What to do with Brad? (Yet another Brad McFall topic)

That all I can do when I try to compress FROM a conclusion. Ok, yes the reference to RUSSIAN WORK DOES NEED MORE, explanation, please wait and know that while we did not hear these sounds in Zaire in 86, JUD apparently was able to get these fish to sound off. The lab was the the first to get them to breed. This species came in buckets full.
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All I got to hear there were catfish. I went there with JDCRAWFORD.I took moust of the comments as positive, but I was concerned with what Percy might have been leaning on(to).This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 10-20-2004 03:40 PM

Well, Brad--even acoustic fish have SOMETHING to say, although I don't know if they are attempting to communicate with any other than other acoustic fish. BTW I enjoy your posts...they are a bit like N.Y.Times crossword puzzles...you have to google all of the dropped names and try and piece the puzzle together! I fear that the motive for this topic was started by me, when I in jest suggested that you be the drill sargent at Boot Camp.
EvC Forum: New Administrator - AdminJar
I was merely joking, however. I agree with the majority when I say that you are an asset and our adopted, brilliant yet offbeat Uncle.

Well, it looks like most of the others here have already expressed thoughts similar to my own, but nevertheless...I really don't think Brad has done anything to deserve confinement to the Boot Camp. Yes he is hard to understand...ok he is extremely hard to understand, but as Lam said, restricting him to the Boot Camp is highly unlikely to actually do any good.I've been "scanning" Brad's posts (as opposed to reading them, which I gave up long ago) pretty much since his first days here and as far as I can tell, he has never been any different. I honestly don't think he can be any different. I certainly don't think he does what he does deliberately. In fact, I get the impression that he thinks his writing is clear. I'm sure it all makes perfect sense to him.I previously had an exchange with Brad in one of the many "Brad threads," in which I made some suggestions as to how he might go about writing a little more clearly. Some of the pertinent posts are #102, #107, #116 and #122.Without re-reading them all (and momentarily ignoring the obvious things like punctuation, paragraphs, etc), I believe that my main points regarded the way in which his thoughts always appear to come flooding out, by the millions.He has said that he is often pressed for time and can be very limited in how long he has to get everything down. I said that this often results in his train of thought being nearly impossible to follow, and that it would be far more worth his while to focus on one specific point and get it across clearly than to squeeze everything his time will allow into a post that nobody can comprehend.I also suggested that if this doesn't do it, he might consider composing his replies offline, when he can give them the required time and thought. I said that perhaps he could use his time online to simply take in (and if necessary, note, save, print out, etc) those things which he wishes to reply to and write his responses at a time when he isn't so pressured to think on his feet.I said that he may even try replying to just the "light" topics while here, and saving the "heavy" ones for later. Admittedly, this would put him slightly behind everyone else but my point was that it would be worth it if it results in him expressing himself more clearly.Something else I thought he could try was a "reading aloud" test. Before posting something, he could read it aloud to see if it sounds like something he would say in person. Or better yet, read it aloud to somebody else and ask them if they understood.If you're reading this, Brad, I'm interested to know if you tried any of these ideas. They were merely suggestions, of course, but I'm curious whether or not any of them were of use to you.Also, some general comments. Somehow, I don't think there is any need for concern. I, for one, seriously doubt that there are many others out there like him. Frankly, I'd be stunned if even one other "Brad" were ever to turn up at EvC. This is something I've always wondered about, myself. It has occurred to me in the past that it might be educational for Brad to post, say, an excerpt from one of his papers. I would be very interested in seeing the result of a written piece that he has put considerable time and thought into. As one of his problems seems to be rushing to "get it all down," seeing something he's had the necessary time to spend on just may give us some insights into how he thinks.He may even have done this already but I haven't read that vast majority of his posts over the years, so does anyone know? If you're reading this, Brad (and if you haven't already done this), would you be willing to post something from an essay, thesis, etc that you've completed?As always, no pressure or anything. If you'd rather not, no problem. It's just a thought. I agree; I'd hate to see him leave. Even though I haven't paid more than cursory attention to the majority of Brad's posts, for some reason that I can't quite fathom, I really like him.In fact, it was precisely because I'd so frequently ignored his posts (and got the impression that others generally did the same) that I wanted to help him out, in the first place. I think it's a shame that such a...let me see..."unique" mind gets ignored so often because of our inability to comprehend the posts it produces, and I long for the day that the lines of communication between Brad and we mortals become clear. Just think of all the stuff we can pick that lovely brain of his for!Of course, if Brad ever does become coherent to the point of being able to freely converse back and forth with the rest of us, will he really be "Brad" any more? Yes we do!

This message is for everybody rather than just Tony alone. Brad has mentioned at least once before that he uses internet access in the library. In fact, at the time he said that they were closing and were kicking him out, so he had to sign off for the day. This suggested that Brad didn't have home access to the internet. Since he could only go online in the library, I'd say that he has very little time to actually go deep into anything with anyone.Anyway, if EvC has a museum, Brad would be the best candidate to be put in it.

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He's not dead. He's electroencephalographically challenged.

Can I have your attention, please, Brad McFall?This message has been edited by Lam, 10-22-2004 12:30 PM

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He's not dead. He's electroencephalographically challenged.

Heh, thanks for the support, Lam. It looks like you think that was a half-decent idea I had.This is actually a thought that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a long time; "I wonder what Brad's Uni assignments look like." Well, I finally decided to suggest it so perhaps now we'll find out. Yes, I think this is part of the problem. He already has so many simultaneous thoughts trying to come out at the best of times. This becomes exponentially worse when he's rushing to beat the clock.Unfortunately, it's hard to know what to suggest because I don't know exactly how limited his resources are. I don't know if he is able to save or print out forum messages at his library terminal but I think he may need to try something along these lines.Also, I think you're correct that he has no internet at home, but I wonder, does he have a computer? If so, perhaps he could compose his messages at home, save them to disk and take it with him the next time he goes to the library. If not, he may need to use a work or friend's computer.Ultimately, I think it comes down to this; Brad needs to separate his composing and his posting. Does that make sense? In other words, one way or the other, he has to take the pertinent forum messages away with him (save them, print them, whatever) and write his replies to them while he isn't online. If he is unable to get access somewhere that he won't be pressured time-wise, I think this may be the only way to go.Now in all honesty, I don't think this will completely solve the problem. I really think there are larger clarity issues here than Brad simply typing away as fast as he can to get all of his points down before his time is up.However, knowing that this is at least part of the problem, I think it's as good a place as any to start. I'm actually curious to see if it does make a significant difference to his clarity. This is one of the main reasons I'd like to see something from his Uni papers.

Actually, I always wondered how his students' papers were marked?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You're right, jar, that's a good question. Professor McFall marking your paper; can you imagine?

I have not one mark on any paper this Fall. I was away in JERSEEY this weekend, and didnt do school work, so this might change this week, but instead I was offered a job there to educate at 200$ a session, people, about herps. I live in NY not NJ.

You mean something that has already been read, graded and returned?Well, I am not taking an "essay" based classes just now and I would have loved to have copies of written material of mine from Cornell from classes such as the Philosophy of Mind, Can Computers Think, and Science and Natural History (forget the name of this class exactly ( I wrote a paper on NORMS OF REACTION) which got me "promoted" into the COLLEGE SCHOLAR PROGRAM). I still have fragements of my application into this program where I described a desire to study downward causation. These works got lost during my period of illegitimacy and frequent movings around the East Coast. I had argued THEN that biology containing a diversity beyond any computer divided class implies that computer scientists will never artifically construct devices supersetable onto biological levels of selection. Now the reading has refined this to a concerned subset of such ontological confidence.I would be happy to WRITE a PHD QUALITY T-H-E-SIS on electrolytic cell division above overvoltage as THE CAUSE of the difference in continuous vs pulse electric fish species approving the probability therein that higher frequency fish have a LARGER supramolecular level of organization seperation in whatever sets of depolarizers/polarizers molecularly are involved. There is a logarithm relation between SVL and frequency in some fish which would CONSTRAIN the covalent bonds revolved inonically( from the electron's perspective) (not the photon as in Einstein's thought). The geographic differences might even become fully explained (SA vs Africa) by phenomenological thermodynamics graph relations but the work would have had to have been completed to see if the difference in process completion falls in clade division bifurcations or not. I do KNOW that Hopkins at CORNELL dismissed my 80s query that IT DOES MATTER how the ions flow (current density) outside the fish as well as in the Knollenorgan if one is to explain the behvaior of the critters. At that time he said THIS thought was Schizophrenic. I now have all the physical information to show that he confused behavior with ecology even if the thesis failed to be defended.No one here is "paying" for this. As you still think there needs to be a position of communication. I AM COMMUNICATING WITH YALL even IF YOU DONT OR CANT RECIPROCATE.

It doesn't have to be something that's been graded and returned. Just copy and paste something, anything, you have that's for academic purposes that's not related to biology. Post a letter to your mom or something. I told you guys Brad doesn't mind us not being able to understand him. I would seriously like to meet him in person. Sounds like a really nice guy to me.This message has been edited by Lam, 10-25-2004 12:30 PM

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He's not dead. He's electroencephalographically challenged.

Hey Brad,Just to let you know, your first paragraph was a lot more understandable than your second paragraph (though your second paragraph is likely more interesting... if I could fully understand it)

Yes, I am well aware of this difference.I am however not interested in yousall getting to know ME more than my ideas so rather than typing off pages OLD essays of mine from the 80s, I would rather anyone here, find the time, to incorporate this cognition in their own thinking.

Although in VRML there exist some ways to do real-time animation,
although some people developed PROTOS to control the production of time
events routed to interpolator nodes, until now there is no way to
describe historical worlds with time referenced geometries and events in
VRML and no technique to navigate in the time dimension, i.e. to go
into the past or into the future and see how the world looks like and
behave at that specific time.
From time referencing:
http://www.geovrml.org/archive/msg00250.html

From here, quoted in its entirety below: I'm not looking for debate of Brad's comments, but rather just some commentary on his writing form/structure. My formating edits were quite minor, mostly just adding some spaces between words.Adminnemooseus

It is not that I DONT CARE TO write slowly and accurately ( I had meant to take out the "K" above, but because I AM ALWAYS WILLING to respond ad nasusem, I am tired of not being understood as to the effect of concepts on what is said, so no, I don't have a problem with changes. If you think that by me writing in a different style will enable access of any others(who?) to these ideas, no, I dont think so, not so long as one does not THINK in terms of cardinalsANDordinals when considiering any quantity of biological objects, it wouldnt matter till then. Qualitatively we all have our own hobby horses and I am hoppy that some here do stick around for the inversion.