John Smith I hath wroth:

RHF wrote:
...
Because "Radium" Touched Them With A Thirst
For Knowledge And A Quest For Answers.
...

I don't know, according to any instructor I have ever had respect for:
"There are NO stupid questions, only stupid people who are afraid to ask
questions."

I beg to differ. My favorite mentor/instructor/employer had a
different philosophy regarding questions and answers. His line was
something like "If you don't understand the problem, no solution is
possible". His method was to concentrate on understanding the
problem, refining the corresponding questions, and only then
concentrating on finding the answer. I would spend much more time
thinking about "what problem am I trying to solve" instead of
blundering prematurely toward some potentially irrelevant solution.

My problem with the original question is that it fails to associate
itself with anything recognizable as a real problem to solve or a
theory to expound. In my never humble opinion, if there was a
question under all that rubbish, it was quite well hidden and severely
muddled. He also introduced a substantial number of "facts" that
varied from irrelevant to incoherent to just plain wrong. The problem
for us in not in finding the answer, but in decoding the question.

There may not be any stupid questions, but there seem to be a
substantial number of marginal people asking questions. I answer some
techy questions in alt.internet.wireless. What I see, all too often,
are people that seem to think that no effort on their part is
necessary to obtain an answer. They exert no effort to read the FAQ,
no effort to supply what problem they are trying to solve, and no
effort to supply what they have to work with. In this case, Mr Radium
has either exerted no effort to compose his question in a form that
can be answered, or if there was such an effort, it has failed
miserably. He couldn't even find a suitable collection of newsgroups
for his question.

There may not be any stupid questions, but there certainly are
questions not worth the time attempting to answer. If Mr Radium had
left the question at the subject line:
"AM electromagnetic waves: 20 KHz modulation frequency on
an astronomically-low carrier frequency"
the question would have been easy to answer, as several people have
done. However, those that answered and I all did the same thing. We
extracted from the word salad question what we thought was something
resembling a coherent question, and ignored the rest of the rubbish.
In other words, we did the necessary simplification and problem
reduction, and discarded the bulk of the incoherent residue. There
may not be any stupid questions, but if you bury it under a sufficient
number of words, it may closely resemble a stupid question.

Depends ... I guess.
JS

Well, let's see:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=%22guess%28tm%29%22&as_uauthors=Jeff+L iebermann
533 guesses, out of about 16,000 postings, which I guess(tm) isn't all
that bad.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558