2012 US Presidential Election

[zherok]

They used to teach auto mechanics in high school. Some of  America's finest hot rods came from high school auto shops.

Perhaps the modern car is somewhat more technically complex than a classic hot rod, and the task of servicing said modern car is more specialized than high schools are reasonably prepared to teach. Not that there aren't high schools that still have auto programs, of course.

I have a feeling that high schools have little time for auto mechanics at a point where tests are so emphatically prioritized though.

It's still sort of the role that specialized trade schools would be designed to cover. And part of the higher education Obama referenced in the first place.

It takes a phD to turn a wrench in space.

I'd rather hope astronauts were college educated. I don't think you get away with sending a low skill worker up into space pretending he'll just need to turn a wrench. Not really sure what you're getting at either way.

[jaybug]

It's a fucking car. You think it takes a college degree to make one? Ha ha ha!  It takes the degree to design and engineer one, but not to assemble. Or do they ahve that many college educated Mexicans with college degrees in the Maquilladora doing the work?

Benson polytechnic high school in Portland was a preemminent tech high school way back when. Now, they mad it into just about an ordinary high school. They have divested from it so much...And Portland is about as 'blue' as big cities get!

So is all the fluff the president is pandering on about, is that to have the feds pay for stuff that should properly be paid for by state and local authorities, but it is easier to get stuff rammed down our throuats when we only have one party with all the power in D.C.?

If it always takes advanced college degrees to turn wrenches in space, we will go extinct on planet earth. Wait, that's too much abstraction for you, you won't connect the dots. Put simply, we will never get off this fuckin' rock.

If you can build a car, you can build a space station. Building a car is not low skill. Some jackass with a college degree can't build one. I bet you couldn't make heads nor tails out of the cold headers I used to operate. I can build a car.

Didn't you ever watch the astronauts fix Hubble, or work on the ISS? They can't have it complicated, because they are wearing space suits. But you cannot be an astronaut unless you have a phD. More degree inflation.

[zherok]

If you can build a car, you can build a space station.

I can build a car.

We have just reached a point in the thread where you claim the ability to build a working space station (and a car, which I'm less incredulous about.) I don't really know where to go from here. We've hit some sort of event horizon. If nothing else, it's been very revealing.

Didn't you ever watch the astronauts fix Hubble, or work on the ISS? They can't have it complicated, because they are wearing space suits. But you cannot be an astronaut unless you have a phD. More degree inflation.

It's so very you to put forth the idea that NASA is perpetuating a liberal conspiracy in order to drive down the effective value of college education. That, and the "it's so fuckin' easy" attitude you have. So so very you.

[AceHigh]

Didn't you ever watch the astronauts fix Hubble, or work on the ISS? They can't have it complicated, because they are wearing space suits. But you cannot be an astronaut unless you have a phD. More degree inflation.

Those astronauts are also doing scientific tests of various kinds which would require them to be specialists in various fields. Multitasking like that requires that astronauts are more or less polymaths.

[Nikkoru]

zherok <= undergoing the complete Jaybug experience.

[Ixarku]

I have no idea what in the hell is going on in this thread anymore.
 
Lately, I've been trying to convince family members to not just blindly regurgitate anti-Obama propaganda without questioning the source of the information or at least trying to understand why parts of their information are suspicious at best, and discredited lies at worst.  But I've failed, and I think it's time to give up.  I think I've lost the last shreds of faith I still had in humanity.

[jaybug]

I have no idea what in the hell is going on in this thread anymore.
 
Lately, I've been trying to convince family members to not just blindly regurgitate anti-Obama propaganda without questioning the source of the information or at least trying to understand why parts of their information are suspicious at best, and discredited lies at worst.  But I've failed, and I think it's time to give up.  I think I've lost the last shreds of faith I still had in humanity.

lol I just stop at telling my mother that I will not vote for Obama. She is just the opposite of your family. What can you say to someone who truly believes that the opponent is the Great Adversary aka Satan?

Zherok, due to the limitations of space suits, any construction activities in space is severely limited. Look, did it take phD to build any of the tallest buildings inthe world? To build, I am not talking about design and engineering, just make the thing. Does it take a phD to build an aircraft carrier, nuclear submarine? Tell me anything that takes an advanced degree to make, please.

Now, the science experiments, I do appreciate an advanced degree. But it is possible to have undegreed people do advanced science. The 19th century was full of those people.

NASA does, because it can. It's called a 'buyer's market. They have the power, because no one else is in the game. As an example, my wife's daughter has an advanced degree, she also had to take on more schooling at very high price in London for even more, just to get a job working under a psycho nut job. She was able to get another job for someone else, but they fired her and replaced her with a man the next day. So now she is unemployed for most of this year. But she still has college debt equivalent to the price of a house in most places in America.

And you keep adding to all the things that the federal government should be paying for, make them entitlements, as if we can have free lunches forever! And include free breakfasts, and them being more than just continental breakfasts, and we get steak and lobster dinners free too! All we need to do is tax the fuck out of all the rich people to pay for it all! It's OUR money, not theirs.

FYI, according to Moneytalk's Bob Brinker, there  are a lot of one-way tickets being sold in France after Hollande's win, and in California after Jerry Brown's new tax plan. Taking away more than 60% of someone's income really takes the incentive out of going to work every day.

[zherok]

Zherok, due to the limitations of space suits, any construction activities in space is severely limited. Look, did it take phD to build any of the tallest buildings inthe world? To build, I am not talking about design and engineering, just make the thing. Does it take a phD to build an aircraft carrier, nuclear submarine? Tell me anything that takes an advanced degree to make, please.

You are under this strange impression that we've somehow advanced to the state in which space is both accessible enough and our technology developed enough that we can afford, or even require sending dedicated low-skill laborers into space. You may be disappointed to find out that this is not the case. As such, astronauts remain highly educated individuals who must be trained for multiple technical tasks, frequently in concert with scientific research.

Not that it matters in terms of employment, as there are all of a dozen or so astronauts at any one time. If this is a conspiracy, as you heavily implied earlier, it's a ridiculously narrow and useless one. And frankly the idea our astronauts are perpetuating degree inflation, as if the doctors, aeronautical engineers, and former fighter pilots that make up the current dozen (and the dozens that preceded them) were all frauds, is a load of shit.

As for your focus on manufacturing, I'm sure you're aware that most heavy construction is heavily automated, so as to who builds these things, ROBOTS DO. Humans are obviously employed on particular tasks and  to quality check the end result, but you do not hand fucking craft a space station.

But let's talk about about those remaining jobs. The tasks required by humans in automobile manufacturing are highly specialized. They may not require a degree to fulfill, but I would argue that fitting car doors to the robot-constructed frames of cars or maintaining quality control for a highly automated assembly line might be outside the skill set that the average high school should really be expected to provide.

Furthermore, if you'd like to consider future-proofing, given the momentum of industrialization since it's inception, would you seriously bet that these are the sorts of jobs we'll be able to retain in the future, or should we perhaps focus on encouraging people into building and maintaining the devices that construct said vehicles in the first place?

[jaybug]

Maybe after you join the workforce you'll understand. But for some reason I doubt it. And I am tired of your deliberately being obtuse, and saying thing I did not explicitly state.

s=true" class="bbc_link" target="_blank">http://www.opb.org/news/article/army-corps-wont-dredge-in-port-orford/?google_editors_pick s=true

Another example robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[zherok]

And I am tired of your deliberately being obtuse, and saying thing I did not explicitly state.

Oh the irony...

[jaybug]

And I am tired of your deliberately being obtuse, and saying thing I did not explicitly state.

Oh the irony...

That doesn't mean you got your logic all ironed out now does it? Or have you been working out, pumping irony?

Heard on the radio on the way to work today. The host can callers were complaining that Obama was sucking up Police for his security, when they are probably needed elsewhere, just so he could get his face on TV prior to the election.

My take on this, is the president must feel he is in a close race. Otherwise I would think he would wait a few days until things have come closer to normal before making an appearance. Otherwise, how many people aside from the media he brought with him, have time to see him?

[zherok]

That doesn't mean you got your logic all ironed out now does it? Or have you been working out, pumping irony?

I don't think you get to claim you can build a space station and call astronauts overqualified and pretend you're the logical one.

[AceHigh]

Nice thread, I see a guy who thinks he is smarter than NASA and promotes ignorance since PhD degrees are obviously a bad thing.

It's funny how that very small percentage of technological social class pretty much pulls the weight of the entire country in order to keep it at the top level among technological international arena and yet our wiseguy jaybug belittles them so frivolously.

[vicious796]

I have no idea what in the hell is going on in this thread anymore.
 
Lately, I've been trying to convince family members to not just blindly regurgitate anti-Obama propaganda without questioning the source of the information or at least trying to understand why parts of their information are suspicious at best, and discredited lies at worst.  But I've failed, and I think it's time to give up.  I think I've lost the last shreds of faith I still had in humanity.

It always amazes me how different regions of this country can be (and, in my opinion, fuels my "states-first" mentality). Seriously, I spend most of my political time doing the opposite. Hell, even Jon Stewart is starting to piss me off. He's just trying too hard to flak only Romney. It's to the point where I can't watch one of my favorite shows anymore. Sadly, he is the only "news" source a lot of people my age watch these days, too.

[surdumil]

There's always Fox News (LOL! Snort!)

[zherok]

He's just trying too hard to flak only Romney.

There's a lot to flak. He's a horrible candidate. Admittedly, you had a pretty shit field to select from. Obama is far from perfect, but I believe he believes in what he's doing. I can't even guess what Romney believes in, and he's been running for President for nearly a decade now.

[jaybug]

He's just trying too hard to flak only Romney.

There's a lot to flak. He's a horrible candidate. Admittedly, you had a pretty shit field to select from. Obama is far from perfect, but I believe he believes in what he's doing. I can't even guess what Romney believes in, and he's been running for President for nearly a decade now.

You have got to be kidding me. Obama BELIEVES what he says? Really?

Ace, so now you too have joined the know nothing intelligentsia, eh? Know the cost of everything, the value of nothing. I can't wait until we need a phD to change a burned out lamp.

[Ixarku]

He's just trying too hard to flak only Romney.

There's a lot to flak. He's a horrible candidate. Admittedly, you had a pretty shit field to select from. Obama is far from perfect, but I believe he believes in what he's doing. I can't even guess what Romney believes in, and he's been running for President for nearly a decade now.

I realize the fallacy in what I'm about to say, but it still amazes me that, if Obama is the worst President in U.S. history, why is Romney the best the Republican party can come up with?  If Obama's the worst President, then Romney's gotta be the worst candidate in history.  The Repubs have given us literally nothing practical that I can agree with.  I don't like either party on fiscal issues, and the Repubs are at least 30 years out of date on social issues.

[Burkingam]

Don't worry Ixarku, Obama is far from the worst president of history, though he's also far the best. Overall, he's a pretty mediocre president.

[Monkeyfinger]

I realize the fallacy in what I'm about to say, but it still amazes me that, if Obama is the worst President in U.S. history, why is Romney the best the Republican party can come up with?  If Obama's the worst President, then Romney's gotta be the worst candidate in history.  The Repubs have given us literally nothing practical that I can agree with.  I don't like either party on fiscal issues, and the Repubs are at least 30 years out of date on social issues.

You have to admit though, compared to the last two fail candidates from the republican party Dole and McCain, Romney is shaping up to be pretty good.