This photo is a circuit using an op-amp (operational amplifier), a chip whose function causes the electronics community to begin talking gibberish. They can’t say how it works, so they go on about differentials and saturations. See the two little white potentiometers? When you twist them to the same value, the light comes on. Now was that so hard to say? Circuit-wise, I’ve gone about as far as I can without more equipment. I’ve built every example in the textbooks, often exceeding my ability to understand, measure, or control the results. I’ve apparently rigged up a “comparator” that works when two voltages are the same. No, that was not obvious, it is amazing the desperate lengths to which all known electronics authors have gone to avoid simply stating that. Thus, I’ve built and tested another gadget I don’t have the tools to operate or enough meters to measure.
How’s all this study going, anyway? We could write a small book on integrated circuits by now. And such books desperately need to be written. Searching for plain English descriptions [of components] is like “trying to find the midget waiter in a flock of penguins”. By now, we’ve covered the entire scope of common ICs. We vastly overestimated what these could do. I’m reminded of the bushmen in “The Gods Must Be Crazy” who warned N!xau that the end of the Earth could be as far away as twenty days. ICs can add, divide, store, count, and compare. That’s about it. There are hundreds of boring slight variants but really not so many different types. A lot like South Beach, I’ve heard tell.
My contention that anyone who passes the law exams should be allowed to practice receives another boost. But not one that makes me happy. California has given a license to an illegal immigrant. My contention is that bar associations stack the courtroom by blocking anyone who might buck the system. I say it should be the marketplace, not some rarified guild, that determines who gets the business.
Like any private organization, they can restrict membership, I’m not disputing that. But if practicing law is contingent on membership, too many potential court-room fire-eaters are being excluded for the wrong reasons. It is undiluted fantasy to think a fair trial is possible when the judge and defense attorney play poker at the same country club. A defense attorney should have no personal qualms over pouncing on a judge who shows favoritism. Anybody who’s lost a “his-word-against-mine” to a court that prefers the cop’s version knows what I mean.
Still, California’s granting a license to a person openly committing a felony is a step toward granting the same to a person who has merely been convicted of one.
Don’t you love rainy days when I’ve obviously been reading the newspaper? How about that “top” story of the shootings outside a Houston strip club? Ermagard, let’s have a moment of silence for men and women at, in, or near strip clubs. They are people, too. In equally profound news, you know those 50 top-rated reviews I did for ePinions? In the last three years they’ve earned me a whopping $37.44. The quality of what you read on the Internet general reflects what they pay for.
Not that you would, but if you read the want ads for writers, all they want is hacks. Sports, restaurants, ad copy. Not one intellectual or academic topic. Their idea of thought-provoking is a lone page of puzzles sandwiched in the comic section. Despite publishers losing ground to other formats, the editors continue to pump out the hum-drum to the faceless masses.
Margaret Thatcher
Wolfgang Mozart
Leonardo Da Vinci
John Lennon
Isaac Newton
