCKING COMPLICATED, but we humans have to simplify it in order to make sense of it. We have to come up with a model to describe the world, then fit it into our three-pound brains. Inevitably, we simplify things; an idea is always bad or always good, or there is only one right way to see things and we can't figure out why other people don't see it the same way. But honestly, I like the complexity. It makes the world a more interesting place.

 

[medicineman]

But honestly, I like the chaos. It makes the world a more interesting place.
I will agree to a point, interesting yes, practical no. There is order in the universe and some amount of order is necessary in the human equation. We must have a form of governence, a general consortium of people that run the mundane things, like school systems, Road systems, etc., My additive would be "Health systems" as the private sector is doing a shitty job. Chaos has it's place but more for entertainment purposes if you ask me.

 

[Doctor Pot]

I will agree to a point, interesting yes, practical no. There is order in the universe and some amount of order is necessary in the human equation. We must have a form of governence, a general consortium of people that run the mundane things, like school systems, Road systems, etc., My additive would be "Health systems" as the private sector is doing a shitty job. Chaos has it's place but more for entertainment purposes if you ask me.

When I said I liked chaos, I suppose I should have said I like that the universe is as complex as it is, ie I'm glad it's not too simple.

And I'm not advocating anarchy, by any means. As humans, we need to make laws in order for our civilizations to survive. I'm just saying that the universe is a lot more complicated than most people like to think. People are extremely diverse, and coming up with a single philosophy to describe everyone, or a single government system that will make everything better for everyone is impossible. The best we can hope for is a government that is a compromise between all the different types of people out there.

 

[GoodFriend]

pot doc i love yer post about the book...
ever read the fountainhead? i think you'd digest that a bit better... (you're a dork by the way, i love your rant about the metal crap) hahaha

whoops....
starting typing this before i smoked when i got home

now i've smoked and forgotten the point i was going to make

hmm
anyways

i've got to go buy those two books again... i gave my copies away after reading them to spread the good word... hahaa
take care friends

 

[Doctor Pot]

pot doc i love yer post about the book...
ever read the fountainhead? i think you'd digest that a bit better... (you're a dork by the way, i love your rant about the metal crap) hahaha

Heh, thanks... an engineer reading Atlas Shrugged is kind of like a computer programmer watching "Swordfish" or a video game developer watching "Grandma's Boy", ie, a wildly inaccurate depiction of something you actually know about.

I did read The Fountainhead, but it was about architecture more than engineering. I took issues with a few things, but not as many as with Atlas Shrugged. For instance, the dollar sign never was a superimposed U and S. It started as a superimposed P and S for "peso", then they dropped the top part of the P. The US started using it to represent dollars because it was a commonly used currency symbol. Also, you can only design a building so well. I mean, when was the last time you were in a building and said "wow, this is the most incredible building layout I've ever seen in my life!" And the ridiculous philosophies espoused by the villains weren't all that believable either. "I want to destroy everything good!" Right...

 

[ViRedd]

As for Atlas Shrugged, here's as good a place as any to list my grievances. Rearden metal was supposed to be cheaper, stronger, lighter, and tougher than steel, and it was supposed to have a higher melting point and better corrosion resistance. It was also supposed to be green because of the copper it used. But copper is MUCH more expensive than steel. Heck, every metal in the world is much more expensive than steel/iron. So it can't exist. Also, in the book nobody wanted to use Rearden metal at first, because they were so tied to the old ways of doing things. Everyone that did use Rearden metal was wildly successful, thus proving that the only thing holding the world back was its backwards philosophy. But this is wrong too. Even if Rearden metal had all these amazing properties, factories would have to figure out how to use it. It's twice as tough as steel? Run it through a punch press and all your punches will snap in half. Think you can cut it with a saw? Good luck with that! The higher melting point would necessitate all new furnaces. Plus, there are all these properties that you wouldn't even know about. Maybe it corrodes in the presence of some commonly-used chemical? Maybe it becomes extremely brittle at winter temperatures? All it takes is one of those super high speed trains exploding and the company has a massive lawsuit on its hands. Provided a metal like Rearden metal became available, companies would be slow on the uptake not because of a backwards philosophy, but because they'd have to spend a lot of time and money figuring out how to use the stuff properly, without even knowing whether it would work better than whatever they were already using. Thus, this premise in Atlas Shrugged is invalid. And when you make a point using an invalid assumption, then your point cannot be stated as truth.

^^^ Now this is exactly why you engineer types drive us normal people crazy!

Ayn Rand is a novelist. Atlas Shrugged is fiction. And you are WAY too analytical.

Excellent post, by the way.

Vi

 

[Doctor Pot]

^^^ Now this is exactly why you engineer types drive us normal people crazy!

Ayn Rand is a novelist. Atlas Shrugged is fiction. And you are WAY too analytical.

Excellent post, by the way.

Vi

Heh, thanks. I know Atlas Shrugged is fiction, but it has a moral to it. And when you base your moral on a flawed story, that throws off the veracity of your moral.

Take the story of the tortoise and the hare. Now imagine that right before the race starts, the tortoise prays very hard to the gods (Aesop was a polytheist ) to help him win the race. And let's just say the race starts, and an invisible spirit whisks the tortoise to the finish line before the hare can even know what's going on. And let's also say that the moral of the story is "pray to the gods, and all your prayers will be granted". Now, the fact that tortoises and hares aren't sentient is a departure from reality, but it doesn't make the moral flawed. What makes the moral flawed is the fact that gods don't grant prayers like that.

It's like that with Atlas Shrugged as well. The moral is that the world is philosophically corrupt, and this corruption is causing all its problems. The fact that industry doesn't immediately embrace Rearden metal is shown to be a result of this philosophical corruption. But in reality, there would be legitimate, practical reasons not to immediately embrace something like Rearden metal, even if it could exist. Thus, you can't say philosophical corruption is the root cause of industry's problems.

Was that overanalytical enough for you?

 

[medicineman]

Let's just say I never read Ann Rand and leave it at that. I started to once, about the same time I voted for Nixon, when I was in my right wing mode, but life and all it's tribulations stole my reading time and I forgot about her, Thank God, all I hear about on this forum from the right is Ann fucking Rand. Atlas Shrugged, Zeus farted, and the right wing took a major shit on the country.

 

[VTXDave]

^^^ Now this is exactly why you engineer types drive us normal people crazy!

Ayn Rand is a novelist. Atlas Shrugged is fiction. And you are WAY too analytical.

Excellent post, by the way.

Vi

Engineers drive me crazy too Vi...And I'm an engineer! It's like this...Some engineers simply cannot detach themselves from their analytical training to simply look at a given situation from a layman's perspective. Ever see an engineer give a presentation regarding a complex issue to an audience of laymen? It's fucking hilarious!

 

[ViRedd]

Engineers drive me crazy too Vi...And I'm an engineer! It's like this...Some engineers simply cannot detach themselves from their analytical training to simply look at a given situation from a layman's perspective. Ever see an engineer give a presentation regarding a complex issue to an audience of laymen? It's fucking hilarious!

Exactly, Dave ...

With all of the positive messages presented by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged that he could have walked away with, Dr. Pot takes issue with copper in the steel, and nothing about how looters destroyed achievement, or how society collapsed when the means of production was left for the looters and the regulators to run.

Unlike Med-'O-Mao, Dr. Pot is an interesting read, I'll give him that for sure.

"Ever see an engineer give a presentation regarding a complex issue to an audience of laymen? It's fucking hilarious!"

Yes, an audience of one ... me! I wasn't kidding about the engineer who wanted me to tell him if the drywall was 1/8" or 1/4" thick. Also, in the "old days" when it was still permissable to smoke in other people's homes, I was doing a final inspection with an engineer client of mine. He was smoking a pipe (what else?). While checking out the range-hood, he turned the fan on, took a huge toke off of his pipe, blew voluminous amounts of smoke under the hood, then quickly looked at his watch. When the smoke disappeared up the flu in a rapid manner, he looked at me with a knowing look, nodded his head quickly ... and we continued the inspection. He was actually timing the dissipation time of the smoke!

I'm sure Seamaiden would understand.

Vi

 

[natrone23]

Yes, an audience of one ... me! I wasn't kidding about the engineer who wanted me to tell him if the drywall was 1/8" or 1/4" thick.

Vi

God forbid you do your job

 

[ViRedd]

God forbid you do your job

And another brilliant observation from the peanut gallery! You and your buddy "tips" should get together for a circle jerk, natrone. Like you know what my job is, right? ... I'd venture that you don't have a clue, nor would you last in my business longer than it would take you to piss off your first prospect with some smart-assed remark. And that would be about one nano-second!

What was I supposed to do ... chop a fucking hole in the drywall?

Want to know what I really said to the idiot? I said ... "if you want the answer to that question, I'll recommend a contractor to you who will chop a hole in the drywall so you can measure it ... but you'll have to get the owner's permission to chop holes in the drywall, pay for the contractor, then pay to have the drywall restored to it's original condition." Want to know what his reply was? "Uhhh ... no thanks, I was just curious."

In other words, natrone ... who gives a shit how thick the drywall was? Based upon his response to me, he sure as hell didn't ... he was only interested in asking a stupid fucking question that appeared to him in his demented little analytical mind. The home was built to code fer cryin' out loud ... but in his mind, he was going to rebuild it to HIS specs, and more specifically, probably at the seller's expense ... until he was faced with a little out-of-pocket expense himself, that is!

Vi

 

[Doctor Pot]

Exactly, Dave ...

With all of the positive messages presented by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged that he could have walked away with, Dr. Pot takes issue with copper in the steel, and nothing about how looters destroyed achievement, or how society collapsed when the means of production was left for the looters and the regulators to run.

Unlike Med-'O-Mao, Dr. Pot is an interesting read, I'll give him that for sure.

I try.

I actually rather liked Atlas Shrugged, it was very inspiring. Well, except for the engineering part. Every single other invention had problems too, not just Rearden metal. The perpetual-motion machine was another annoying one. I guess it wasn't nearly as bad as say, the X-Files, but it dealt more intimately with engineering so it grated on me more.

Well, I didn't like the 10-page speeches on why communism is so horrible either. I mean, one lengthy speech, fine. Two starts to get annoying. By the fourth or fifth, I just started skipping them. All those masturbatory speeches were essentially the same anyway.

The book trashes communism, but so what? In my opinion, communism is like monarchy, sure some countries still practice it, but it's not considered a serious form of government anymore. I'm sure it was great capitalist propaganda during the fifties, but now that the cold war is over it seems quaint.

So yes, a society that forces equality is deeply flawed, but Ayn Rand's proposal, that people owe nothing to society, I believe is equally flawed.

What was I supposed to do ... chop a fucking hole in the drywall?

Want to know what I really said to the idiot? I said ... "if you want the answer to that question, I'll recommend a contractor to you who will chop a hole in the drywall so you can measure it ... but you'll have to get the owner's permission to chop holes in the drywall, pay for the contractor, then pay to have the drywall restored to it's original condition." Want to know what his reply was? "Uhhh ... no thanks, I was just curious."

Pfft... not much of an engineer. Anyone knows you can just take off a light switch faceplate and examine the drywall thickness there. And who ever heard of eighth-inch drywall? You're probably thinking three eighths.

 

[hornedfrog2000]

I saw the interview ... in fact I taped it and watched it this morning. It was absolutely delightful.

Obama and his wife came across very well indeed. Very pleasant and great smiles. He seems to be very kind ... and both are extremely self confident. I loved the way Obama talked about his two beautiful girls. Kind of reminded me of how I felt about my own girls when they were the ages of Barak and Michell's girls.

Now ... what are his ideas again?


Vi

Very nice post. Give the guy a shot. We are going to need a lot of working together to dig ourselves out of the hole we are in.

 

[medicineman]

Very nice post. Give the guy a shot. We are going to need a lot of working together to dig ourselves out of the hole we are in.

Exactly. Trashing him even before he makes one executive decision is rather pre-pubescent, but I must admit, there are a few of those on this forum.

 

[ViRedd]

Pfft... not much of an engineer. Anyone knows you can just take off a light switch faceplate and examine the drywall thickness there. And who ever heard of eighth-inch drywall? You're probably thinking three eighths.

... Yep, that's what I love about you engineers ... practical all the way.

This reminds me of the guy I hired to remove some wall paper from a client's home. The first thing he did was to remove a wall plate to check how many layers of wall paper there was. I asked him why he removed wall plates like that, and he said: "The very first job I bid on, I bid low to get the job, then discovered that there were six layers of wall paper to remove. I'll never make that mistake again!"

Brilliant!

Vi