User talk:John Baker, Ph.D. (abd)

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ADB
Hi and welcome! If you don't mind me asking, what does the adb in your username stand for? --  rxnd  ( t  |  &#8364;  |  c  ) 20:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ooops... I meant the abd. I guess that I am a bit tired. --  rxnd  ( t  |  &#8364;  |  c  ) 20:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, I figured it out All But Dissertation. Thanks anyway :)  rxnd  ( t  |  &#8364;  |  c  ) 20:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC) (abd) 6 weeks away

"abd" can mean "all but dissertation," but it also means "all but defense." In my case, my university had improperly fired my major professor, the distinguished Harvard educated Constituional historian and political philosopher (University of Chicago), W. R. Goedecke, who became a life-long friend and mentor, and I was peeved about it. So even though I'd written my dissertation, its in the philosophy of science, and delt with T. C. Chamberlin's "method of multiple working hypotheses," (c. 1900)and received full college credit for it, I refused "defense." Thus I never completed that Ph.D. My web pages have a link to Chamberlin's landmark essay, [] just scroll down the page, reminding yourself to read some of the other essays, to the bottom and you'll find the link. I like to think I've completed many more Ph.D.s since I privately mentor graduate students and have "ghost written" dozens of dissertations for them over the years, in many fields of study. (:})

I was inducted into the Physic Honor Society and studied, on and off, under the Nobel Laureate Dirac. I was a System Analyst in the early '60s for SAC and the Minuteman ICBM. I daily carried launch codes and keys, as well as hydrogen bombs, sometimes in EOD conditions. Remind me to write an entry for what happened in L2, at Elsworth, AFB, SD, where in 1965, I think it was, we wound up with a warhead in pieces on the silo floor.

In that little known theromnuclear accident, involving a fully armed on duty wrhead, trageted for the Soviet Union, sitting on top of unattended and unrecallable ICBM, which could have reached its target destination in a bit over fifteen minutes, we came, in my professional opinion, as close to an unauthorized launch and/or stateside thermonuclear detonation as we have ever come.

I still have the occasional nightmare about it. Classified for decades the Brokenarrow accident at L2 has been mainly declassified, so the essay would be legal.

Despite my native and unexpected aptitude for this sort of work, (schools don't generally test for it, so it was news to me that I ranked in the top 0.0001 percentile, which if you do the math calculates out to a group of about 1 out of every 25,000 Americans) which in turn explains why the Air Froce had to wait months for eight or nine qualified airmen to enlist before they could gather a quorum for our nearly year long technical school.

The psychologists classify it as a "maze solving mentality." This, along my psychological tendency to get calm only during real emergencies, (I'm hyper all the rest of the time) earmarked me for this type of elite duty.

I well remember cooling my heels with temporary duty while the Air Force waited for that quorum. Since it isn't the policy of the AF to explain itself, I continued to bellyache to my tyrannical drill instructor, the only man I have ever met who had absolute black eyes, he was a slender, shortframed WOP, about the delay.

One afternoon he flew at me, “you stupid SOB, its because you four eyed freaks are a bunch of goddamn geniuses and not enough of your type are foolish enough enlist to drive the damn class. Now march!”

In my era students were not accelerated because of their superior mastery of subject matter, so I was “held back” in high school. My father had graduated from college before I had from high school. Different era, different educational philosophy. I came to believe by teachers, many of who seemed rather “slow,” must have been blind for not seeing my arm in the air begging to answer every question offered to the class.

When a reading instructor passed out a sheet of paper asking us to keep track of what we were reading, I was roundly chastised for complaining there was enough room on the page to tack the books I'd read that month. Since my reading skills don't test well, I think I made something like a 500 on the GRE, and it was thus only my 800 in math, which I detest, that pulled me up, she challenged me. But I quickly proved I had already read and could outline more books than fit onto her sheet. After that, she left me alone.

IQ tests scores were also not shared with students in those days, so I was shocked to discover the AF considered me some time of genius or wiz kid. My grades weren’t all that good, in fact I’d recently flunked out of college…where, much to my dismay, you actually had to turn in term papers and attend classes. Later I became an honors student, but not on that first shot.

Now why the AF would entrust nuclear weapons and launch codes and keys and keys to teenagers with a record as checkered as mine, I needed a “waver” to get into the AF, because of the several dozen speeding tickets I’d collected on my driving record, I’ll never know. (:})

But their tests and psychological profiles had done their duty. And, as time proved, I did mine.

I shunned working with nuclear weapons, even though the field paid well and my above Top Secret, Crypto, Q Access security clearances and Air Force experiences would have assured me lucrative and endless employment, I opted out.

Like Oppenheur, in my opinion, thermonuclear weapons are instruments of genocide and should be razed from the face of the earth. You'll never catch me working on one again. My only regret is that if I had stayed in the field, I would have lived to decommission the Minuteman system and become involved in international weapons inspection. I've taken an MA in International Affairs, along the way, so I would have enjoyed this sort of technical diplomatic work.

My worse fear is that somewhere, sometime soon, one of the poorly maintained weapons will detonate on its own. They aren't toys and boys shouldn't be playing with them.

Paleography, the study of writing
Is your Paleography, the study of writing article a personal essay? Did you copy it from somewhere else? Adam Bishop 00:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I just saw this sorry if I jumped the gun. I've added a copyright violation tag to the article. It is obvious this essay was not originally written for Wikipedia but was written somewhere else under a different context and for a different audience and was uploaded in a single edit with some minor formating changes. The author of the essay and its previous publication history needs to be outlined. After that it needs to be reviewed as it does not read like an encyclopedia article. -- Stbalbach 04:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Comments
When you leave comments for someone the correct place is on "User talk" rather than the user page. I moved yours over to User talk:Garzo. Also if you use the ~ it puts in your signature and date/time group, makes it easier for the person to see. No harm done. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 06:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)