🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, SunnyJim wrote:
> 
> A bunch of letters at the end of someone's name means nothing. Lots of
> Phd's drive cabs and many more without anything have amassed great
> wealth thru their own drive and determination. Education means nothing
> unless you are appealing to a crowd that requires the comfort of some
> level of education. Backroads and other high end bike touring
> companies have lots of bike mechanics and tour guides that have BA's
> and MA's. See what that got them.

So you are ignorant and proud of it?

How come someone as smart as you isn't a millionaire?

The biggest lesson out of the current economic system is that wealth
generally belongs to a hereditary clique, eg. William Gates III, etc.

Getting a degree doesn't mean that much and doesn't guarantee a job, but
people with a clue make the right choices. I was about to start the final
year of a physics honours program when I realized that the same Ph.Ds that
were teaching my first year labs were still teaching labs 4 years later.

A switch to a 5 year double major left me with a double degree in physics
and computing that has left me with virtually guaranteed job security and
no reason to put up with a working environment I don't like. I remember
having envious people commenting "you're lucky to both still have jobs" to
my wife or myself back in the depression/recession in the early 80s. We
just give them a puzzled look and ask if they knew any unemployed computer
programmers. There were a few in Ontario, but the concensus was that they
either couldn't move for some reason or were the ones who could only get
employed when employers were extremely desperate. Even as a student I had
someone call me once and offer me a job as soon as they heard me tell them
what SPSS stood for.

It's quite interesting how many people with science or engineering degrees
end up in computing. As for letters after your name, that gets you in the
door, but you can either make computers do what they are supposed to for a
reaonable cost or you can't. If you can't people won't pay you to stay
around unless they are very desperate, which does happen sometimes.

http://www2.mybc.com/news/bc/fs.cfm?source_id=&id=898877
"IT workers in short supply: study
VANCOUVER (CKNW) - A survey commissioned by the federal government 
shows what the information-technology sector has
been saying for years: IT workers are in short supply."

http://www.shrc.ca/lmi/index.html

Why an I going on about IT? Well for one thing, it will overtake forestry
as an economic factor in the province, if it hasn't already. The only
limit is the number of qualified employees available. It takes a lot less
time to train an IT professional that it does to grow a tree. Forestry
propagandists used to trot out bogus statistics using ridiculous spin off
factors to try and inflate their position in the economic scheme of thigs,
but people figured out that it was bogus decades ago. IT just keeps on
growing at double digit %s every year, while old growth available for
strip mining/clear cutting gets scarcer every year.

BTW, I'll take the views of anyone with a biology or related degree over
yours anytime, but why waste your time trying to convince people in BC? 
It seems that the market places of USA and Europe are where the real
decisions are being made about what is happening in BC forests. If you
can't peddle diapers or newsprint made out of centuries old trees there is
no point in cutting down the trees in the first place. You don't even have
to convince the entire consumer base. Even a 1% shift in buying preference
is enough to get the attention of wood fibre industry customers.