Pat...... I need a list!

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] As soon as it is convenient, Pat, I would like to have you post a list ....(it probably won't be very long so it shouldn't take you more than a few minutes)... of things that you don't know diddly about. Knowing just that much would save a lot of surprise and downright astonishment on my part plus a lot of head shaking. So far, it has been one head-shake after another as different areas of that cavernous brain you have are selected by the IBM 360 Model 30 Disc drive retrieval system and brought to "read" status. You know the one I mean, they used to call it the "pizza oven" when IBM used it in the middle sixties. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] This last posting on the .22s was the capper (excuse the pun) you have a whole disc with info on ballistics too? Gaaaaaaaaa [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Dave, I'm not sure if you are complaining or if you are complimenting me, both, or something entirely different. Anyway, My wife's BIL (is he my BIL too?) said it the best I have heard so far, "Patrick, you are an information junky! Your philosophy must be something like he who dies knowing the most facts, wins!"

I really can't take all the credit, or probably most of it. Just like tall folks who just grew up that way without getting human growth hormone shots, I just grew up this way.

I suppose spending so many evening hours getting degrees had its effect too. You tax payers paid for the overwhelming majority of my schooling. I do appreciate all of your generous contributions. Please consider any help (or entertainment) I can provide to you as a tax rebate. It is the least I can do to return the favor. Egon doesn't need my help but I will give him free advice as part of my contribution to international relations.

Dave, Come on man... there are entire vistas of topics on which I am abysmally ignorant. I was not an instant success in lots of things I dabbled at, including some languages. I gave up on Russian because it hurt my pallet to speak it and I didn't like the Cyrillic alphabet. I was offered a full scholarship to go to Harvard language school to study Chinese but I was in a position to be able to gracefully decline my employer (USAF) with no repercussions and instead went on to get electronics training and be a flight simulator guy, trained to repair, modify, and extend the beast as well as be the instructor pilot.

Back to the concrete area you mentioned, ballistics. Sure, I have read ballistic charts and done hand loading but with limited breadth. I can quote from memory only part of what I knew for the .44 magnum, .38, 357, .22, but remember most of the .22-250. I preferred the 52 grain gilding metal jacketed prescored hollow point loaded to about 4000 ft per second where when zeroed for 200 yds you were almost 3/4 inch high at 100 yds and almost 4 3/4 low at 300 yds. Hitting a blade of grass would cause the bullet to turn to dust so prone shooting was iffy. It is a flat shooting son of a gun but I would never hunt deer with it as it is too light by my standards, although they sell rounds for deer hunting (bad idea.)

I have put a new scope on mine but need to shim it as it does not align right with my LASER bore sighter and I just haven't taken it out and fired it to zero it in.

Just today my wife said to me as we were returning home from lunch, "you better buy whatever guns it is you think you will want or need because both Democrat candidates are 2nd amendment unfriendly and either one will favor rabid gun control if not confiscation." NOT an exact quote but pretty close and she broached the topic with no prodding or manipulation (this year.)

Gee, I wonder if I NEED a Barret .416 semi auto carbine? It is more accurate than the .50BMG but ammo is hard to come by.

Oh, about the IBM 360... I came to a computer science BS later in life, 1984, and read plenty about the IBM 360 system, mostly as an example of what not to do in project management.. See also Brooks, "Mythical Man Month." I did have to learn a bit of the IBM OS as the Ada development system I used during my first time in grad school (MS in software engineering 1986) was hosted on the schools main frame. The OS was VM-CMS and I got into it via a PC like terminal. I never got near the actual hardware and have no clue how big or ugly it was or anything about the disks. At this same time at work I bought a VAX 11-785 with a hard drive with removable platters. I recall the "cake" boxes or pizza boxes the big interchangeable disks were stored in when out of the drive. Pretty big physically considering they only held 20 MB. I had bought a Unix based computer to use at home and it came with a whopping 15 MB hard drive and a floppy disk drive. Recall the original floppy disk was 8" (the 5 1/4 media was a diskette.) The 8 inch drive was IBM 3740 format, single sided single density with a whopping 251KB storage. I bought an accessory outboard twin drive with double density double sided drives, man was I cooking. IBM PC became the defacto standard (back in the days of floppy based boxes with no hard drives, running at 4.7 MHz with 360KB diskettes, single sided single density) Remember when if you turned on a PC with no floppy in the drive it would boot up in ROM BASIC! How cool is that?

So as IBM was THE standard, I donated my $6000 home computer (about 18 months old) to the Starvation Army and bought a Samsung clone. A Pascal compiler for the PC clone was $49.95 from Philippe Khan of Borland software. A Pascal compiler for the Unix box I gave away when on half price sale was $800. A word processor for the Unix box was over a grand and on and on. Better to cut your losses and go with the herd even though they rallied around an inferior OS and inferior processor architecture sold to the unknowledgeable public so easily just because it came with three initials that inspired trust, I-B-M.

IBM, International B--- Movement!

Regarding the memory management of the 8086, 286, 386, PENTIUM Processors... segments are for worms! Motorola 68000 series was superior in all respects but Mr. Gates wanted a special deal and got it from Intel who were shoved into glory and fame they never deserved by the huge volume of inferior product they sold.

[/Rant off]

I'm sorry, what was the question?

Pat

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] How are you at braiding rugs, Pat? [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] The BIL was more right than you might think. There is probably a PhD dissertation in this somewhere, but I really think that to a great degree, intelligence is about the ability to retrieve. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Dave, Mental performance is not a topic that everyone feels comfortable discussing analytically whether if about themselves or others present or in the abstract and lots of tension relievers have come into use due to this. Take for example the compensatory theory that is often invoked in some form. You know, the Judy may be fat and ugly but she sure can sing. Statistical reality tends to show that native ability tends to cluster, the haves tend to have more and the have nots tend to have less. Not a popular reality but reality none the less.

A lot of emotional capital is expended trying to wiggle around the hard cold actuarial facts but stats as well documented as those on these topics are just hard to ignore without using some powerful emotional balm. Some people just revel in pointing out a few exceptions such as the odd idiot savant here or there but in general if nature short changes you very much in a few areas she usually short changes you a lot in many areas.

Now to swerve into a different lane... You are telling me what constitutes the majority portion of intelligence when the greatest minds involved in this topic have difficulty deciding what truly is intelligence and have much greater difficulty and generate more dissension when trying to measure it.

If your contention were true then an individual with eidetic memory would be extremely intelligent however we find that in searching the literature this is not as well supported as your contention might suggest. I'm not talking about the rare retard who is said to have a photographic memory but the people who have "excellent" memory.

Side note: Go here and read a simple explanation of how people with photographic memory (eidetikers) probably do not exist. http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...9368.Ns.r.html

In various areas of human performance in order to excel, a series of things have to be "right", a veritable chain of great length that must have NO WEAK LINK or the result is not particularly above average.

To (quote) write off intelligence as simply a good memory, is to tremendously understate the importance of many other variables. It is like selecting a single chemical compound prevalent in human tissue (salt for example) and proclaiming it the necessary and sufficient condition for LIFE, the be all and end all of the study of life.

Retrieval is of little consequence if after you have retrieved you are not equipped to interpolate, extrapolate, synthesize, infer, and other wise digest, process, and make use of the information retrieved. If the information can't be processed in a superior way then terrific retrieval is of little value short of a quiz show or crossword puzzle (with which I never voluntarily involve myself, crosswords that is, I do watch Jeopardy and Cash Cab if I happen to wander across it.)

There is synergism between retrieval and processing and they are integrated such that neither can be studied independent of the other as after some retrieval has occurred and some processing is performed, further retrieval is guided by the ongoing processing which is influenced by the ongoing retrieval. To separate the two into two artificially cleaved entities is to not understand how memory (or processing) works.

I don't recall ever braiding a rug but did a hot pot holder when I was really young and my grandmother taught me to crochet a little when I was a preschooler. I can still do that but usually don't except for sometimes prepping extension cords for storage and I take a break from the typical nautical approach.

Inasmuch as without retrieval there is no intelligence you may feel your contention is supported but since there is no retrieval without intelligence (processing) your statement is actually not supported and is a non sequitur in effect since there probably is no such thing as intelligence or retrieval in the absence of the other. As if the intertwining of these components was not complexity enough, there is likely quite a bit more on closer examination, the other links in the long chain, each of which must meet muster to avoid being the "weak link" which would, like a small fraction in a chain multiplication, "swamp out" the effect of high values in the other multiplicands, severely reduce the result.

I know you expected to get instructions on building clocks when you asked what time it was but were you prepared for a class on horology and the British sponsored competition for a chronometer with sufficient precision to be used at sea for celestial navigation?

So you see there is yet another area that I am neither practiced nor experienced nor knowledgeable in, rug braiding.

Also, I had no bloody clue what was on the other side of the paddle!

Pat

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] The paddle thing is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Fact storage and fact retrieval is what wins so many of the catetgories on Jepoardy. The rest of the stuff has to do with interpolation and so forth. I find myself good at fact retrieval and fact retention, but I absolutely, positively cannot do a word jumble, no matter how long I stare at it. If you don't know which ports are on the Caspian Sea, then no amount of massaging will help, but I'll agree that it takes more than just facts and fact retrieval. I'm fond of making skool kids aware of the crucial importance of a clock at sea. Captian Cook had twenty-some clocks aboard when he sailed. Anti-U-Boat patrol planes kept track of what would be "apparent noon" in their search area so they could be especially vigilant and hopefull bag a sub that came up to do a noon sight. Yes, I know that intelligence is a sore subject in our leveled-down, no heroes, new world, but I have always known that is IS clustered, and one of my kids is the beneficiary of some really good DNA. That child became a Harvard Professor right outa college and is packing a PhD, an Ms, a JD, and oh, yes, a BS. What is so surprising is the range and scope of her interests, from free range chickens to the health care crisis. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Dave, I should have had an early interest in cloning as I have too many interests and projects to possibly be able to do many of them justice by myself.

Oh, about I.Q. - - - - one of my favorite authors, Isaac Asimov, once said words to the effect that you don't need to give IQ tests, the kids reading science fiction are the smart ones.

A couple of the dullest gatherings I have ever attended were 1. a party hosted my MENSA and 2. a tall persons party were you had to be a minimum of 6'2" as a man, 5'10" as a woman, or be married to a qualifying person to attend. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick one to attend again, I'd go to the tall folks.

Dave, you had to, of course, meet your min mem req to be able to decode the paddle thing without asking, WHAT?

Boy how I wish there really was photographic memory and that I had it. It would be danged handy. I know I have better than average memory but I think more and better is well, way better.

Do you ever wish you were a specialist that knew more and more about less and less until finally you knew everything about nothing or would you rather be a generalist and strive to know less and less about more and more until finally you knew nothing about everything?

20 some clocks... I did not know that. I always heard that you should never go to sea with two clocks since they would invariably differ and you have no way to know which is right, if either. Better to have 3 or more and eliminate any odd fliers. Apparently Cook was of that opinion too.

Do you mention to the kids the ENORMOUS prize offered by the crown in the chronometer competition? A good chronometer would confer a GIANT boost toward supremacy at sea for naval warfare and power projection in suppo=rt of the nations vital interests as well as giving a tremendous competitive edge in commerce.

Pat

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] I didn't know about the big award for making a seagoing chronometer, but I can see that it would be a logical form of incentive. Regarding the photographic memory thing: I do have that in a few select areas. Like right now I can close my eyes and see the red-painted door of the Tallow Works truck that came to our dairy in the fifties and which had the script: Ph: LA2-7224. I can get pretty good recall on phone numbers that way years later by visualizing them against their original backdrop. Numbers are the easiest thing for me to recall, be it a part number for the thermostat housing on a 1936 Dodge Six (28348) or some other equally obscure item. I have very little recall for faces, however. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Do you remember the big movement in the fifties to add a prefix to phone numbers? And how the engineers figured that a name would help folks remember it? Lambert was LA or 52. Klondike was KL or 55. They soom found out that it was a lot more annoying to decode the letters to numbers thing on the dial than remember the numbers direct. I still hate it when some genuis makes his number into something like HELPMEE and it takes a codebreaking effort to dial it. [img]/forums/images/icons/mad.gif[/img]

[Pat]

My memory for numbers is so so. I once memorized pi to 20 some digits and still recall most of it. I guess the things I actually purposely memorize stay with me pretty well but casual things I make no effort to memorize may or may not be readily available. They are kind of spotty. But of course, things I had to memorize in school, like the preamble to the constitution, the Gettysburg address, bunches of Shakespeare, Lewis Carrol's Jaberwocky and things like Monty Python's Lumberjack song and Kingston Trio stuff is indelibly burned in my mind like my USAF serial number and for some strange reason the lisc plate of my 1959 MG Model A roadster (HSG332)

Oh and of course the Philosopher's song (another Monty Python)

I sometimes think I need to RotoRooter my brain to clear all the ---- lodged there.

The prize winner is a friend of mine who while riding shotgun late at night on a winding trail through a pine forest looking for Laguna Hanson in Baja California suddenly exclaims, "turn left on that track, I know where we are now because I remember the shape of that mud puddle next to that tree by the trail." A few minutes later we came to the lake and made camp. He too has a terrific number memory for long numbers. He was a math major physics minor when I was a physics major math minor and we took lots of the same classes, sometimes together.

Pat

[egon]

What about us fellows without the ability to recall long numbers?? [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] EG: anything above 5 digits! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Were toast?? [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[jimbrown]

Egon I am with you. Half the time I can't recall my own phone number, I for sure do not know any of my license plates, and most of the time have not a clue what day of the month it is. And really don't care.