Neanderpundit

While discussing the post below with a well-respected friend, a few truths dawned on me that I guess were always in my mind but never found voice until that moment.

Most of my troubles with liberal vs conservative come to this: I base my politics on well documented fact. Anyone can disagree wiht those facts, and hell, once in a while, someone comes up wiht a disagreement that holds such water and is so irrefutable, that I change my opinion, based on the new evidence. Such is the nature of scientific thought.

Most if not all liberals I know, base their worldview on belief. Let me give you a few examples of fact vs belief:

Belief: Liberals fight for freedom of all people.
Fact: Conservatives have a long track record of actually providing freedom for people in this country and assisting other countries to become free.

Belief: Socialism is best for all.
Fact: Socialisim has failed every time it has been tried.

Belief: Embryonic stem cell research is the key to advances in science
Fact: Placental stem cell research has already provided cures for many diseases, amniotic stem cells have recently shown to be as effective and as adaptive as embryonic stem cells, and raise no moral issues.

Belief: Firearms are bad and cause crime
Fact: private ownership of firearms is a deterrent to crime.

Belief: Human Caused Global Warming exists.
Fact: The data isn’t there to support it, there is no way we can know, and we don’t know.

The idea that anyone votes one way or another based on what they believe astonishes me. it’s like jumping off a cliff believing that God will reach down his mighty hand and catch you- that God is on a spaceship waiting to come get you, that God will raise you up whole i the End Times Rapture. When you send your child to school, if you have a brain, you try to send him or her to a school that has a good reputation. When you buy a car, you buy it because it’s clearly faster, or handles better, or is safer than any other. Qualitative evidence exists to show you the facts, and you make those decisions based on those facts. You don’t buy a volvo because you BELIEVE it will protect you in a head on accident, unless you are an idiot. You research the facts, and act based on them. Faith belongs in the Creator. In politics I look at track record and results.

As if the bullshit here isn’t enough, a very old friend, and a very dear friend of mine mails me out of the blue today, the missive being in whole a forwarded piece of glurge entitled “forward this to ten people or we could have another republican president”. What followed was a list of the kind of kool-ade drinking liberal party line bullshit that makes me boil.

I responded “this kind of hatefulness and meanness of spirit makes me wonder why anyone would be a democrat”.

She wrote back “It was good talking with you too”.

Jesus.

Maybe she forgot that when her roof leaked, a republican crawled up there and fixed it.

Maybe she forgot that when her daughter’s car died a Republican came and got it running again.

Maybe she didn’t know it was a Republican that repaired her lawnmower. Sat for her dog. Fixed her air conditioner. Made sure she had heat, and no frozen pipes, and moral support. Someone to call and cry to when her grandfather died. Someone to be there for her when her marriage failed. Someone to make her fears go away when the darkness overtook her, late at night.

Nah. Couldn’t have been a republican. They’re all assholes.

Damn.

In the time I have run this blog, I have developed a following of a lot of really great people, many of whom I’ve had the great pleasure to meet, and a couple of total whackjobs.
Sir Fredrick, who has whined at length here, has whined his last whine.

First of all, Sir Fredrick, I am not a workman. As I said, you ignorant ball of pus, you have no idea who I am, nor of what I do. I am an engineer. The engineering has come to me via a combination of study and personal experience. I have no degree.

I find that I am in excellent company.

During my career as an engineer, I have accomplished a few things. Small things, for certain, but I’m quite proud of them.

Here’s one. I developed a system that uses robots to manufacture a certain kind of drill, used to manufacture- well, everything. From transmission parts to engine blocks. Pretty much, if it is made of metal, and it has a hole in it, these drills are used. The manufacture of these drills has been a long and closely guarded secret at that company for a long time, and I was made privy as to why. They had one old timer that could do the job of manufacturing them. he was about to retire. I wrote code that exceeded what anyone thought a robot could do, and made a robot do the job. Theoretically impossible- in fact, a highly paid engineer at the robot manufacturer assured me “it can’t be done”. That was over ten years ago. It has been running every day since. Did I invent the robot? (No, but I know the man who did) What I did, was I combined technologies in a way they had never been combined before, to create a process that had never existed before, which is now the industry standard for that type of manufacture.

here’s another: I designed, built, and programmed systems to deburr aviation equipment. Gears used in airplanes, jets, helicopters have incredibly stringent tolerances for allowed deviation, and for a hundred years, the gear manufacturers would pour money into a metal blank until they had a finely machined aviation gear. Then hand that gear, now worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars, to a guy to deburr. That guy often removed too much or too little and scrapped the part. Plus, he was doing a dangerous, dirty, difficult job. I developed a system that is now in use in many major aircraft manufacturing plants nationwide. I was installing one, in fact, the weekend I met Dick and the second time I met the Du Toits.

I’ve worked, over the last fifteen years, in a very wide variety of industries, using robotics and other automation solutions to do some very creative things. Systems I designed or helped design or programmed are hard at work making the things you see every day. Have steel entry doors at your office? One of my customers. Sleep on martha stewart sheets? We packaged them. Eat Slim Jims? Barilla Pasta? we bag ’em and tag ’em. Wipe your ass with Charmin? robots my company provided package the stuff, and do so with incredible speed and accuracy.(if you don’t think accuracy is important in packaging asswipe, try watching a line running at 3000 rolls per second when a single roll gets out fo place) Drive a Ford Focus? Visteon uses robots I programmed to load gear blanks into lathes. Another division uses robots to load the finished gears into heat treat machines. Drive an American made Honda? my robots clean and deburr all the axle castings. I wrote all the code, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hours of a system I designed, programmed, and implemented, and never a hiccup.

I also developed a standard interface to automation systems that is in use all over the country these days, and I’m now applying that concept to other, non automation type equipment.

No, I’m not a “degreed” engineer. I wouldn’t consider myself one, because with rare exception, most engineers I know couldn’t find their ass with a geiger counter.

As for the ‘tradesmen” you see, Jimmy boy, “Hanging around the unemployment office”, if they’re any good they’re working, simple as that. Ever make a kitchen cabinet, Jim? hang a sheet of drywall? wire an electrical outlet? Change a water pump? Lay a hardwood floor? You can’t wipe your ass without the “tradesmen” you scoff at.

Let’s look at some of the uneducated, unwashed masses, shall we?

Here’s a guy you probably don’t know a thing about, named Oliver Heaviside. Heaviside was almost entirely self taught, left school in the sixth grade. Wait, he’s even stupider than those eight graders you mention, Jim! He’s so stupid that by calculation alone he predicted the existence of a layer of the iopnosphere that now bears his name. He’s so damned dumb that he invented Vector Calculus. Simpleton stuff, really.

Lest we forget those from other continents, feast your eyes upon Srinivasa Ramanujan. A guy who, had he lived, might have figured out the Unified Field.

Then there’s this guy, Harry Pope, who made the finest rifle barrels in the world, at the time- barrels which are still highly prized and sought after. Self taught.

Another grade school dropout you might know: who worked for this
insignificant fool…. He was probably just addled. They bought steel made by the bessemer process, developed by another self taught man.

Now, I dislike Vonnegut as much as the next guy, for the most part, but I have to quote him here:

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”

There are a lot of autodidacts out there, though not as many as before. Some think this is a sign of the way the world has gone.
I think it just makes those of us who are, rarer and more valuable.

So pound sand, Sir Fredric James. I’m not sure what you’ve done with your life, but I bet you can’t open your eyes without encountering something my technology has touched or improved, in some way.

Oh, and by the way? As for the

“Not much to darken these days, if ya ask me.”

Where’s YOUR blog, fuckwit?