Saturday night, all smiles

[cleolinda]

Finished! Eight hundred and eighty-eight pages of Ray Bradbury, and I'm finished. And there's a ton of stories they didn't even include. Amazing. No idea what I'll read next, though. Possibly the nonfiction one about William James investigating Spiritualism

Comments

[padawansguide]

There are plenty of dumb astronomers. We joke at work that once you get your PhD, you lose the ability to work AV equipment. We had one guy who couldn't figure out how to turn the TV in the lounge off. So I got up and pushed the "off" button. But then I only have a BS in astrophysics, not a PhD.

Then there is the guy who accidentally printed a binary file to the printer - it just kept printing gibberish, and he kept feeding it paper until it jammed instead of turning it off. He called the computer help desk to report a paper jam. He wanted them to unjam it, so he could keep feeding it paper. You know, instead of just asking them to kill the job. We still make fun of this guy for it. He literally printed out *two* reams of paper fill of gibberish before it jammed.

So yeah. There are plenty of dumb astronomers. ;-)

[christwise]

I knew a lot of engineers in school who could build killer robots or death lasers or whatever but you ask them what 2 + 2 equals and you'd have to give them a second to think. The more advanced you get, the more you lose the real world knowledge I guess. I'm was a film major, I don't know anything.

[particle_person]

Frankly, I think it's not that Ph.D.s are any dumber at "real-life" things than anyone else, it's that non-Ph.D.s somehow expect that the receipt of a degree makes you stupidproofed against simple mistakes, silly responses, accidents, slowness, and failure to get the point (whatever the point happens to be).

Regarding math, it's strange, but arithmetic uses completely different brain cells than calculus and higher math, as far as I can determine. I've been slow at arithmetic since I was a kid, and I didn't get "good at math" until late high school, when I picked up a calc text and started reading it one day. I'm still very slow at mental arithmetic.

[word_herder]

My sister hated math in high school, nearly failed college algebra, and then whizzed through Calc I, II, and III with alacrity. It must be a different part of the brain. Didn't Einstein fail algebra?

[pygmymetal]

To assist your development, do we visit the pages with the extensions, like /sec for security? I put that in my browser but I ended up at the main page.

I r confuzzed

[cleolinda]

Yeah, you do--it just redirects you automatically to the main page, that's all.

[robyn_ma]

'And there's a ton of stories they didn't even include.'

Hells yeah - no 'The Fog Horn'? No 'Mars Is Heaven'?

[cleolinda]

"The Veldt"! "Small Assassin"! "A Sound of Thunder!" Tons of them not in there! I was really, really hoping to find Everything Short That Ray Bradbury Wrote, and that book was pretty much the best I could do. I did end up reading dozens that I'd never seen before, so that was pretty good.

[cleolinda]

You know, I think I might read that. There were so many motifs constantly repeated in the stories that I actually found myself wanting to read some kind of biography--even fairly early on in his career, Bradbury seems to write about old/older men a lot. And of course, all those glowing stories about old-fashioned childhoods. And I'd love to know if there's anywhere particular he got his love of books and libraries and authors from--I mean, how many stories does he have about going back and meeting an author, or someone bringing story characters to life? I can think of at least five or six offhand. It's not an unusual or uncommon passion, certainly, but it's always fun to see how it developed for a particular author.

[valancy_s]

Aww. Ang Lee mean? No, I can't believe it. He's so adorable in Emma's diary. "No more sheeps. Never again sheeps."

[cleolinda]

Heeee, yes!