Showing My Ars

I haven’t posted anything about my favorite web site Ars Technica in quite some time. Well here goes.

Ars had a nice article about a project to use some knowledge of thermoacoustics to develop a inexpensive, robust, and simple device that can use such a common item as a cook fire to provide the energy needed to provide rudimentary electricity and refrigeration. For those that don’t want to look at the article the goal is to apply acoustic cooling and high efficiency thermodynamics to create essentially a highly engineered tube that when one end is heated the other end cools and electricity is generated. And all of this with a minimum of moving parts. It’s a fantastic use of modern scientific and engineering understanding to create a simple item that can change people’s lives everywhere. It reminds me of an article in the NY Times not to far back about a man who spearheaded creating a solar charging flashlight for poor people in 3^rd world countries without electricity. The flashlight left in the sun all day provides about 8 hours of illumination. It allows them to read school lessons, cook, scare away animals and thieves, and any number of other things we take for granted. It also allows them to stop using soot producing lamps and such to light the dwellings. Both of these are good examples of industrialized nations footing a large development cost for a simple item that could help millions of people.

Ars also mentions a report that the Center for Naval Analyses released in which it calls global climate change a national security issue. It’s definitely an interesting article. I like that the report states that the military most often must take action and plan for worst case scenarios when there is usually a limited amount of information. They approach the problem from a tactics and logistics point of view. It promotes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Climate destabilization can cause governments to fail and new enemies and wars to crop up. It would be far cheaper to offer technology to the countries we can help stabilize than it would be to fight in dozens of conflicts. It’s a good smart read.

And finally Ars mentions that Illinois’ citizenry are paying a rather hefty price for defending a law that they should have known was unconstitutional. Most probably the law was seen as a way to garner votes for election time by “Protecting the children.” I hope the tax payers of the state rise up and kick their government’s collective ass. Taking money from the welfare and public health to pay bills on stupid laws. I’m actually surprised SC didn’t end up doing something like that.

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Links redux

Several months posted about the FDA approving a new vaccine that I had mentioned the year before for several of the viruses that can cause cervical cancer. Well the NYTimes has an article up(signup required) about the Texas Governor Rick Perry signing an executive order mandating the vaccine shots for all girls entering 6^th grade, excluding those whose parents refuse to participate. I’m actually really surprised that Texas was the first state to do this, though the article says that Texas has the second highest number of women with cervical cancer. The executive order does offer the opportunity to bypass a lot of political wrangling in the legislature, and I don’t think there will be a big fight to eliminate it. Plus, the implementation conditions seem to be reasonable. I’m hoping Texas opens the door for a lot of other states to add this vaccine to the normal series of vaccinations women receive through their lives. Here’s hoping.

Several weeks back DailyTech had an article about a Naval rail gun test that passed the 8 Mega-joule range. I tell you I like that stuff. It bodes well for safer and longer range guns and a cheaper, more reliable plane catapult system. Where do we get those wonderful toys?

Well I spoke before about the Real ID Act, with my opinion that the security problems and ability for abuse outweigh the potential benefits. Well Ars has an article up about the growing opposition to the act. Seems more people are getting concerned about it for all the right reasons, security, abuse, and monetary. Maybe the system does work occasionally.

Oh and for friends that like the ideas of wikis and writing Ars posted about a “novel wiki” taking place. So far it looks like a situation of too many cooks in the kitchen. Should be interesting to watch.

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To Err is Human, Just not Desired

For my Industrial Engineering System Design, which is mercifully coming to a close, I had to buy two books. The first and most expensive I already reviewed. The second much less expensive book was Set Phasers on Stun: & Other True Tales of Design, Technology, & Human Error by Steven M. Casey. Yeah it’s a long name. This book is a collection of 20 stories told by Casey. He uses them to demonstrate disastrous interactions between humans and design choices. Each story offers a different example of how easily a seeming innocuous design choice can cause reactions and outcomes that are completely unintended. The book is well written and Casey makes the stories entertaining without being too long. It’s a good reads for any engineer, and most people that would like to understand why testing and iteration of designs are so important. Throwing technology at a problem doesn’t work unless the technology is used judiciously with the user in mind. It makes a good case for why Industrial Engineering is important.

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Beginning of the End

I’m in a bit of a celebratory mood today. I turned in the final group project report for the Industrial Engineering class that I’m taking. It was about 30 pages long and we’ve been working on it for most of the week. The past 2 nights I haven’t gotten to bed until after 2 AM. The class has been sucking up more time than a normal 4 credit hour class usually would. Now all that’s left is the final presentation on Friday and the exam on Monday. But for now the hardest work is over. And that means I Am going to celebrate a little. And I should also have time to finish the book reviews I’m late on.

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Deep Down in My Soul

Earlier I reviewed The Civilized Engineer by Samuel Florman. I had purchased the book for a class many years ago. After reading part of what was required for the class I decided to purchase a previous book Florman had written, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. This past weekend I managed to finish the book. Maybe I won’t ramble on about this one as much as I did about the previous one, but I make no promises.

TCE was more a book about the rift between engineering and society’s and the Liberal Arts’ view of engineering. TEPoE is more about “Why engineering?”. The book was originally written in the 1970s during the anti-technology and counter-culture movements that defined much of the time. The book is indelibly marked by this. Though the elements have softened with age they still exist, and the points Florman makes are still as pertinent as the day he penned them.

This book could truthfully go by the name of another book, To Engineer is Human. The two books are very different, and they take different meanings from the title. Florman spends most of the book punching holes in the idea of the un-naturalness of engineering. He promotes the idea that engineering is a most basic part of being human. Florman makes sure to support himself with facts, but he takes great care to support himself with feelings and such that the existentialists deem more worthy than mere science.

To be honest with you, when I started this book I wasn’t quite sure what existentialism meant. To me it was always like the term post-modernism. It means different things to different people, and the ideas are so nebulous that their very meaning precludes definition in words. But as it turns out my basic seat of the pants feeling for the word was essentially right. Florman is primarily using the word as the deep down essential part of being human. The existential pleasures are the ones that give us our most meaningful sense of belonging and accomplishment and warm us to the very center. Florman maintains that engineering, as a basic part of human existence, provides these pleasures. And I have to agree. I personally have felt the pleasure of coming up with a fast solution to a pressing problem, and I have had the elation of realizing the answer to a question that has plagued me. I freely admit that during some machine design while I Co-Oped I had to get up and run around the engineering floor and manufacturing floor when I realized a solution to a problem or an elegant refinement of a design.

Anyway, I dearly liked the book. Florman does an excellent job in writing prose and describing the mind of the engineer. I really enjoyed reading the book and would actually recommend it to some people engineers and the like better. I think this book is more widely enjoyable than TCE. Reading this book is one of the things that lead me to write a post a couple of weeks back. Maybe it could do something similar for you.

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The Design of Designing

This semester I’ve been taking Industrial Engineering 201: System Design. In the class we are divided into groups. Each group is given a design project for someplace on or near campus. Our group was given the project to improve Freshman Move-in day. We narrowed the cope of the project to the High rise dorms, and have been working on the project ever since. All along we have been studying how to manage a design project to develop the best solution in the time and in the constraints provided. The book we have been using to facilitate this is Product Design and Development by Karl Ulrich, Steven Eppinger, Steven Eppinger. If you want a taste of the cost of engineering textbooks follow the link. Since we are in the final parts of the project, we have finished with the book, hence the review.

Basically the book does a pretty good job at what it is supposed to do. It helps direct you down the path of product design and development. You start at finding a need, defining the need and constraints, and moving on from there. The book works best in an environment where an instructor fills in some info and provides additions reasoning and points of view. You can read it on your own, but you really need a project to get the most out of it. When we finish with the other book I’ll post a review of it. Now we have to finish the project report, and maybe they will implement it next year.

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Building a Corpus Callosum

As some of you know or have guessed I have a nearly unrelenting want to collect and read books. I know I want to read far more books than I will ever be able to. Of course that also goes for movies, television series, plays, music, art, classes, and various other things. I find myself torn between all of these and the needs for daily activities of life. That means that I am also loath to get rid of books. Periodically I will go through and throw away a lot of stuff that I don’t need, but books always seem to escape the trash can or the giveaway bin. So I have slowly gathered a collection of books from classes and such. The Civilized Engineer by Samuel C. Florman is a prime example of that. Anyone who knows engineers knows how long we can ramble on the subject, and how emotional we can get. Feel free not to follow the link if you have no interest in an engineer’s rant.

I had to buy TCE for a Mechanical Engineering class. It was one of those books that had designated readings for it, but I never really got into it or read many of the passages. It was just that at the time I was preoccupied with taking 17-19 hours of engineering curricula a semester. However, I kept the book, because I did like some of what I read. I hoped beyond hope that I might actually take time to read it one day. In fact I foolishly purchased a previous book that Florman had written entitled The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. That book is on my list for reading later. In fact an Architect friend of mine saw it on my bookshelf and was rather taken aback at the name. He seemed to think it smacked of oxymoron. It’s a common view point that is mirrored on both sides of the Engineering (Useful Arts) and Liberal Arts divide. And it seems that the current educational culture and environment are set up to reinforce that divide rather than attempt to bridge it.

In fact that’s what this book is primarily about. Florman has a bachelor’s degree and civil engineer’s degree from Dartmouth plus a M.A. in English literature from Columbia University. He laments the divide between the two areas of study. Primarily the book traces the origins of the divide back to the change from engineers being the larger than life, classically trained Eiffels and Roeblings through the development of the land grant schools whose charter was to teach the sons of mechanics and farmers to be engineers. The book posits that this shift from upper class, classically educated engineers to lower class engineers of rather poor backgrounds, maintained the class distinction of the time. This was also reinforced by the classical Greek notion that thinking was a much nobler and more favored task than mere doing. My understanding is that in the end the Greeks transferred much of their doing and building responsibilities to their slaves, under this notion. An interesting thought considering the plebian view some maintain of engineers. Then you have the other professions that look down on one of the few professions that still only requires a 4 year degree. I too have felt the downcast gaze as I passed under the upturned noses of these “true” professionals and “high thinkers.” But I digress.

Florman is one of the individuals from the profession that trumpets the changing of the engineering curriculum and training to include more of the liberal arts that have slowly been squeezed from it. I read as he told of his life and saw parallels to my own. We both became swept up in the wonder and joy of learning of machines, designing, and improving the world around us. The elation at problem solving and increased control and understanding of the world around us can be truly intoxicating. That’s hard for some people to understand. I don’t think I quite lost touch with other interests as badly as many. I have known engineering students and others in programs like computer science that saw no need for classes not related directly to the degree they were seeking to attain. I always felt that showed narrowness of view, but for some it allows them to focus an intensity that few can achieve. As I got farther into the program I noticed that my interests and tastes were expanding. I became dissatisfied with the limitations of the required curriculum and set out to supplement it with large numbers of classes I didn’t have to take but wanted to.

As the book continued I realized that I had begun a journey that he advocates, but that I hadn’t completely intended. Florman advocates a percentage of engineers seek additional more liberal education. Some engineers prefer focusing on the technical, but some need to expand their education and abilities in order to move up the management ladder, serve as interfaces with less technical public, and provide a much needed technically proficient part in government. The expanded education is a difficult thing. All of the time for a 4 year degree is taken up by the current curriculum. Any expanded education will require more time and money. It’s difficult to justify to a student without seeing any certain future monetary benefits.

Florman, like most people, thinks highly of his profession, and I admit I do as well. Of course I am slightly biased. Non-engineers might not find the book that compelling, but reading it might inspire a little more understanding of what they see as the dull and drudging engineer. He puts a lot of interesting things in the air in ways I hadn’t thought of them. I’m going to have to ponder them and decide if it’s time I got off my duff and chased some things of which my conservative nature has previously steered me clear.

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