Tabby has a piece of paper from the University of CA...One of Tabbys friends was the Co/founder of the Fuller Seminary Graduate school of Psych and another firend is an Associate Dean of Student at a University in So CAL...he oversees Phd canidates in psych some of whom now run psych programs at other colleges and Universities..

Also Tabbys Daddy is an Aerospace Engineer...so Quanitative mindset is nothing new to me..

"MIT Prof Fired for Fabricating Data"

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/10/28/professor.fired.ap/

Tabs, did you just see "What the bleep do we know" while reading "The Elegant Universe?"

here's one for you: why is more probable that strings rotate having charged lobes rather than vibrate?

Anyway, funny story about smart people and practical vs. creative thinking. I once coached rowing, best sport in all the world. We'd row all the way in November which meant that the locks holding the coaches' launches were frequently iced up, wouldn't work.

We had this kid on the team, frickin brilliant chem/physics double major graduated in 4 years with a masters (brandeis). Sweetest, smartest guy, just wish he could rowed better, but that's another story. Anyway, he's new and I ask him to unlock the boats, he comes back, says the locks are all frozen.. I follow him down, grab a bailing bucket out of boat, scoop up some the Charles' finest and plunk one of the locks in the water. he reacts like I've put it in liquid nitrogen and now it will be iced up even more. he's dancing around and everything, quite a show at 5:45AM.

I pull the lock out 5 seconds later and it unlocks llike butter. He's astounded, which is funny becuase if given an "assignement in class," I am sure he could have told me the exact caloric transfer of heat between the ever so slightly warmer water and the colder lock to melt the ice in the lock and for every degree warmer the water was, how much time would be needed, blah, blah blah in seconds.

I kid you not when he said it never occurred to him that all of heat transfer equations he knew were anything more than theoretical, or just for use in the lab.

Re: Logic is the First Casuality of War...
 

Oh hey, I remember that from dinner. Thanks for giving credit.

I'm here to tell the non-believers (HEY PAUL), just have dinner with Tabs on your next Vegas vacation or business trip. Nowhere is there a more affable and hospitable guy. The whole online persona thing makes a lot more sense afterwards.

It also helps to read TABS posts when you're as loaded as I am now...Mother always said I couldn't hold my liquor.

TABS don't forget to send me your address, I'm going to be out in BARBEQUE country a week from Monday. After a few more Pelicans have sent you their regional pork products you can start handing out ribbons...

I can't tell you how often I get the question "so what is the best engine oil to use in my _ _ _ _ 911"? Trust me when I tell you, I could write a dissertation on this subject and hit you with about 300 pages of theory with supporting data. Heck, I but I could even bend out an algorythm that would explain it very elegently. But the answer I most always give? "What do your friends or fellow racers have luck with"?

The theory is great, the practicle application is great as well. Blending the two is the ultimate trick and very possibly the key to being a master of the craft.

MIT with a blue collar background - perfect fit IMO.

Will wonders never cease......who woulda thought that a couple of MIT grads would turn out to be empiricists.

Next your going to be telling me you like Hee Haw....

Classic stuff - Barbie Benton was on Hee Haw! Serious babes, corny but funny jokes, good music. All in all, Hee Haw may just go down as one of the best shows ever aired! (along with Leave it to Beaver, The Adams Family, Monty Python, Laugh In, early SNL, MASH and All in the Family).

I'm still a fan of the Pat Paulson show though.