From: Karen Simmons

Date: 19 Aug 2005

 

Please continue your work.  You are providing a valuable source of knowledge and experience.  (I sent a comment a month or so ago, but wanted to elaborate after reading through the site further.)

 

Reading your informative and commendable site has provided me with a wake-up call. Not because I didn’t understand the beauty and flexibility of the relational model – but because I never realized that people who DON’T understand it are alive, (un)well, and spreading misinformation.

 

I’m appalled at the level of ignorance documented on your site. I consider myself a novice with relational databases, because of my limited practical experience. I’m a recent college graduate, and for the most part have only been functioning as a report-writer/analyst for the last five years.  I’ve had the experience of working with some horrible, sloppily designed data storage systems.  Getting accurate, usable information out of these was like extracting blood from a stone.  In comparison, I was able to work with a better designed system that enabled me to fulfill any request for data resident in the system, no matter how obscure.

 

So with my limited experience and undergraduate education – how on earth is it that I seem to understand relational fundamentals while others with far more experience (for example those in your Quote of the Week section) just don’t get it?  Is thinking logically and rationally so far beyond the majority of our population?  Unfortunately evidence seems to support the idea that logical thinking is beyond the ability of most of the individuals that comprise our species.

 

In my “Introduction to Databases” courses in school, we were exposed to the mathematical foundations of relational design – but the majority of my classmates found it boring and a “waste of time”.  They wanted to jump right in and start “making databases”, as if it’s nothing more than setting up a few tables.  At the time, I didn’t realize such an attitude was indicative of a more widespread problem and lack of desire for knowledge and understanding.

 

Q: What happens when you try to teach a pig to sing? 

A: You annoy the pig and frustrate yourself.

 

Unfortunately, you are trying to turn a yard full of pigs into a choir.  But please, keep trying.  Some of us appreciate and learn from it!!

 

 

Fabian Pascal Responds: What you are watching/describing is not just a data management, or even an IT problem, but rather a serious societal problem: the collapse of the educational system and its replacement with vocational training; and the dismissal of science in favor of engineering at best, faith at worse. Ignorance becomes knowledge, and stupidity becomes wisdom. Orwell would readily recognize his NewSpeak.

 

Here are exchanges with other readers:

 

From: Andrew Hughes

Date: 24 Aug 2005

Subject: Bush administration's hostility to science

 

BBC news: The Struggle Over Science by Harold Evans. Another one for the 'SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT' section?

 

Keep up the good work.

 

From: Fabian Pascal

 

Bush represents America better than people think. He is not the problem, the public who elected him is, something nobody wants to talk about.

 

When corporate market capitalism destroys education, this is the logical consequence.

 

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/perspectives2005.May.htm

http://perspectives.carnegiefoundation.org/read.php?1,230,232

http://liberalorder.typepad.com/the_liberal_order/2005/08/declining_by_de.html

 

 

From: Carlos Augusto

Date: 26 Aug 2005

 

Amid concerns that America doesn't produce enough technically trained young people, mainframe computer users and developers are especially concerned. Most computer science students concentrate on small-computer technology, such as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems, or the popular alternatives Unix and Linux. Few have been trained on zOS, the operating system that runs IBM Corp.'s massive mainframes.

 

 

From: Fabian Pascal

 

Most US practitioners today are self-taught, or took vendor courses (academic education has morphed into vendor training too). They operate in cookbook mode, have no general knowledge that is applicable to any hardware or software, and can't think or reason if their life depended on it. That's what a CS degree was supposed to give you, but it does not anymore.

 

Those who think that the rise to power of Republicans in general and Bush in particular is the cause, are mistaken. These are the consequences of the real problem.

 

There is no society in history who gave up reason and knowledge and survived in any functional form and, as indications are starting to pile up, neither will the US.

 

 

Posted 11/11/05