Some of you may know me as the blogger known as I’m Not Emeril. Some of you may have bumped into me aimlessly wandering the halls of the GA building in Richmond, lobbying, (unpaid), for issues I believe in. Some of you don’t know me at all.
I’m Alton Foley. My profile here states; “Alton Foley, writing from a SWVA perspective, is a former Teamsters truck driver, South Florida swimming pool contractor to the stars, electrical engineer for a world-wide robotics company and later for the Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia coal industry. He is the blogger formerly known as I’m Not Emeril. He has worked on numerous campaigns, starting with Ronald Reagan’s first term efforts in Florida. Serious one day, frivolous the next, any serious piece from him will be an honest effort to provide the reader with the truth. No partisan spin, no political rhetoric, no BS. His readers will also find a considerable amount of satire under his by-line which may be full of spin, rhetoric, and BS.”
It’s in that spirit that I offer this.
As an electrical engineer I know that in a wire, the speed of electrons is about 4 x 105 m/s. In a word, fast. But an electrical circuit can be no faster than the response time of it’s slowest component. In most cases that would be a mechanical relay.
In nature this concept is carried over into herding animals. For example a herd of antelope, pretty fast animals, can move no faster than it’s slowest members. In nature this works to the advantage of the herd, as the slower and weaker members are regularly culled by predators or hunters.
The human brain is both electrical and organic, thus it operates on this same principle. It can be no faster than it’s slowest brain cells. Brain cells, however, have no natural predators.
We do have alcohol. Excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells, but in obeyance of natural selection laws, only the slowest and weakest are the first to go. Consequently, the regular consumption of alcohol eliminates the weaker cells, thus continually making the brain a swifter and more efficient organism.
The result of this thesis verifies the link between frat parties and engineering student performance. It also could be used to explain why, after leaving school, getting married, and “settling down” most engineers can not keep up with the latest graduates. Only those of us that maintain a strict regimen of a short glass (or two) per day are able to maintain the intellectual level of our more recently graduated peers.
Anyway, that’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it. It may even work in your profession. Let’s lift a short glass to “weedin’ out the weak ones”!
