Question for Mr Ed: did you include geologists as engineers or scientists?

If Mr. Ed included geologists with engineers, there will be a lot of ... oh wait, he's an engineer.

Never mind!

My brother is a joljist. It'll be a cold day in hell before I ever call him a scientist, and it's a plain fact that he's not an engineer (no engineering degree, no iron ring, IQ over 80 although no much over, etc).

"Oil worker" might be closer, although that's a pretty broad category.

I know a couple geologists with a PEng after their names..... ;)

I actually fall into at least three of the catgories listed.

And Kate? How'd ya know I was in my PJs??????

Not too many protest sign holders, tree huggers or Suzuki apostles in the list. I guess they figured out that whiney arrogant dweeb is not an occupation.

The list also explains why with the exception of trolls, most of the commentary and debate here is loaded with facts and first hand knowledge.

WK just got rug pulled out :)

His ranting about the free and opened Internet being a problem because of the quality of commenter's just got shot down.

Also, there must be 'another', 'behind the scenes' motive for no-comments-allowed on musings.

No need for Mo Strong and the United Nations to control the Internet because of quality problems. Try the media.

Another commenter survey sugestion;

o Rank your personal respect for the following occupations

Carpenters, Ranchers, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, ....... Political Party lawyers/Strategists

Just about every occupation imaginable is employed with government. I would be curious to know how many on this occupational survey get their paychecks from the tax-payer.

I am hoping not many since I believe this blog to be a haven for private sector tax-slaves.

It was a great idea to survey your readers Kate. Very impressive array.

I am also curious about the possibility of an unintended consequence. Might some of the future comments be colored by the knowledge of who is reading them?

I am in my robe at this moment.

No POLITICIANS ?? Hmmmm.......

Just a suggestion in the same vein ... levels of education completed would also show some interesting results. My primary job concern is sales, but I do have a degree.

BTW - CBC was at it again ( propagandizing ) last night on The 5th Estate

Well Yanni, speaking as someone who earns every damned penny of my tax payer funded cheque (you will notice I bothered to spell it correctly), especially during the 5 plus I have been deployed overseas in the last 16 years, I think you know where can take your holier than thou attitude.

Hobbes1970? This is not directed at you or anyone else here, but as the smartest man I ever knew once said ,"Any relationship between education and intelligence is purely coincidental". Education is a poor indictator of intelligence at the best of times.

Let*s see. Stop gap measures before going to school.

Service trucking firms, (2) sold for profit.

Home building / renovations / cabinets. Private contracting.

Hope I can decide what to do when I grow up = TG

TG, you can always grow up to be a (electric) used car salesman. ;-)

I don't know if the level of education would be a valid benchmark of anything. After all, a BA (Barely Able) or a PHD (Piled Higher and Deeper) may look nice on the wall but so does a McDonald's Employee of the Month award. More telling I think, is the fact that so many have moved from career to career and are still exploring the world. For some of it might have been a move of necessity, i.e. Mr Cretien's Air Farce doesn't need your services anymore. But I think for a lot it is more the pursuit of knowledge and experience that has always driven humanity, except of course for those content to sit around and let someone else take care of them (like guvmint).

Don't worry about comments like "knuckle-dragger", the lefties project every time they open their mouths.

When they're calling 'stupid' it's because they're stupid. When they take the moral high ground it's because their morals are degenerate. When they fling out their racism accusations at the drop of a hat it's because they are bigoted and racist to the core. When they see corruption and conspiracies everywhere it's because, given half a chance, that's how they would do things.

The world centers of knowledge advancement and progressive thought are the USA and Israel. All the fanatical supporters of the financially corrupt Kyoto scheme are on the left. What does that tell you?

We know what 'socialists' are - stupid, immoral, racist conspiracists with a murderous and oppresive hidden agenda.

Not too many bureaucrats in the list. Or union leaders.

[sarcasm]

I agree with Yanni, can't have those goverment teat sucking soldiers cluttering up this blog, can we?

[/sarcasm]

Anon Said -
"Don't worry about comments like "knuckle-dragger",...."

We know! sigh................

Wise up idiots soldiers don't count as civil servants they are soldiers ... for christ sakes you must know I am talking about the office workers whose job it is, is to try to come up with ideas to justify what they do and to control the rest of us.

"Well Yanni, speaking as someone who earns every damned penny of my tax payer funded cheque (you will notice I bothered to spell it correctly), especially during the 5 plus I have been deployed overseas in the last 16 years, I think you know where can take your holier than thou attitude."

Jim,

You protest too much. What's your problem? I am bilingual I speak and write both American and Canadian. I am pretty good with Ebonics as well.

I know how to spell in Canadian, but I was raised in the US and use their spellings because they make more sense to me.

If you are a pissed of soldier, bummer, if you are a civil servant working in an office overseas and wish you weren't ... that's your problem

Let's hear your story Jim, why are so you so tense and behaving like an attack dog?

Seems to be a number of regular commenters not disclosing their occupation.

John. May I inquire what business it is of yours?

"Seems to be a number of regular commenters not disclosing their occupation" Such as???

I can't blame Jim for being a bit defensive. As a retired Silly Servant, we take a lot of heat from those that really don't know what we do. Like any other job, there are the whackos and malcontents that screw the pooch every chance they can get but, surprisingly, many of them are quite dedicated and productive workers. I've worked in both the private and public sectors and find the difference mainly in management styles. If you've got a beef about how your taxes are being spent, talk to the "Crats in Ottawa, don't belittle the front line folks. They're just doing what they are told to do by an inflated and out of touch bureaucracy.

Jim,

Sorry, I use two different computers to comment, one has my name as John, the other has my Greek name for John which is Yanni. I changed it with this comment.

So let's hear your story. Why are you so offensively defensive?

Rattfuc 1:46pm

I would somewhat agree with you. There are a lot of dedicated civil servants. The people of Ottawa, are, by and large, just like everywhere else. It is the 'system' that is somewhat rotten.

TC; "Seems to be a number of regular commenters not disclosing their occupation" Such as???

I do not remember seeing Alby's and John Cross'. May have missed them --- pages and pages.

After looking at the numbers, it is is clear that there is a shortage of physicians who read SDA. A bit of browsing via Google gives estimates of ~250,000 engineers in Canada and 66,289 physicians (in 2002). This gives an engineer/physician ratio of 3.77. Searching the list of occupations for "doctor" and "physician" gave only 3 people. Based on the 61 engineers who are regulars here (before the flood of additional engineer readers made their presence known), one would expect 16.2 physicians to read SDA if occupation numbers were based on the Canadian population. This shortage of doctors may be as a result of there being far too few of us in Canada and most of them not having any time to read blogs, but I suspect there are other reasons. I find myself getting into heated arguments with my medical colleagues who often seem to be of a statist bent. Maybe I should have followed my first inclination and become an electrical engineer before I got sidetracked into biology as I seem to think more like an engineer than a physician.

Well, I know for certain that alby (since banned for a despicable attack on Kate) is a student.

I'm absolutely shocked at how many air traffic controllers there are on here, since we only number about maybe 2000 across the country. (That's just a guess, though.)

When I collated that list, I counted geologists as scientists. Lots of people had multiple professions, and in those cases I tried to categorize them according to the primary or most recent occupation.

In some cases I was not successful in categorizing them - what the hell does the guy who wrote "I grow crystals" do? Is he an artist, scientist, engineer, what?

OMMAG, I can't recall off hand if there were any politicians listed; if there were then I categorized them under civil servants.

Thank God for spreadsheets, and thanks Kate for giving me something to spend my time on during a recent bout of insomnia. ;)

KATE CURES INSOMNIA isn't exactly a ringing endorsement;-)

Yeah, TC, but "working on an Excel spreadsheet at 2am, categorizing hundreds of people by job description" is a sure-fire insomnia cure. ;)

Just about every occupation imaginable is employed with government. I would be curious to know how many on this occupational survey get their paychecks from the tax-payer.

I'm on the other side. I write software for personal financial planners, and a lot of its function is involved with minimizing taxes.

Well Yanni/John, I was being neither offensive or defensive. I was stating my position as regards your warped and uniformed view of the vast majority of the people that work for this country.

Let's take a look at my last pay statement shall we? For the first five months of the year we have:

$7657.89 Federal Tax
$1404.78 CPP
$537.08 EI

Seems to me I am paying my fair share. What ya think? That give me your permission to read this blog and maybe even post on occasion?

For the record? I am not a soldier. I am a sailor in Her Majesty's Canadian Navy. I was a hard rock miner for the five years prior to the day I walked through the gates of Cornwallis.

So, speaking as someone who has paid their fair share of taxes for the last 21 odd years, I can tell you it sucks no matter where the cheque comes from. The fact that you pay your taxes out of the private sector does not make you part of some special or privileged group. It most definitely does not give you any moral high ground with regards to those that earn their way working for the government.

Lots of politicians read the blog, if the ip's coming across my logfiles are any indication. ;-)

Remember, though, that most of them have primary occupations. At least, the Conservative ones do.

Maybe I should have followed my first inclination and become an electrical engineer before I got sidetracked into biology as I seem to think more like an engineer than a physician.

Well loki, I would have to say, reading the analysis you give before making this statement, you would probably blend right in with the engineering crowd.

(That's a good thing in my opinion, not so good in my wife's opinion.)

Actually Alby did post his occupation. He said he was a moonbat (seriously).

Actually Texas Canuck...you're right when you say that "Kate cures insomnia isn't exactly a ringing endorsement".

Considering her personal attractiveness and obvious intelligence, I would have surmised that sleep was clearly a lesser option...

Loki wrote: "After looking at the numbers, it is is clear that there is a shortage of physicians who read SDA. A bit of browsing via Google gives estimates of ~250,000 engineers in Canada and 66,289 physicians (in 2002). This gives an engineer/physician ratio of 3.77. Searching the list of occupations for "doctor" and "physician" gave only 3 people. Based on the 61 engineers who are regulars here (before the flood of additional engineer readers made their presence known), one would expect 16.2 physicians to read SDA if occupation numbers were based on the Canadian population. This shortage of doctors may be as a result of there being far too few of us in Canada and most of them not having any time to read blogs, but I suspect there are other reasons"

Yes, I too was surprised by the low numbers of docs and other health care workers. My mother-in-law is receiving chemotherapy. The oncologist just about had a heart attack when she saw what I was reading.....America Alone by Mark Steyn. She has never looked at as quite the same since then.

Alby has been banned for gross negligence. It was Beria who said his occupation is moonbat. John Cross is away on business for two weeks (he wrote that here last week), a few weeks ago he said he is an engineer.

The relationship between education and intelligence is not purely coincidental, although the correlation is often low, especially in some areas, like the angry studies departments. Of course, it can be argued that what they call education actually isn't, which further supports the conjecture.

I certainly don't a priori hold it against someone that they are a civil servant, Jim, indeed, to the degree that we have some degree of government we need some degree of civil servants, and the better it is to have more of them who don't see Canada from a Marxist perspective. The endemic problems of any civil service system cannot be laid at the feet of every employee thereof.

At least in Alberta, professional geologists and professional engineers are both members of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA), so there is at least some argument for categorizing them together. (I am not a member of APEGGA, and therefore do not call myself a professional engineer, though I do have an iron ring.)

One very important place to keep the lines of communication open is between doctors and engineers, because they generally have different but important perspectives on the human condition. So keep up the good work, Loki, I always look forward to your comments here. Let's not forget that Kirk's principal officers were a scientist, an engineer, and a doctor; I see no reason for it to be any different here on SDA-1701 ;-)

I'd be interested in knowing what the readers' MMPI, Myers-Briggs, or Keirsey-Bates types are, and how our aggregation varies from the species norms as a whole. Anyone want to bet that we're high on the NT side and low on the SF side?

Well Jim,

It appears that your main bitch is your level of taxation.

But take heart you are paying your taxes with other people taxes ... not much economic risk in your life.

I wouldn't normally have said such a thing to a man who served in the forces, but your unprovoked and brutal attacks on me, tell me that even though you may do noble things with your life, you are still quite the asshole.

Well loki, I would have to say, reading the analysis you give before making this statement, you would probably blend right in with the engineering crowd.

(That's a good thing in my opinion, not so good in my wife's opinion.)

I think that being able to think mathematically and mechanistically is a very good thing, but it does have negative emotional impacts on some people. When I was a medical student in an obstetrics rotation one of the educational components involved us spending our shift with one of the incipient mothers getting to know them before assisting at the delivery. The woman I was assigned already had her husband with her for support and there's only so much conversation that one can have on the subject of how frequently contractions are occurring and their intensity. A nurse came by to attach a fetal HR monitor to her belly and it was malfunctioning. When I looked at the arrangement of the electrodes, it was obvious to me that it was completely wrong for cancelling out noise and a few minor adjustments resulted in a perfect fetal HR signal on the monitor. This didn't impress the patient, but her husband then chose to mention that he worked for DEC and we started discussing computers which seemed like a much better use of time to me. When the patient was about to deliver, she pointed at me and loudly said "he's not delivering my baby". Since then I've learned to play appropriate doctor roles for various clincal situations but technical problems are an ever present distraction/temptation whenever I'm in a highly instrumented setting like an ICU or CCU.

You can reassure your wife that some geeks can learn people skills and over the years I've developed a new set of wetware modes dealing with various aspects of medicine. They work so well that patients are usually very surprised when they find out about my geekish past.

Dear me, I only confessed to engineering prof. I ought to add corporate research scientist, physicist, mathematician, construction worker, printer/binder, stockboy and beer taster!

In the matter immediately above, I think you are being unreasonable, Yanni. On the other hand, your comment in the original thread and above as to what effect this survey may have on future comments was, I think, insightful. I know I certainly will take this new data into account; I don't see why that would be a problem.

"iberia" is a moonbat.
"lberia" is a ex-trucker, ex-stoker in the Canadian Navy, ex-heavyduty mechanic and currently a machinist.

In the original thread, a Mr. Beria reported "Machinist" at 2007-01-01 10:45 and "Moonbat" at 2007-01-01 12:16. If the second entry was by an imposter, that wasn't challenged by the real Mr. Beria in the original thread; I was simply reporting from the available data. Indeed, I thought the second entry was Mr. Beria attempting to be jocular. Should I have known better ;-?

Well, I thought the comment was funny, so let the imposter have fun. 8>D

Vit,

You may be right about my counter to Jim, but I had no intention of alienating anyone, I merely put forth the idea that this is not a place where the typical government bureaucrat (usually a leftiist as my experience tells me) would come to perch his brain. I noted an absence of MSM types as well.

I might have originally thought to exclude potential servicemen since I am a big supporter of the armed forces, but Jim seems to have take a dislike to me and as you can see has been pretty rude even after I explained my views on servicemen. So on the other hand, I may be right you know, he may just be an ass.

One more point, Jim's first attack on me suggested that my American spelling was offensive to him which, tells me that he may not be too enchanted with Americans either ... another leftist trait.

Andfinally, if blogs are to be assessed as spelling bees or bastions of good grammar, they will always fail miserably on both counts.

One more point, Jim's first attack on me suggested that my American spelling was offensive to him which, tells me that he may not be too enchanted with Americans either ... another leftist trait.

And finally, if blogs are to be assessed as spelling bees or bastions of good grammar, they will always fail miserably on both counts.

My take on it is that Jim responded a little hotly, Yanni took the bait, and then you guys wandered from the topic. But you called him an asshole, Yanni. That's where I think you crossed the line.

In the original Mini Survey thread, at 12:37, you wrote, "Now that I see what a truly class act this site has become based not only on your offerings, but the clientèle, I shall be more thoughtful and polite in my future comments". As I said, I thought that was insightful. Perhaps, I thought, with this new data we will all be a bit more thoughtful and a bit less trivially bickering.

And then you called him an asshole.

well kate you had it wrong, I'm not in jammies at all I'm nekked. that's right! 47 yr old plumber, butt nekked.
now what were you saying about class act vitruvius, sorry to interrupt...

Alas, Kelly, I shall not take the bait, my comments are on the record, I let them stand.

I'd be interested in knowing what the readers' MMPI, Myers-Briggs, or Keirsey-Bates types are, and how our aggregation varies from the species norms as a whole. Anyone want to bet that we're high on the NT side and low on the SF side?

Excellent point Vitruvius although somewhat ironic that it takes an engineer to see this. I'd forgotten about the Myers-Briggs personality inventory (MBPI) as this is a tool used by psychologists and we have our own ways of doing things in medicine;-) Lots of online tests available and my profile is ENTP. (Just as you predicted Vitruvius).

Nice thing about MBPI types is that there are only 16 of them and the proportions of the N. American population that fall into the various types are well known. If everyone who posted their occupation(s) also did MBPI, this would represent a very valuable chunk of research data. It's clear to me that the population of individuals who contribute to/read SDA is significantly different than the Canadian population, but it would be really interesting to know quantitatively how they differ.

My gut feeling from perusing people's occupations is that there appears to be a proponderance of individuals who have engaged in a greater number of lifetime occupations than one would expect from a randomly selected sample of the population. The educational level also appears to be quite high (as is obvious from the very high quality of the posts on SDA). I was going to try my own analysis of occupations tonight, but thanks to Vitruvius, I'm now researching MBPI. What I'm supposed to be doing is a medical legal report, but it's much more intellectually stimulating here.

I'm ENTP too, Loki, though 30 years ago I was INTJ. My NT indicators have always been over 90% on both axes. My E, I, P, and J indicators have always been border-line, and over the years I've trended from IJ to EP, which as I understand it is normal, with age, for NTs. Or as you put it, "over the years I've developed a new set of wetware modes dealing with various aspects [...]".

I do find the personality inventory types concept interesting. I've taken Keirsey-Bates every few years (I have the book, and I know there used to be an on-line test, but I can't find it now), more or less just for fun, yet as a result I've noticed some interesting phenomenon, such as the weak indicators varying depending on what sort of problems I was working on. Meanwhile, as I understand it, the taxonomy is principally subdivided by the middle two axes, which is why I mentioned NT and SF.

For those of you who are interested in this topic, you can start here - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
Loki, do you have a URL link for an on-line inventory classifier?

We probably should not hijack this thread on this matter, but perhaps Kate may at some point introduce the topic, in which case having researched the issue one would be in a position to comment. For the record, I don't think personality typologies are scientific, I think they're interesting. You'll have to decide for yourself.

I confess that it was me that was the "iberia=moonbat" imposter. I thought it was kind of cute at the time.

I'm not very well know here at 'dead critters' as I tend to lurk more than I post, but it's still fun to be a part of this remarkable site of Kate's.

I think I also figured out that "terrence" might be my uncle from the left coast!

Interesting that you were initially INTJ, Vitruvius, as this is the personality type most over-represented in engineers being 4.88 times more common than in the general population (from http://www.eng.monash.edu.au/uicee/worldtransactions/WorldTransAbstractsVo1No2/05_Capretz15.pdf)

I'm only a few hours into researching this topic and the MBPI does have the advantage of huge amounts of data and a long history, but I have thus far found no neurochemical basis for the personality types and even more worrisome, no data thus far on the stability of MBPI categories over time. My current area of interest is bipolar spectrum disorders and it would be very interesting if extraversion correlated with hypomanic mood. Psychiatry (at least the DSM4 version) tends to be categorical which means either you have a disease or you don't whereas those of us in primary care medicine know that things are very rarely this clear cut (maybe the people we refer to psychiatrists are) and the MBPI is a type of continuous measure that might be usefull here. (Sorry Kate, I'll stop here).

Like you, I've also noticed a seeming change from E to I depending on problems that I'm working on and when I'm heavily into a major programming project (far too infrequently now unfortunately), I might not talk to or see anyone for days at a time whereas if I'm stuck, I'll take my laptop and head out to a bar to work. The last major programming project was the result of a touch too much extraversion where, at a meeting, I declared a particular problem to be trivial and that I could provide a working program in a week; I'm getting too old to survive on 2 hours of sleep/night for extended periods of time but I did manage to provide a crude but working demo within a week.

Now that we've got two MBPI data points, we need more data (subtle hint to Kate).

I'm INTJ, is anyone surprised?

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Well a final few points Yanni or John or whatever you are going to call yourself today.

1. You assume I am anti-American? Well ya know what happens when you assume. I have served with and alongside my American brethern for most of my time in the Navy and I have nothing but the greatest respect for them.

2. Someone (me), has the gall to disagree with you, therefore that person must be an asshole. Now THAT is a leftist trait.

3. Am I unhappy with my level of taxation? Is there someone out there happy with their level of taxation?

4. Brutal attack? That was brutal? Live in Disney Land do you?

5. Am I an ass/asshole? Not normally, but in situations like this I tend to work to the level of the competition.

End, out.

"I confess that it was me that was the "iberia=moonbat" imposter. I thought it was kind of cute at the time.

I'm not very well know here at 'dead critters' as I tend to lurk more than I post, but it's still fun to be a part of this remarkable site of Kate's.

I think I also figured out that "terrence" might be my uncle from the left coast!

Posted by: Eskimo at June 5, 2007 1:30 AM "

Well. Thanks for the confession,as it is good for the soul(whooopppss..that was meant as non-religious :) ), but you really didn't have to post that. Most people here,IMHO, figured out lberia long ago. But why risk your rep by playing to his silly game by pretending to be him? Just asking.

Please add one Ph.D. scientist to your survey, Kate - me...

Add another real estate person to the mix, AND I'm a member of Mensa.

(I know, it's kind of stupid, but I joined when I was 19 on a dare and I keep up my membership now because (1) they have very cool parties once in awhile and (2) it irritates my pagan friends no end when they look at my science degrees and my tested IQ AND my happily devout Catholicism.)