Jay wrote:
It's like arguing with a religious zealot. There's absolutely no point talking to you.
Jay, you are amongst the unclean heathens - you are not of the
Brotherhood of the Ivory Tower.
Your accomplishments have been relegated to banal tedium and common toil.
It has been decreed by a High Priest of the Ivory Tower.
Accept your Judgement,
weep for your sad fate,
and do penance for your hubris.
Uzique wrote:
these people are at the top of their chosen field, which is a lot more than 99% of other working-people can say that just struggle along with everyday tedium and averageness
Ha!
Practical engineering has a separate set of challenges.
Designing new & novel systems, from a perfect theoretical standpoint can be challenging (and fun!).
Now, a proper challenge is designing a robust & reliable system around a limited budget, semi-skilled labor assembling the project, limited plant installation space, regulatory (EPA, etc) permitting limits, imprecise input materials, imperfect (or partially failed) subsystems, maintenance requirements, accessibility requirements, etc etc. (Nevermind the management of egos, meetings, and organizational bullshit involved in any substantial project)
Now, if you can maintain any semblance of the original (pure) theoretical design elegance, while accomplishing the practical engineering implementation, you're a damn good engineer. Top of your field even.
Any half-competent undergraduate can design a novel theoretical system - it takes real engineers to make it into a robust, working deliverable product.
Not to denigrate cutting edge academic theoreticians. The 'Ivory Towers' certainly have their share of the 'best and brightest', but academic theory isn't the only place the "top of their field" can be found.
Uzique wrote:
pog college
Unless you're attending a national military academy, I think they're ALL POG colleges. POG:
Person Other than Grunt, i.e., non-infantry.
[/sarcasm]