Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips For what it is worth, and I think it is worth much, read or review Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” I didn’t take many English courses in college (just one). While happy, at the time, to skip needless courses, I sometimes regret what I could have learned. Then again, I was […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Old metaphors indicate many problems. One result, however, is that they prevent thought. Thinking is a pretty good practice, and I discourage anything that reduces it. The old metaphor should be avoided. George Orwell wrote about this in his essay on Politics and the English Language. Orwell wrote it much better than […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We don’t want to be slow. Stop all slow processes; be quick. There are, however, slowing processes—things that cause pause for thinking. And thinking is almost always a good thing. “This is slow. This is too slow. Let’s stop doing this,” said a frustrated person who has a good idea (or in […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Almost anyone can gather the material. Organizing it or creating a story from it, however, appears to be a rare yet valuable skill. We have lots of information. Go to Wikipedia. Download PDFs of the pages. Concatenate the pages. There it is. Go to a search engine. Find a dozen hits. Copy […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The ability to immediately talk at length about a topic often shows a lack of forethought. “I could talk for hours about this.” I have heard that many times. I have said it a few times. What I later learned after saying it myself was that I had failed to think about […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In order to move on with other matter, from time to time we accept approximations and use them. That is fine as long as we acknowledge such. Water boils at 212° F. Well, sort of. There have been many experiments performed on various things we call “water.” When is “water” really “water” […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If I cannot think of three things wrong with my latest great idea, I am not thinking enough. Great ideas. I get lots of ’em. Great successes? Not so many. And why not? Because most of my “great ideas” have problems, many problems. If I spent a little time trying to find […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An old wise technique is being forgotten, again. This is an old technique, but let’s run through it again. Make it work Make it better Please do these two steps in order. Please do both steps. Do not stop after step 1. I read daily about people attempting artificial intelligence and machine […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We used to discuss this topic, but with different choices. Time passes. People discuss this on the Internet. Today’s question is “R or Python?” Good grief, two interpreted languages that run slow. But they are good for prototyping things, bringing in mammoth libraries, and writing useful things in ten lines of code. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips After the pandemic, some of us will return to the office building on some days. When? Why? Let’s think a bit. The pandemic is over, I guess. It is time to commute to the office and work there. Right? Well, maybe. There are several activities for which online telecommuting doesn’t fit. This […]

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