From: bretcahill@aol.com   
      
   > > There are other factors at work here.  In the late 19th Century and much   
   of the 20th Century they didn't always have the money or tools for more   
   sophisticated designs requiring more components so mechanical design relying   
   on dove tails, i.e, using    
   the rims of a bicycle wheel for the brakes instead of a dedicated disk rotor,   
   seemed justified.   
   >    
   > business is competitive. Things were far tighter in the past   
   >    
   >    
   > > This is in stark contrast to the way electronic design has always been:    
   Most every component has always been for a single purpose.   
   >    
   > Someone never heard of reflex receivers. I couldn't even begin to count the   
   number of circuits using bits for more than 1 purpose.   
      
   You need something like, say a cap or inductor, deliberately designed to have,   
   say, a high resistance to keep the circuit above a certain temperature.  Most   
   here will snicker / summarily dismiss that approach like those late night 30   
   min. infomercials    
   where the last use of the whopper chopper is as a bludgeon.   
      
   The OP never claimed there aren't exceptions in both fields, just that this is   
   one of the least discussed differences between circuit design and, say,   
   machine design and D & D seems to be disappearing in many places w/o comment.   
      
   It's not just happening in mechanical design.  It may apply to humans.    
   There's a tsunami of online work style / life style articles all saying, with   
   at least some credibility, that multi-tasking -- "flat land thinking" as   
   Nietzsche called it -- may have    
   seemed to work in the past but it will not help you accomplish anything   
   worthwhile nowadays.  Today the philosopher gets the $$$.   
      
   So when is D & D clever and when is D & D too-clever-by-half?   
      
   The reason this question is important is D & D seems to be enjoying a   
   renaissance in geo engineering schemes where it might be cheaper to work with   
   infrastructure that's already in place.   
      
   For example, you might want to water desert crops with shredded Mylar in the   
   irrigation mix.  Glitter on the soil cools desert ag areas for a longer   
   growing season, less evaporation of water plus more light on the leaves for   
   faster turnaround.  As well    
   as increasing the albedo.  (Maybe crankcase oil is more multitasking.)    
   Obviously this would only be done for the initial irrigation of row crops but   
   any time for flooding orchards.   
      
   If D & D turns out to be a dumb approach in _all_ fields in the long run, that   
   could help shift funding to geo engineering schemes that have a better chance   
   of working, not making an even bigger mess.   
      
      
   Bret Cahill   
      
      
   Milo Minderbinder after re-purposing his Egyptian cotton:  "Is it that bad?"   
      
   Yossarian (spitting out the chocolate covered cotton):  "It's even worse.  You   
   didn't even take the seeds out."   
      
   -- Joseph Heller    
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)