Or maybe it's global warming which might make the Earth uninhabitable. Of course in a
sense that's an engineering success, not failure.
There have 2053 nuclear bombs exploded. I'm not sure how many were above ground; about
200 U.S. and probably an equal number of Soviet.
Brent
On 5/7/2012 12:11 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
John,
On the subject of engineering blunders, here is the most catastrophic engineering
blunder humanity has ever faced. It could make North America uninhabitable.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/fukushima-fuel-pool-is-urgent-national-security-issue-for-america-top-threat-facing-humanity?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8179b0de4d-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email
<http://www.kurzweilai.net/fukushima-fuel-pool-is-urgent-national-security-issue-for-america-top-threat-facing-humanity?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8179b0de4d-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email>
On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 1:42 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com
<mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Sun, May 6, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com
<mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>I'm not an engineer.
>> I know, that's part of the problem.
> I think it's part of the solution. As the saying goes, if all you
have is a
hammer, everything looks like a nail.
It's far easier to get a reputation as a good philosopher than a good
engineer
because you can't fake it. If a engineer is full of shit there is no way to
hide it,
the bridge falls down or the laptop catches on fire or the power grid dies
and
plunges the nation into darkness and all the world knows he's a idiot, but a
philosopher can hide his ineptitude by saying things that can never be
proved or
disproved in his lifetime or expressing platitudes in pretentious language
that
sounds much deeper than they really are or by expressing his personal
preferences as
if they were universal truths and not just a matter of taste.
To keep his job a engineer needs to be right, or at least not dead wrong,
nearly
100% of the time because if he is dead wrong people could quite literally
end up
dead, but a philosopher can never be right and still get tenure. When a
engineer
makes a blunder it's front page news but when a philosopher makes a blunder
few know
or care and he never misses a paycheck. The engineer has by far the harder
job.
John K Clark
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