Now waite a minute Bob,
I rather enjoy some of Geoge's posts and I have enjoyed some of the replies.
I wish they would hold down the personal attack parts but I suspect that
will fade with time.
I enjoyed George's posts because:
1) I had never heard of psychometry and may get around to looking it up
sometime. It is an interesting word.
2) The exchanges about Pauli's quote or quotes has been entertaining. I too
had forgotten the one about something being so bad it wasn't even wrong and
the one about someone being so young and already so unknown immediately
brought chuckle.
3) The exchanges between Geore H and George M about the curvature of space
were informative though I have to admit I haven't spent any signifcant time
thinking about them because I am not a mathematician and am busy with other
concerns right now. And besides, it all reminds me of the first time I
seriously listened to the speaches at given at the election conventions -
both sides sounded so good I could only conclude I didn't know enough what
they were talking about to spot the errors myself.
4) George's reply of "you just say it" in response to the question of: how
you call someone an idiot that politely, was very good. AND it may
actually be of some significance in this time of political correctness
non-sense. For instance, as a teacher how can I be sure I won't say
something which offends one of my students if the offense is in the
student's perception of what they think I ment by what I said rather than in
the words themselves. I have no idea what the students will think I mean
when I say something so I have no way of knowing for sure what will or will
not offend. All I can do is state as simply as I can my evaluation of the
situation or whatever. I learned that even this is not allways suffecient.
A few years ago I got so tired of my student's poor logic and mistakes which
showed they had no understanding of the of the information relating to the
question they were trying to answer that I started writting BS on such
answers. I carefully and repeatedly told them before I started doing this
that the BS stood for "blatently stupid" and not for whatever else they may
have heard it refer to. I was hoping that seeing this on their papers would
make them realize they had not only made a mistake but that it was a serious
mistake and that they needed to start putting some effort into studying and
if they couldn't learn the answers at least they should learn enough to know
when they didn't know an answer and not put down something stupid. None the
less after several complaints I finally figured out I was either going to
have to quite writting BS on papers or make some trips to the Dean's office
and I didn't see any point to wasting his time and mine with such
triviality. And so even "just saying it" without mallice or prejudice is no
guarentee that is the way it will be taken. But I still like Geoge's answer:
"you just say it".
Darryl
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Gilm" <bob_gilm@yahoo.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2001 6:05 AM
Subject: Forget about SPOG: behold SPTNCAWHS
>
> Dear All,
>
> I'd like to share with you this momentous insight I
> had yesterday evening, after thoughtful consideration
> of the number of toes in my left foot, and how it is
> exactly the same as in my right foot. The number 5 is
> significantly larger than Planck's constant, h (6.6262
> x 10^-34 J-s). However, since Plank showed that that
> the energy of an oscillator of frequency v is
> quantised, and the number of toes in my foot is also
> discrete, I conclude that Hammond's SPOG is wrong.
> This is not surprising at this point, since any idiot
> could have seen that. In its place, I would like to
> present the SCIENTIFIC PROOF THAT NOBODY CARES ABOUT
> WHAT HAMMOND SAYS (SPTNCAWHS).
>
> Now, serious. Hammond, nobody on this list cares about
> what you say, particularly your SPOG. Nobody here
> thinks that it is of any use. We are not qualified to
> understand it anyways, according to you. So, why do
> you waste your valuable time with us? Why don't you
> spend this time trying to publish your SPOG in a
> peer-reviewed journal?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bob
>
> __________________________________________________
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>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Aug 18 2001 - 07:54:40 EDT