I believe I'm permabanned from SDN now... it took me less than an hour. Beat that!

[TJHairball]

You seem to have issues of inferiority and insecurity. Are you sure a trek vs. wars forum is the right place to work that out?

I've seen the math on his page, its consistent throughout.

Actually, his website is highly inconsistent. I actually offered him the olive branch of simply going through the inconsistencies rather than waiting until he found someone with my qualifications, but he didn't take it up.

I don't like him (I think he's a dick half the time and he probably thinks the same about me) but he's not dishonest.

Actually, he is. See above.

You're the one screaming about a vast conspiracy to defame your character and education.

No, no vast conspiracy... simply Wong and a few of his buddies trying to justify their delusions.

 

[missmanners]

And this thread gets!

:meh:
mm

 

[TJHairball]

A last good nail in the coffin for the SDN crowd.

Are you going to bother to respond to the fact that my B.A. ECONOMICS degree demonstrates substantial overlap with your course requirements from App. State?

I responded to your uninformed assertion. You neither understood what classes corresponded to what or what checklists mean what. (Yes, it's a bit of a mess sorting through all the checksheets and figuring out what's actually needed for a degree.)

The college I went to is part of a close-knit consortium that includes 4 other colleges, including Pitzer College (SAT average around 1200--a little higher than App.State's), and the courses taught at Pitzer, and the average student going there (there were exceptions) were NOTICEABLY weaker than those from Harvey Mudd (average SAT score around 1500) and Pomona (average SAT score between 1450 and 1500).

None of which, incidentally, I would've had lower than average incoming SAT scores (or outgoing GRE scores) at.

App State is a fairly large public university. The good students there would be good students anywhere, and the upper level courses are geared appropriately for that.

Besides which, you're drawing a bad comparison. The engineering program at Waterloo is huge - something like 5,000 students out of 23,000 - and Waterloo accepts 66% of the students who apply there. About a quarter to a third of those actually decide to go to Waterloo.

You're not going to convince me that this is an elite population of students to start with, even if it is a world reknowned program. Heck, Appalachian accepts 68% of the students who apply, and 37% of those actually go to Appalachian.

Then my guess was right. If 52 out of 140 of his credits are physics math concentration then that's really around 7 or 8 credits out of 20 or only 30 - 40 percent of his degree physics and math.

Actually, I had more than that in department, let alone in concentration (i.e., including the various applicable math classes.) What I took relevant to concentration was no less than 75 credit hours, or 15 out of 20 units as you measure it.

Damn scary shit, really three times the education! Give me a break retard.

Three times the relevant education.

TJ: Took over thirty courses in math and physics, only 10 at the freshman/sophomore level.
Wong: Was required to take about a dozen courses that could pass for physics or math courses, most at the freshman/sophomore level.

TJ: Demonstrated above average competence in his fields in nationwide competition and examination.
Wong: Managed to get certified to work as an engineer.

TJ: Went on to graduate study.
Wong: Didn't.

TJ: Graduated with honors from an obscure (outside of the region) mid-sized public university that admits 68% of applicants.
Wong: Graduated without honors from a well known (in Canada) large public university that admits 66% of applicants.

TJ: Took broadly applicable courses in philosophy. (Only one philosophy course - philosophy of mind - doesn't relate to anything that's commonly discussed comparing Star Trek and Star Wars.)
Wong: Took narrowly applicable courses in mechanical engineering, almost none of which have proven relevance.

TJ: Took (and passed) >60 actual courses as an undergraduate.
Wong: Took ~40 actual courses as an undergraduate.

TJ: Took his general classes seriously enough to be invited to join half the departments he took a class in.
Wong: Can't be arsed to see the positive point of courses outside of a major.

TJ: Aced four straight courses on logic.
Wong: Probably hasn't even taken one.

TJ: Capped off his undergraduate work with a senior thesis.
Wong: Thesis? What?

TJ: Guilty of over-acting and bad acting. (I am utterly preposterous!)
Wong: Guilty of dishonesty.

Now, you may dispute my assessment that I have three times the relevant education... but I feel fairly comfortable asserting my superior education, just as I assert the ridiculousness of Wong claiming that only someone with an education like his can make arguments worth debating.

 

[TJHairball]

The admission rate means nothing. The failure rate, and the admissions controls do. Am I to believe that a university is utter shit based solely on the number of people they do or don't let in?

You claimed a selective population of elite students. High rates of acceptance and low rates of decision deny that probability. You may have some very good students in the mix, but it's hard to say that one that just scraped by in the program without scoring any honors or accolades - as Wong did - is going to be a student who would've gotten in anywhere.

Waterloo has placed in the Putnam mathematics competition consistently, ranked 17th and placing in the past few years with the likes of MIT, Harvard, Princeton. Where the fuck is your university? Is it there at all? Do you think people are fucking stupid?

Large universities that take serious effort in training their Putnam teams do well on it. When my father was going through his undergraduate work in math, he and all the other honors student were put in a seminar whose purpose was basically to train them to take the Putnam.

Personally, I rolled out of bed one morning and was told that I ought to take the Putnam. I got a 19 on it. I was disappointed, of course, but perhaps you should explain a few things to the audience about the Putnam before you continue to talk shit about my education.

Nobody is going to be fooled by a science major saying he's got a better education than an engineer,

I would have thought nobody would be fooled into thinking someone who is primarily vocationally trained has a better general education than someone with roughly three times the math and physics coursework.

I'm sure the ME program at Waterloo trains very fine engineers. That doesn't mean those same engineers are also capable mathematicians or physicists in comparison to, you know, actual majors.

Why the fuck does he mention public? Are public universities a poor education in the US?

Not at all. Appalachian's sister school in the system, UNC - which it is frequently compared with locally, and rarely comes off too badly in the comparison - is top notch. Certainly more widely ranked and known than Waterloo. North Carolina has a very good public university system, supplemented with a high quality community college system.

I find it hard to believe that UW admits 66% of its applicants to the engineering program. It's actually quite difficult to get in.

UW admits 66% of all applicants to come study. Approximately 20-25% students at Waterloo are actively in the engineering school to gauge by what I've read on Waterloo's site (5,000 out of 20,000-25,000, IIRC).

 

[TJHairball]

Engineers are very good at math you dumbass. At least as good as majors, given there is considerable overlap in courses.

Which is why I've taken close to three times the math that a bachelor's mechanical engineer does?

Engineers don't take courses in quantum. They don't address relativity. They don't deal with exotic phenomena. Engineers deal with tables, approximations, and very practical ranges of reality - something that's rare in fiction.

If you rolled out of bed and got 19 on the Putnam, you're either smart or a liar.

Given that a 19 is in the top 500 list circulated to all participating universities, I'd be pretty dumb to lie about it. It's completely legit.

So's my physics GRE score, which is well above average if not quite as impressive.

Now chew on that. Think about your preconceptions for a minute, and mull over the fact that I am one of those folks who is talented in every academic field I try my hand in, and the fact that my credentials are, in fact, quite solid and exactly what I've told you they are.

Either way it doesn't justify your claim that your education is three times better, has three times more math, or is three times anything.

Three times as broad. Three times as relevant to the sort of crap talked about here.

Wong is a specialist in plastics making assertions about epistemology, logic, ethics, and more. He's way out of his field - at best.

and you attacked the credibility of UW.

Not once have I attacked the credibility of UW. I have consistently described UW as a very good school, in fact (although, see above, it isn't actually highly selective in general admissions terms. Neither, for in-state students, is UNC). See, here's one of the things I really don't like about you folks - you distort constantly what others say. Then the next person quotes you and distorts what you said, and before you know it, something completely different is being claimed than what was actually said.

I have attacked Wong as completely untrained in philosophy and horribly wrong, as well as being completely ridiculous in his posturing in claiming that nobody with a real science degree would disagree with him.

I pretty damn well have a real science degree. Ergo, he's flat out wrong.

There's already people who said they had engineering degrees, science degrees, and even math degrees in this thread and other threads, and you claimed that none of them had as good an education as you.

I claimed that probably none of them matched my credentials. In part an act calculated to produce hostility; in part completely true prediction, as not one of you has produced a philosophy degree, which is, IMO, the most important part.

Now that the stardestroyer.net thread is on google, it could do serious damage to his reputation, and it's not good to be used if this tjhairball guy isn't McIntee but using his name to tar it.

You worrying about lawsuits now that it's public enough to constitute slander?

 

[TJHairball]

Okay, now that's just stupid. These are engineers we're talking about here, not plumbers. At my alma mater they take some of the same courses as the pure math and physics students. Okay, so they don't take courses in general relativity or higher quantum mechanics, but really, is that so important to what you call the relevant education that you're willing to dismiss it as vocational training?

Typically, engineers don't even deal with special relativity or any serious quantum mechanics. Or the philosophy of science, or logic, or any of those other goodies.

And yes, that's highly relevant to a handful of the claims and explanations produced regarding the VS debate... and the education of the person making it is completely irrelevant to whether or not the claim is correct or worth addressing.

THAT is what my dramatic entrance was all about. As I thought I said already.That, and the absolutely ridiculous claim that nobody who was well educated would disagree with him.

 

[Gagh]

Yes.

 

[Shitty Dual]

Didn't SDnet have a longtime member murder his father IRL?

 

[Grandtheftcow]

Didn't SDnet have a longtime member murder his father IRL?

That'd be Stofsk. He was a nice guy online and I rather liked him while I posted on Darkstars short lived Star Trek vs Star Wars board. Unfortunately he apparently didn't get along well with his father and well anyone is capable of murder.

If I recall he was convicted and is serving out his prison term.

 

[Tamar_Garish]

Where Wong really got his degree:

http://www.diplomacompany.com/index.php?target=pages&page_id=international_ordering

 

[Grandtheftcow]

You know something else crossed my mind. A few years back a longtime member there was instantly banned when it was revealed he was being charged with possession of child porn.

Does anyone know who that was?

 

[VKD]

That'd be Stofsk. He was a nice guy online and I rather liked him while I posted on Darkstars short lived Star Trek vs Star Wars board. Unfortunately he apparently didn't get along well with his father and well anyone is capable of murder.

If I recall he was convicted and is serving out his prison term.

taking his obsession with star Wars a little too far perhaps? Do you think he took off his father's helmet as he lay dying? :lol:

 

[CaptainChewbaca]

That'd be Stofsk. He was a nice guy online and I rather liked him while I posted on Darkstars short lived Star Trek vs Star Wars board. Unfortunately he apparently didn't get along well with his father and well anyone is capable of murder.

If I recall he was convicted and is serving out his prison term.

In that trial, the judge was so shocked at the conviction, he actually told Stofsk that he didn't think he was guilty, but had to sentence him according to the law (australian judges can't overturn verdicts). From the transcript I read, they didn't have any physical evidence, and apparently Stofsk became 'emotional and upset' when an undercover officer tried to blackmail him saying 'I know you killed your father'.

Which is, you know, understandable.

You know something else crossed my mind. A few years back a longtime member there was instantly banned when it was revealed he was being charged with possession of child porn.

Does anyone know who that was?

I hadn't heard about that one, I'll look into it.

 

[GStone]

Does anyone believe his bullshit at this point? I'm honestly curious. If you're reading this post and do, register an account and say so.

I do. Just like I believe the grim reaper lives in my butt because he's freezing. The bloke's only got a robe to wear on his bones. That scythe is never warm.

It's funny these versus debaters display such a high level of appeal to authority in members who claim to have an engineering or physics degree. They're talking about two fictional universes that constantly shit on science throughout.

I guess it takes a science degree to make it sound plausible.

No, it's just to get the discussion outside of the kindergarten level debate of Spider-Man versus Batman.

It wouldn't be necessary either because the explicit words of the canon are sometimes disputed. For instance, there was this very recent book. It said one device worked one way. Those that had that idea before this book said it said 'We told you'. Some of those on the other side said 'Maybe they were right all along'. But, others said 'No, they're still wrong and we're still right because blah blah blah'.

brianyeci also said something interesting and worth replying to:

10+ hours per week per course is very typical of physics courses at Appalachian. The 3 credit hour standard is supposed to correspond to about 10 hours of work.

10+ hours per week per course is also very typical of students in any 3000 or higher level philosophy course at Appalachian.

He does understand that these are not programs from 3 thousand years ago, right?

 

[Gagh]

This is easily more pathetic a thread, than ANY of my spam threads.

 

[Hero1000]

I went back there in response to Wong issuing a challenge to anybody with a "real science or engineering degree" to come disagree with him.

Here is the thread. I got banned about five minutes after posting what's now the initial post of that thread in another thread, apparently in order to prevent me from debunking Wong's subsequent lies about my education and alma mater, so I'm posting it here so y'all can at least have a look. Especially poor TK resident CaptainChewbacca, who seems like he got completely suckered by Wong. (Poor Chewie! Always check facts presented by honesty-deficient folks like Wong! Nub.)

Wong has claimed that a degree in physics from Appalachian involves a "core of six classes and 4-5 courses in a concentration, posting this edited version of the Appalachian Physics B.S.:

Curiously, not one of Stardestroyer.net's mindless sheep has seen fit to actually looked at the checksheet he edited out significant portions of. Nor have they bothered to even read and find out that Appalachian isn't a "community college."

Like the part where the physics core includes 6-8 more hours (2-3) classes, or the actual concentration checksheets, which make it clear that actual concentrations at App are a minimum 6 courses, not "4-5."

Or the part where, after the 62 hours in classes relating to the major, an additional 60 hours of credit are required... only around 30 hours of which are accounted for by the general core. Meaning that regular Appalachian physics students regularly take between 60 and 90 hours related to their major field of study, and 75 is quite typical.

Or the part where a standard (normal) class is 3 credit hours and represents ~10 hours of work a week (sometimes the ratio between credits and work is higher the physics department), meaning that what he's representing as a 5 year-course units related to the physics program is in fact 10-15 year-course units related to the program. Whoo! How's that for a "Big Lie?"

In comparison, he has posted this schedule for the University of Waterloo physics program, and claimed that the coursework for an Appalachian degree "...wouldn't even get you through the second year of an equivalent program at another university..." citing the large number of courses.

Reviewing this schedule, Appalachian's standard mathematical physics program would definitely get you through the first two years of this program even if you took minimal numbers of courses. The course breakup is different, of course; Appalachian likes to combine its lower level courses, which makes it difficult for freshmen to get AP physics credit in (because the intro course corresponds to AP Physics B and AP Physics C in terms of lecture material, and then has a lab tacked on.)

Heck, even being generous to Waterloo, most of the third year material is also covered at App, and there are a few things I recall covering that I can't figure out when they would have put it in before then. Of course, most of those were elective, like the course I took in differential geometry (and how are you going to talk much about general relativity without taking diff geo?)

(And Waterloo is supposed to be the #1 or #2 school in Canada for that kind of thing? Of course, since MIT only actually requires 13 "courses" it wouldn't make a good example for counting courses, even if it is rated higher. I guess MIT isn't such a good school, huh?)

He also chooses to completely ignore the firmest and most final measure of a bachelor physics program's effectiveness:

Rate of successful graduate study.

Currently, about 5000 Americans graduate with physics bachelor's graduate each year, and about 500 graduate with physics Ph. Ds. 2,000 people get master's degrees in physics in America every year (including the ones that just came over here to get 'em. Sorry, no breakup by citizenship for master's degrees.)

Of Appalachian's physics graduates, 10% have gone on to successfully complete Ph. Ds and 50% have gone on to successfully complete master's degrees. The deviation from average bachelor's behavior can be explained perfectly by the fact that ~10% of the departments graduates included in those statistics are graduating from a terminal master's program - most of those too recently to have had a chance to earn a Ph. D.

Whaddaya know. It's like... a normal physics program with average results! Not a top school in physics, but I never claimed that.

A "community college program," as the SDN-sheep are claiming? Bullshit. Inferior - with, mind, equally serious programs in mathematics and philosophy - to Wong's singular bachelor-level engineering degree? Bullshit, even leaving alone my assorted honors and accolades.

Good for a laugh when you realize just how much emotional investment Wong has in his engineering degree? Depends on your sense of humor.

Did I let myself get trolled but good? I'll grant that.

Congrats, dooder

 

[Sendell]

POST CALCS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[GStone]

This is easily more pathetic a thread, than ANY of my spam threads.

It easily happens when you bring in a versus debate. When you want to make it the ultimate patheticness, it should be about star trek and star wars.

 

[Cassie]

Obviously Star Trek is better.

 

[JCady]

Hey Hairball,

Over on SD.net you said

Engineers don't take courses in quantum. They don't address relativity. They don't deal with exotic phenomena. Engineers deal with tables, approximations, and very practical ranges of reality - something that's rare in fiction.

That is not true, or at least not categorically true at all universities.

The undergraduate academic core requirements at my current university -- which everyone has to pass regardless of option -- does indeed include physics up to quantum and relativity. Specifically, we have a three-term freshman physics sequence which is Newtonian mechanics, electricity, magnetism, and relativity, then a two-term sophomore physics sequence which is statistical physics, waves, and quantum mechanics.