I hear ya! However, our field is also one in flux. While the guys that studied mechanical engineering in my school in the eighties would still recognise the teaching today, many of the techniques for programming in the large, management etc. weren't even (I hesitate to say, because it's not really true, but bear with me) invented then.

So I think things will probably move in that direction, slowly but surely. However, even those engineers needed to know about Euler's four cases of buckling, or what strain is, etc. Likewise a programmer worth his/her salt need to know about and understand algorithmic complexity etc. (Something I know these "learn X in three months" schools don't necessarily teach to a sufficient degree), so it's not a simple question of throwing all the "old" stuff out, either.

However, we do surely need to leave/make room for (unfortunately very time consuming) projects large and small during college. Damned if you do...

And at Chalmers in Sweden (one of the top two engineering schools, "polytechnics") I had all those courses available in the late eighties, early nineties.

However, one problem is that in order to grasp those subjects you first have to grasp the basics. And those takes time to aquire. As I tell my students today; "Remember, it takes ten years, or ten thousand hours to become an expert. This is the first half of that" (our engineering degrees are five year programmes).

Now of course, you'll come across management issues as you mature (it's inevitable it seems), BUT if you didn't have the basics, you wouldn't get the junior position that would eventually lead to your current problems. So it's really a chicken-and-egg problem. We can't teach you everything at school, there comes a time when we just have to chuck you out and let you sink or swim, and learn on your own.

Or not doing too well, esp. the Ukraine.

They even got US and Russian promises that "nothing bad will happen, we promise. Cross our hearts and hope to die" and all that...

You mean they don't have to have types at all? That's even worse...

Or is it just one of those tedious semantic confusions that are so common when discussing programming languages and types. Do you mean something else by "dynamic language", if so what exactly?

You're welcome. The elephant in the room when it comes to maritime safety is really twofold, alcoholism and sleep deprivation. The 6-by-6 watch keeping that is common means watch personell build up a sleep deficit that isn't helped by the rampant alcoholism (fueled by boredom and tradition). So more often than not, the reason ships run aground, esp. at night, is that the one guy on the bridge falls asleep at the wheel. Of course, no amount of radar or other currently available electronic navigation aids will help in that situation.

Well, that's close, in that you need time, but not necessarily a chronometer. That was what Harrison had against him, the committee favoured a celestial approach to measuring time as well. And that did work, but the calculations were so onerous that they took literally hours to complete, for less accuracy than could be had by Harrison's chronometers.

If Harrison's chronometers were the only way to determine longitude, then the committee would probably have come around a lot sooner. That Newton himself, as the chair of the board, wasn't all that keen, certainly didn't help. In fact while he didn't object to chronometers per se he did object that if it became unreliable, only celestial timekeeping methods could even hope to put it right again. Something that was true until the advent of radio.

So the chronometer is an item of (practical) convenience, rather than theoretical necessity.

Wow, you're a land lubber then, despite living in Valdez... :-)

OK, where to begin. Disregarding the drunk captain (who I'm told taught navigation in NY to mariners after the incident...), historically first and foremost you don't use celestial navigation if you have land marks to navigate by. That is to say, when in coastal waters, the sextant stays in it's coffer. When you're in coastal waters you use "piloting" skills, hence the name of the specialist you take aboard your ship for extra sensitive tasks. (I.e. the pilot). Piloting uses bearings to visible land marks (rocks, houses, light houses etc), depth readings etc. to establish your position, and compass and log to update it by dead reconing. In the age of technology many of those bearings could be taken by radio direction finding (of radio beacons), manually and via radar. The radar can of course also be used to get bearings and range to other (radar) visible landmarks. That's how ships could pilot in poor visibility, by using so called "radar navigation".

Now, you don't use a depth gauge (whether a knotted line, or a sonar one) to avoid a shoal. By the time you've detected it you're already either on it, or much too close for comfort. Instead navigation by depth reading is done to keep you i.e. in the middle of a sound, or comfortably far away from a coast etc. (Very useful when you have gently sloping costs, that are common in sandy regions. If you sail outside a beach, you can often rely on depth for navigation. Rocky coasts, not so much.)

Now, what to do when you can't navigate by landmarks. That's where celestial navigation comes in. If you have the proper knowledge (tables) a way to measure the apparent height of a celestial object (sun, moon, star) and an accurate clock (which ships have had since the late 1700-hundreds), then you can determine your position on the globe. Now, for reasons of simplicity most ships that still bother with celestial anything resort to a single noonday sun reading, as that's a simple thing to do, and doesn't require you to be as precise with your timing (and working out the position is simplified). Since you're in the middle of the ocean anyway, you don't need to a fix more often than that. You can safely use dead reckoning until next noon. However, should you want to (and have the correct tables) there's nothing stopping you from using the sun as long as it is visible at any given time of day (back in the day, sightings were often taken at least once a watch, i.e. every six or four hours), or the stars at any time they are visible. The moon is also usable, but since it moves so quickly over the sky in relation to the stars, taking a moon height requires skill and dedication, and hence navigational stars are preferred.

All this is historical of course. The merchant navy doesn't even carry the equipment to navigate celestially anymore, and they're not skilled in its use. Today it's GPS and everything else a distant second. Radar navigation skills are still practice however, as it can come in very handy.

So, when it comes to the Exxon Valdes, having your radar turned off if radar navigation thorough that sound was warranted, would indeed be a court martial offence. "Sonar" would have probably been of very little use, as a depth reading will only tell you that you're seriously off course (soundings on charts are only so accurate) and with a ship that size, you should already be well aware of that fact if you're to have any chance of saving the day. Even thinking about using celestial navigation in narrow coastal waters should have you forcibly removed from the bridge, as that couldn't tell you anything you needed to know in time to do anything worthwhile with a ship that size, moving that fast. Celestial navigation is for the open water, period.

P.S. We got the double hulls now and they're not all they're cranked up to be. You see, they don't actually use more steel in the construction of a double hull tanker. So it's the same amount of steel now divided into two thinner hulls, with an empty space you can't get to. Rust, however, can. So you now have a rusting time bomb that you can't inspect and that isn't that much sturdier than what you started with. Many believe the double hulls that are sailing since the Valdez spill are nothing less than ticking time bombs that will starts to go off any day now...

Well, history is funny that way. I'm not well read on Hearst and hemp, but it is a plausible scenario given that economic factors are not fixed but varies.

Say that you have two competing technologies that could potentially come to dominate the market. Even if they're not that different, say one is 10% "better" than the other, that doesn't mean that the better one will dominate the market, or that they will take market share according to their relative "goodness", or even that the "better" one will win. There are many other externalities as play, such as did one get a head start? Does it have a lot of backing? Etc. Look at the many format wars for entertainment over the years (VHS/Betamax, "HD-DVD/Blueray, etc. etc.) the first to market, with some small advantage will typically, due to network effects, come to completely dominate the market over time. So if I were Hearst, and I had just bet a pretty penny on wood pulp based paper I would certainly try to put as many obstacles in the way of the competition as I could. If I could just pull ahead a bit, I'd have time on my side to eventually guarantee complete market domination.

So why don't we make industrial hemp based paper even where we have industrial hemp? Because there isn't enough of it in places where access to wood pulp based paper is difficult enough. The wood pulp train continues on its own momentum, and derailing/dethroning that, at this time, with something that's only maybe 10% (or 20% or 50%) better isn't going to happen. There's simply not enough money in it to make the switch and write off the sunk cost (not just plants and distribution facilities, but all the knowledge, training/teaching etc. etc. that we have of the wood pulp based process). If you want to beat out an entrenched competitor you have to be 10 times as good, not 10% better.

Of course, there are a lot of "ifs" and "buts" when it comes to any specific market, but the overall economic theme is difficult to get away from. As soon as society starts to do something one way, it takes a lot of effort to change that. The rewards have to be substantial for it even to be considered. Which relegates hemp to the status of "also ran" when it comes to paper.

Well duh! Emacs is written with Emacs, so that's trivially true.

Only with the old style "straight jacket" static typing. With a modern Hindley-Miller type type system, effort is a wash at worst, and in most cases static typing is a clear win as you're not nearly as dependent on testing to find the simple, common brain farts or typos. (And if you're using tools to find those, then guess what? Then you're using static typing, only poorly implemented static typing.) Also, those types, when you've taken the complete step towards typeful programming, serve as wonderful documentation etc.

In that case there's no solution anyway, so the only question becomes whether you do it like in Sweden, i.e. where the patient in most need gets the best surgeon at the best hospital, or you do it likt in the US, where the "richest" patient gets the best surgeon in the best hospital.

And that's, incidentally, why we have much, much better outcomes for the same money.

But in general the answer to your question is "yes". In Sweden you can go to any hospital/doctor to seek treatment. If the same treatment is available by your own county, you can be made to wait a couple of weeks, but even that's not a hard rule, if you push, you can go directly. It's not uncommon for your local doctor to discuss with you where you'd want to go, when you're going for a speciality that is of the "one of a kind in the country" that you seem so afraid you'll miss.

No, I pay out the nose. No question about that. :-) However, I pay a lot less than you do, since that how insurance works (or rather, I pay about the same, but get much, much better care for my money). If you have a large pool with no individual management then insurance gets dirt cheap. Ask any insurance company, it's individually that costs money. (That's why so called group plans for i.e. home insurance you can get from e.g. your union in Sweden are so popular. They're usually about a quarter of the cost for the same service, and that's not because insurance companies are cutting their profits.)

Now, of course your "podiatrist" spiel is just silly. With health care based on need, you'll just be sent home if it turns out that you don't actually have a need. And that's the way it should work. Now of course, if you'd actually go to the doctor because you're to lazy to cut your own toe nails, I'd prefer our system. If you think that's why you're at the doctor there's a good chance there's something wrong with you, but at the other end of your body, and I'd much better that you'd actually go to the doctor then, then not being able to, due to cost. I'd much prefer to have those people in the hands of psychiatrists than running around complaining they can's see a doctor.

No, it's usually yearly for kids, and that's quite frankly often enough.

Also, dentistry (same as in the US) is usually not part of the universal healthcare, but a separate system, so there's a lot more variability in dental care than healthcare proper in the EU. In Sweden for example, only kids (until 18 yo) get free dentistry, as an adult you have to pay your own. Unless of cours it becomes a systemic health care problem.

It's less of a surprise if you consider its pedigree. Al Jazeera took over many if not most of the staff of the Arabic BBC world service channel that was shut down by the BBC as a response to Saudi censorship demands.

So, with that kind of heritage, it's not that surprising that they should be good at what they do.

Nope. As a computer scientist educated in both logic and engineering, it's pretty clear who's words needs to be taken with a grain of salt and who's doesn't.

Hint: it's not his... Misreading "statics" for "statistics" is a huge enough warning flag.

Sure, but that also made it unpopular for its "excessive" wounding effects. That's one reason it was changed. (Even though you aren't signatories to the relevant conventions, you still profess to follow them).

But this is getting off topic. :-) We were talking about the vaunted firepower of the SMLE. While the Lee Enfield might have scared the Germans at Mons, it was past its prime by WWII. Now, 20 (or indeed 30) rounds out of a (semi) automatic that's a whole 'nuther ballgame, the capabilities of the round itself notwithstanding.