On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:47:12 -0700, "RST Engineering"
wrote:


Boy, but you sure did hit on a bunch of my pet peeves Jim:-))
Remember I quit work at age 47 and went back to college full time to
earn a degree in CS (minors in math and art)

(PLEASE don't take this as a political rant. A scientific or engineering
rant perhaps.)

I guess I'd have to say mine is aimed at the average individual on the
street.


Roger ...

What we need is a national leader with the balls of a Kennedy who said in
1961 that "we will send man to the moon by the end of this decade (the easy
part) and bring him back to earth safely (the hard part).

While that wasn't something that really HELPED the economy, or that gave us

I do think in the long run it did make a substantial boost for the
economy from the technological gains alone, let alone the "spin offs".

immediate technical gains (teflon and Tang notwithstanding), we did it for
the same reason that Isabella hocked the crown jewels and gave Columbus his
marching orders. It was something that had never been done before ... man's
insatiable desire to know what is over the far hill.

A generation of us who were drifting rudderless all of a sudden had a

While we now have several generations in that boat. When I was taking
a college Anthropology class (Sociology) the Prof remarked about an
article she had read that stated people were no where nearly as
success oriented as those of several generations prior. She wanted to
know if any of us agreed with that. Only two of us did. Of course I
was probably older than the prof so she asked me why I thought that
today's (It was 1989) people were not as success oriented at those of
earlier generations.

I said that the average individual's idea of success oriented was
getting a degree, or just a good job, working 8 hours, go home, prop
their feet up in front of the TV and have a beer while watching "the
game". The whole back row stood up and complained. (they were mostly
our sports players). They had absolutely no idea as to what success
oriented meant. They had confused it with successfully reaching their
goal. I told the prof, "I rest my case". She had a bit of a problem
keeping a straight face, but then proceeded to explain to the rest of
the class the definition of "success oriented".

pointer. Tens of thousands of us who weren't sure what we would be doing
that August started poring over college catalogs to see what sort of a major
program would put us on-line with our new national goal. Somehow I finagled
a triple major in electronic physics, math, and aerospace studies, which
coupled with my ham ticket and college airline job fixing radars and other
microwave gear put me right down the localizer to have a teeny tiny part in
the Apollo landing radar.

Today the trend is to avoid the sciences as well as the technical.
Then people complain AND blame the schools when their kids who aren't
suited for advanced education aren't prepared to step out into a good
paying job. They come out unable to continue into college but with no
technical background and the parents blame the system instead of
taking responsibility for where their kids are headed.

Unpaid overtime wasn't an option, it was expected. We had a deadline. We
beat Kennedy's challenge by five months.

I was still paid overtime back then.


And now are you all telling me that if we had somebody that said that if we
don't solve our energy problem that we are all going to be sitting around
our campfires in the dark in a hundred years that we couldn't solve that
problem?

No, but :-)) First we have to convince both the public and
government leaders there is a problem that can't be ignored for a few
more generations. Problems of a size that Band-Aid will not cure.
Both are still in denial and are just blaming the big corporations or
believing in junk science.


Are you telling me that a generation of the finest and cleverest amongst our
young couldn't pick up the traces that we dropped almost forty years ago and
pull that wagon across the finish line ahead of schedule?

Two problems: We have to convince enough of them who are not already
believers to get busy and we need to prevent the older generations
from holding them back. Encouragement would be nice, but not holding
them back would be a big step.


Are you telling me that if we took all the trillion$ we are ****ing down one
rathole after another and turned it to making the magnetic Klein bottle to
hold the fusion energy genie that we couldn't do it on time and within
budget?

Now there's one of the main kickers. The owners of all those "rat
holes" through which the money is sliding are going to fight to get
bigger "rat holes" rather than spend the money on something to which
they have no connection even if it is far more useful, or even
essential.

The fusion energy genie is a slippery little bugger isn't it? To me
it seems like a big computer, a bit of chaos theory, and some super
conductors should be able to do it. Certainly that is an over
simplification but I think it conveys the general idea. It would seem
that some one could figure out how to contain that very slippery
critter that is developing its own magnetic field inside another
magnetic field. Of course that's like trying to push like poles on
two very strong magnets together that are moving and changing strength
continually.


I think not. It takes a single charismatic leader with a vision and a
purpose. I hope (s)he appears before we are too far behind the power curve
to recover.


Knowledgeable, honest, and charismatic leaders are as rare as the
proverbial "hens teeth" and appear to be in short supply be they
Liberal or Conservative.

People would prefer to have "faith" in some one watching over them so
they don't have to be responsible. We have built up a tremendous
inertia where the general population relies on support in one form or
another. Getting them to step in and take responsibility is a big leap
and the chasm is getting wider every day.

We are looking at the requirements for a multi tiered program
consisting of alternative energy sources, advancements in technology,
education and acceptance of reality that we really do have a problem,
and conservation at the individual level.

It's a bit sobering to see that conservation at the individual level
could make the US independent of foreign oil, yet the average
individual blames big industry for high prices and polluting the
atmosphere. OTOH those individuals are calling for more oil
refineries instead of using less.


Jim



Now all we need to do is develop a fusion reactor that works well and
develops useful power, something that has been eluding us for many
decades..

73

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com