Hi John. Nice piece. Not sure we were in that same class... but we might have been. My memory of the same department (and probably the same prof) , was of being excoriated for proposing a scheme for electric transport. Some of his critique of my paper on the topic was correct. Some, in hindsight, was utterly bogus. My other memory of that era, in this vein, was of jumping on the bandwagon of heaping shame and vitriol on James Watt for, well... everything! For being a Christian, for living his views... darnit, for existing!! That was a wee bit off also.
Thanks! I remember an essay assignment where you had to imagine you were a bigshot corporate decision-maker and come up with a plan to reduce energy usage. I couldn't imagine such a thing (though in retrospect, it may have been appropriate for many of our classmates! Indeed I've since been on the outskirts of several useful such projects), so I wrote a fantasy in which I owned the Red Sox, scheduled day instead of night games, and pushed the league for geographical realignment to reduce travel costs. Plenty of bogosity on both the teacher's end and mine, but I got a decent grade because at least it was unusual.
The class was full of fascinating issues but lacking in intellectual rigorous approaches to thinking about them. Sadly, I could apply that description to many disciplines of the era... although maybe that critique shows I learned something!
My idealism (and pride) about our alma mater being "intellectually rigorous" in the '80s (much less now) took a big hit when I read what one of its great lights actually said--stuff which would get him banned (or at least shunned) today: https://bit.ly/Hopkinslectures
Hi John. Nice piece. Not sure we were in that same class... but we might have been. My memory of the same department (and probably the same prof) , was of being excoriated for proposing a scheme for electric transport. Some of his critique of my paper on the topic was correct. Some, in hindsight, was utterly bogus. My other memory of that era, in this vein, was of jumping on the bandwagon of heaping shame and vitriol on James Watt for, well... everything! For being a Christian, for living his views... darnit, for existing!! That was a wee bit off also.
Thanks! I remember an essay assignment where you had to imagine you were a bigshot corporate decision-maker and come up with a plan to reduce energy usage. I couldn't imagine such a thing (though in retrospect, it may have been appropriate for many of our classmates! Indeed I've since been on the outskirts of several useful such projects), so I wrote a fantasy in which I owned the Red Sox, scheduled day instead of night games, and pushed the league for geographical realignment to reduce travel costs. Plenty of bogosity on both the teacher's end and mine, but I got a decent grade because at least it was unusual.
The class was full of fascinating issues but lacking in intellectual rigorous approaches to thinking about them. Sadly, I could apply that description to many disciplines of the era... although maybe that critique shows I learned something!
My idealism (and pride) about our alma mater being "intellectually rigorous" in the '80s (much less now) took a big hit when I read what one of its great lights actually said--stuff which would get him banned (or at least shunned) today: https://bit.ly/Hopkinslectures
Great story!