I have a Bachelor of Arts in poetry, so clearly no.
Also my comment was not in the economic sense, just repeating what I’ve heard my whole life.
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And no doubt it irritates you. It certainly irritates me.
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After school, I applied for three programs:
- industrial design
- audio technology engineering
- semiconductor engineering
So it is perhaps no coincidence that I find photography intriguing, being an intersections of art and technology.
(Though for the life of me, I don’t know why or how I chose audio. Somehow that crucial branching point in my life was not taken consciously. How very odd.)
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Ironically I see the same blindness in Arts types who can’t see the beauty and expression in the choices taken to solve an engineering problem. Different types of engineering are like different medium for expression and an elegant solution can connect in just the same way as any work of art. The same creativity is required to work within the limitations of those medium, be that acrylics or circuits.
I’d love to see more celebration of human expression and ingenuity rather than people not wanting to see the value in what others do.
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Reminds me of the astounding book “Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Hofstadter, which tries to bridge that gap in a surprising, beautiful way.
I’ve never made it to the end of the book, though. It takes too much puzzlebox energy, which I just don’t have left after a day at work.
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It has been said many times and in different ways that musicians make excellent computer programmers.
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I think Richard Feynman sums it up well:
I have a friend who’s an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don’t agree with. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.” I think he’s kind of nutty. … There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.
I love the area that we live in, we have a good concert hall at a reasonable distance. Perth is a small city, so we don’t get the top rank artists, but we do get a reasonable variety, without having to travel a great distance. There are local societies that provide talks on history, archaeology, a variety of topics in science and technology.
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As a (past) scientist, there are some equations I consider beautiful. I’d imagine my wife would not be able to see the beauty (without explanation). I therefore must assume that other people will consider other things beautiful that I am unable to see.
A flower, however, is unlikely to be one of them. In fact, I hold that a sense of beauty can be honed independent of the medium. It even benefits from being as multifaceted as possible.
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It was not my intention to make that claim.
Regardless of the wider discussion: it is hard (or impossible) to write informative news articles without context. We are talking about very little, a level of knowledge which can be acquired without a degree in the specific field: for example, I am not a chemist, not even a natural scientist, yet I know enough about toxicity to understand that levels matter.
And yes, I am not enthusiastic about people who are journalists but fail to make this kind of minimum investment. This is not about arts degrees, it would apply to me equally if I made claims about, for example, medieval history without investing at least a few hours of research.
This reminds me of In our time on radio 4. It’s a great program. They cover topics from literature, history, science and technology, but assume a graduate level of understanding in literature, a high level of knowledge of history, but assume that you have no understanding of science and didn’t complete primary school maths.
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There was a hugely popular book in Germany called “Bildung – Alles was man wissen muß” (Education – Everything one needs to know). It covered European history, European art, Western philosophy, and Western literature.
In the last few pages, it proclaimed that science and technology are categorically not worth knowing. In fact, such knowledge will be seen as a detriment in high society. Implicitly, it also considered anything non-western irrelevant, as it didn’t even mention it.
I was still in school at the time. But even I could tell that this reverse-Philistine viewpoint was, ironically, un-educated.
In retrospect, I can see that categorical rejection of science as an unintended form of flattery: by actively gatekeeping scientific knowledge, it implicitly acknowledged that there is indeed a part of society that finds “purely artistic navel-gazers” boring. There were later follow-up books about that “other part” of education.
Which reminds me of my (Midwestern) mother-in-law, who had this fixed idea that us scientific types all hate religion, and would thus be difficult to talk to about spiritual matters. It took me a few years to get her to understand that while I don’t believe in the Christian God, I’m still fairly well-versed in philosophy, and see no conflict between science and belief. (In fact, I can’t verify most scientific claims any more than a priest can theirs, so we both implement our worldview on faith in very similar ways.)
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Though on a related note, I’ve had religious types try to argue that science is just a type of faith, missing that the whole point of science is to modify our views to fit the best evidence, not to filter our experience though the lens of faith or revelation. Those applying science may take a view to accept evidence based on reputation and authority, but that’s using science, not doing science and I think some who start from a faith perspective don’t see that distinction.
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This is just equivocation, using “faith” to indicate an unbased belief rather than a high degree of trust in something or someone.
Not my intention to push back on you directly, but I’ve heard this, especially in the US for a long long time and by default I must push back on it. Frankly it is insulting (generally, not you specifically).
“Oh a liberal arts majors, I bet you can read” is like “oh a math major, what is 2 x 5!”
“oh a chemistry major, name one element from the periodic table”
“ah your liberal arts degree is useless” — I dunno I seem to be doing pretty well.
I am triggered, sorry.
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I don’t think it’s deliberate, I think they saw the world so differently that they assume others think with similar processes.
I ordered the JM20 Max, to drive my relatively demanding Sennheiser HD650s. The amp works very well, is indeed powerful enough to drive the 300 Ohm headphones, and (therefore) sound better than the USB audio interface I used before (PreSonus AudioBox Go).
Thank you for the recommendation!
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Folks, I’m way out of my knowledge sphere here. I am looking at ordering Esparagus Audio Brick | Crowd Supply but the speakers I want to hook them into have an RCA red/white plug on them. Will this work? Looking to get the whole house audio going while I wait for my handman to come install my security cameras.
2x 30 W at 24 V at 8Ω, THD+N = 1% (Power mode)
1x 65 W at 24 V at 4Ω, THD+N = 1% (Power mode)
What speakers are your trying to use? How many?
We have these: Amazon.com
Those are powered (they have an internal amplifier), so it I think it should work. You will likely need to cut a RCA cable to make the connection to the board.
Joking → If you want I can ask chatgpt or any other AI for further details. 
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