22 August 2013



Back just 3 and a half decades ago or so, I was an aspiring graduate student at Virginia Tech. My advisor was Larry Adler; he had started at Columbia University with a degree in math and went on for his master's and then a PhD in Rock Mechanics at the University of Illinois.

His mentor was Steve Boshkov from Columbia. [ http://www.aimehq.org/programs/award/bio/stefan-h-boshkov ] . Larry invited Steve to Blacksburg for a seminar presentation to the graduate and undergraduate mining students. That evening he invited me over for dinner and brandy, so there we were, student, mentor and übermentor. Being young and brash enough to get away with it, I dared ask Steve what was the most important thing in life.

Without flinching he spent 10 minutes holding my fascination and that of Larry as we both just sat listening to the anecdotes that came following this simple statement:

"In life, you do well if you can get along with people, and you do well if you can get along with money. If you can get along with both you do very well. If you can influence either one you are quite successful, and if you can influence both you are phenomenal. That's all there is to it, purely and simply."

Engineers do incredibly well with numbers, and good engineers are the ones who relate those numbers to money and the wealth of their company. Very seldom, though, do you find an engineer who is really good with people. If you do, you make him a manager. But, the engineer who is skilled with money and with people makes himself your manager and proceeds far beyond any expected level. That's why Steve stayed at Columbia, because he could influence the engineering curricula heavily inserting humanities and arts to give engineers what they really needed much more than another course in mechanics or mathematics.

That's about as far as my tired old brain wants to go this morning, especially with my cluster headache meds kicking in, but it should be food for thought for anyone who wants to bother researching the topic even casually. Think about it.
That is all.
Word.

08 August 2013

 http://www.redstate.com/dloesch/2013/08/07/wife-of-ft-hood-survivor-dod-is-gagging-us/










Call me crazy, but it seems to me like this would-be king is letting the power go to his head more every day. I can understand the legal discussion behind why he wanted to throw a gag order on the victims of the Ft. Hood heretic treasonal seditionist jihadist, Hassan, but the last time I read the Constitution it still said that the Congress shall pass no law restricting the right to assemble and speak; and, to me that points out fairly succinctly that it is, indeed, the Congress that makes laws, not the President. A king, on the other hand, is different, I suppose, in that what he says from the throne goes no matter how absurd it may be.



 I see that The President's city, Chicago, is rapidly taking a lead from Detroit. And, they are leading the league in dead African Americans (black people, persons of color? I never know any more how we are to refer to certain groups). I see that 3 black kids beat up a white kid on the schoolbus, but that the driver did not intervene and the mainstream media didn't report it. Notice that I did not say I was surprised by this happening. Things like this happen every day, more than once, and the only thing I see on TV is "pastor arrested for sexual assault on teenagers" which is about a guy, an assistant youth pastor (general flunky on the staff) that was fired from his position as a youth pastor and later was stupid enough to fool around with a couple of girls to whom he had "ministered" in days of yore. Our friends on TV can sensationalize anything they want to, or subdue everything they want to.

I see Brian Williams is getting a new knee. I see that every night. They certainly did not do 10 minutes with Dr. Nancy Snyderman when I got my new knee. Perhaps that was because it was my left knee and it's Brian's right knee, maybe it's because I am so old that it would not be newsworth, but Brian is so young (!) that we should feel sorry for him.

I could keep going all day. I won't. I'll sign off for now; but, I shall probably be back soon.