Monday open discussion
jfiore | June 30, 2008This past weekend was high school graduation weekend for most of the schools in our area. At times like these, I sometimes hear folks waxing nostalgic about certain teachers who made an impact on them. I never had a chance to thank a couple of teachers who taught me extremely valuable lessons that served me well over the years, so here goes.
First, there was my fourth grade teacher. She introduced to me to an idea which has always stuck with me, and which has served me well in my many years as a college professor: Adults, and teachers in particular, can be wrong. Up until this time I had…
jfiore | November 5, 2007Electronic Engineering Times has released their annual salary survey. Among 1600 respondents, median income including benefits for electrical and electronic engineers in North American now sits at $108,800. That's about 4% higher than last year. Two thirds declared themselves satisfied with both their career and employer. In sub-areas, the big winners are in engineering management and marketing at $133.9k and $123.9k. Component/chip design came in at $115.k, R&D at $111.1k, and Internet services at $110k. Further down, software design came in at $106.9k and system design at $100.9k.…
jfiore | July 16, 2007It's amazing the things you can learn from a simple quiz on a morning radio show. But not the item that was intended, that is. A station that my wife listens to while getting ready for work often has one of those "Seventh caller who gets this question correct wins free tickets to the phone polishers convention" or some such crazy event. Usually, the questions are very easy. Things like "What color was the brick road that Dorothy followed in The Wizard of Oz". Something you could answer in your sleep (which is probably appropriate as I'd venture that most listeners ARE half asleep at that…
jfiore | April 9, 2007The April 8th edition of ABC's This Week With George Stephanopulous featured a blurb with Walter Isaacson who will be releasing a biography of Einstein shortly. In it, he pushes the idea that Einstein was a deeply spiritual man:
He said he was like a child walking into a library, and you see the books and you know somebody must have written them, and you see them ordered and you know somebody must have ordered them, and there's a sense of awe that's manifest in that, where you kind of understand that there's an order underlying everything and the more you appreciate it, the more humble you…