Re: Ping Kevin Aylward - re your "scientific paper"

From: John Fields (jfields_at_austininstruments.com)
Date: 09/19/04 

Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:13:24 -0500

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 00:30:59 GMT, "Kevin Aylward"
<salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk> wrote:

>John Fields wrote:

>> ---
>> What's happened is that it's gotten past the point where you can
>> control it because you consider the judgement on the validity of an
>> issue to be solely yours to make.
>> ---
>
>Dont we all? 

---
No.
---
>> ---
>> That's hardly fair.
>
>I think it is.
---
Well, of course you do!  You have no choice, since being forced to
admit to yourself that you're not the only fit arbiter of fairness
would place you someplace other than at the top of the heap, where
you've convinced yourself that you belong.  The motivation for the
mechanism should be covered in your paper, no?
It oughtta sound something like "Being at the top of the heap
increases your shag potential..."  
---
>>If I write 100 words and make one error and you
>> write 200 and make three, that doesn't excuse the extra error just
>> because you wrote twice as much as I did.
>
>Maybe it does. It depends on the content.
---
Yes, of course. I made that point last time.  Read the next sentence,
which I posted last time and which you seem to have "glossed over". 
>> Besides, it's not just a question of the number of errors, it's also
>> about the quality of the errors.  Something like ten trypos are
>> equivalent to a tense error or two mis-speelings...
---
>>> Being "not good" is not being "bad". There is a middle ground. Its so
>>> easy, to ignore the 99% that's right when only 1% is wrong. The 1%
>>> failures are what stick out. If I design 100 circuits and one fails,
>>> am I a bad designer?
>>
>> ---
>> Depends...
>
>Sometimes
---
"Maybe it does" and "Sometimes" ???.   Hmmm... do I detect the
beginning of grudging agreement?^) 
---
>> All of your timer designs worked in the field except the one which was
>> supposed to time the deployment of automotive airbags.
>>
>> What do you think?
>
>The assumption here is of equal weights. Anyway, this is still just 
>avoiding the main point.
---
Which is... ?
---
>> I don't think anyone's saying you're all _that_ bad;^)
>
>Oh yes... some are.
---
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?
---
>>What seems to
>> have happened is that you got defensive and copped an attitude when
>> your paper started being criticized and when it got to the English
>> part you were trapped and just couldn't let go.
>
>But this aint really true neither. 
---
"But this aint really true neither."?
LOL!
---
>I addressed objective criticism. That 
>is specific faults. I removed two wrongly placed words, I also removed a 
>redundant word. The issue was with some twat claiming that the whole 
>thing was incomprehensible. Maybe it was to him, but not because of the 
>prose, more like failure to pass 101 math and logic.
---
Just because it was comprehensible to you doesn't mean that it would
be comprehensible to everyone who read it.  It was comprehensible to
you because you already knew what you meant when you wrote it, and the
mechanics of the delivery were, to you, unimportant since the burden
of the decoding (you feel) lies on the reader.  However, for someone
not familiar with the concept you were trying to present  and not
desperate for the information, having to slog through your prose just
to try to glean some meaning from it might represent an investment in
time and effort not worth the meager return.
The part which I think is particularly interesting/telling is that you
had no inkling of what was wrong, technically, with the composition of
the paragraph and, even after some of the more glaring errors were
pointed out to you, _and_  you recognized them as errors _and_ you
agreed that it's the writer's job to paint an understandable picture
for the reader, you still take the position that it's the reader's
fault that reading you is difficult and you blame it on the reader's
lack of intellect!
Speaking for myself, I'm certainly not at the bottom of the
intellectual food chain, but when I read your stuff it's as if I were
taking a train trip and expecting to get from point A to point B with
maybe a few stops along the way but, instead,  have to get out and fix
the tracks every mile or so and listen to the conductor tell me that
it's my fault it's taking so long to get to the end of the ride. :-) 
-- 
John Fields

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