Alkahest my heroes have always died at the end

February 5, 2007

The limits of education

Filed under: Social,University Life — cec @ 10:57 pm

There’s a saying about education (I would call it a joke, but it hits too close to home for that), the process of education is learning more and more about less and less until finally, you know absolutely everything about absolutely nothing. This is pretty close to the truth. For a period of time in the 90s, I was one of the world’s foremost expert on the subject of using artificial neural networks for image and video compression – talk about your niche subjects. If you read the titles of dissertations, they are all extremely specific. For the most part, PhDs are specialists and generalists are few and far between. In fact, I was once approached to interview at Sandia National Labs because I was one of the few PhDs they had a resume for who was a generalist (I turned down the interview since I had just started in my current position).

Given the nature of PhDs, I was amused by this article in the Washington Post about officers in the military with PhDs, advising on the war in Iraq. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t doubt that these officers are all very intelligent and are well qualified. But one shouldn’t assume that because the advisers have PhDs, they will be independent or will give you new ideas. Petraeus has found a set of educated advisers that will almost certainly confirm the ideas he already has – that’s probably why they were picked. It doesn’t mean they are right. You could just as easily find other officers with PhDs having entirely different ideas. The PhD is a credential. It does demonstrate that the officers are intelligent, but it doesn’t mean that their specialty is necessarily relevant.

Puns

Filed under: Personal — cec @ 10:03 pm

Some folks I know were talking about puns today. I’ll admit to not getting puns or at best, getting them and not finding them funny. For example, a friend of mine who is a master punster once wrote on a white board “What’s in the monitoring wells? … Hg.” I didn’t get it at all, I was thinking – well, sure they could easily be monitoring for mercury. The H.G. Wells connection just didn’t occur to me.

So, here’s my theory. As near as I can tell, puns are a confusion between the symbolic meaning(s) of a word (i.e. what the word represents) and its structural representation(s) (either verbal or written). The punster selects a structural representation that has multiple symbolic meanings. So, for example, Hg refers to both mercury and the initials of an author. One of these meanings is in-context for the issue being punned about. Other meanings for the same structural representation make sense in a different symbolic context that may or may not be relevant to the issue being punned about.

One theory of humor suggests that it is experienced when what is expected is different from what occurs. So, the confusion between symbolic and structural meanings is the unexpected that causes a pun to seem funny. It’s also the reason that I don’t generally find puns funny. For the most part, I don’t interact very well with words on a structural level. I don’t do well with crossword puzzles, K beats me in solving Wheel of Fortune puzzles 19 times out of 20. I can’t spell to save my life. In short, my interaction with words is almost entirely at the symbolic level. The specific meaning of a given word is then based on the context – the puns completely pass me by.

Miscellany

Filed under: Personal,Plumbing — cec @ 9:25 pm
  1. The acid neutralizer has been in place for over a week – no problems yet. That said, I did manage to break a holding clip on my water softener while trying to figure out why there was extra water in it. Not a big deal, new clips are on order and the broken clip holds for now.
  2. Spinach Quesadillas! My standard quesadilla recipe calls for shredded Mexican cheese with a filling stuffed into a folded over tortilla and pan fried. I just tried a new filling: I took frozen spinach, defrosted it in the microwave and squeezed the water out of it. I then took a few table spoons of butter (okay, smart balance) and lightly sauteed some garlic. Then I added the spinach and used the result as the quesidilla filling. Yum!
  3. I’ve got a couple of extra posts coming tonight: sorry for the drive by blogging.

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