I thought of this when I read about the joint damage. As far as I know they never found the source of the crunching noise.
It could also be something as mundane as a bad heat treat in a bearing leading to launch-load brinelling and subsequent low cycle fatigue. Or maybe they got the launch loads wrong because something resonated and that caused the damage. Or something could have been assembled too tightly.
What I'm curious about is how the metal chips got on the outside of the thing, I would have thought there would be a casing around the mechanism.
This is just another in a long line of hot button issues with sexed up titles designed to rouse the rabble. Playing the radio in a commercial establishment has been against the rules as long as I've been alive, which is a long time.
Also, who's to say the popular kids aren't us? Yes, it's a bit fun to play the nerd outcast sometimes, there is something I've noticed about life: you are what you label yourself.
The other day I was costing out some midrange systems and I got some interesting AMD vs Intel results when I factored in the cost, power consumptions, AND chipset features...
Oh crap. Sorry, I thought this was slashdot. My mistake...I wonder where it went...
I'm just winging it here, but maybe the reason for making a lamella-type composite is that the matrix has to be thin on the order of molecule-size in order to get the unusual slip-stick behavior they compared to Velcro.
So, the clay lamellae they used are geometrically what is needed to organize the microstructure into planes, with very thin and controlled layers of matrix between the strong plates. A tangled mass of fibers would result in disorganized and uncontrollable inter-fiber regions.
What might be interesting is using the whole composite structure as described in TFA as a replacement matrix material in a classic fiber composite where the fibers, measured in microns, are much bigger than the dimensions of the platelet microstructure.
It's not obvious how such a material could be commercially built.
It wasn't my post, but it's an interesting discussion. I suppose there is the argument that with a natural U reactor you can get bomb material without any complicated and expensive isotopic enrichment. I believe this is how India got the bomb.
The counter argument is, as you said, at least you have cut off one way of making bombs using U235. Another anti-proliferation benefit is that Pu only works in implosion bombs which are harder to master than gun bombs (which casts an interesting light on N. Korea's apparent dud). Also, to get usable Pu239 the fuel can't be left in the reactor for too long, so it makes the job of monitoring potential bomb-grade material sources easier: all you have to verify that fuel is put in the reactor and left there for a certain period of time. After that Pu239 is contaminated with other isotopes and chemical separation is no longer enough.
Where would you store these billions of tonnes of dry ice until their half life rendered them inert?
And another thing, radioactive waste products make your drink BOTH bubble and glow the most interesting shade of blue. I bet your precious dry ice can't do that!
While I can't agree with the sibling post's tone, I can understand his/her frustration that the plutonium toxicity myth continues. I suppose once these things get started they never die, particularly if the alternative is cognitive dissonance.
The standard delusional fantasy is that a pound of Pu 239 can cause 8 billion cancer deaths, plus or minus. Which begs the question, what are we all doing here? What with the hundreds of pounds of plutonium atomized into the atmosphere in the 40's & 50's.
Another thing is, I wonder if you could concentrate the "badness" of CO2 into a small enough volume that would enable you to store it indefinitely instead of releasing it into the biosphere, how nasty would that substance be? Pretty nasty I would think. But if you could, would you? I bet you would. So in fact what the Munch-style disaster fantasists consider to be nuke's Achilles tendon is actually something you would like to do with other technologies, if only you could. Funny, huh?
And finally with regard to the BWR design...once again it's the American approach of using partially enriched uranium. Which goes way back to the original decision to use that fuel strategy because you can make smaller cheaper reactors and what the hey, the U.S. has all those enrichment facilities sitting around that were built for...other things. Too bad it would be impossible to buy Candus because, well a) no enrichment facilities needed, they take natural U (if Iran really just wants to generate power they could do it without all those scary centrifuge thingies) and b) its a clever reactor structure that consists, and I'm not kidding here, of a series of tubes instead of one gigantic bucket, which makes it structurally redundant and intrinsically failsafe (did you know Canada had their own TMI event where the main reactor structure cracked and the big result was, radioactive water on the floor?) and c) you can shove fuel in one side and take it out the other while it's running and you never have down time for refueling.
But that's a pipe dream. What the US will get is unfortunately, glorified aircraft-carrier power plants, because, you know, might as well monetize some military technology that's just sitting around. More profitable that way, don't you know.
I seem to remember this. IIRC NTP won on a technicality, something like they got a ruling of infringement before RIM got the patents invalidated. So how are they back for more with the same patents?
Ok, AMD paid for a trip for a bunch of journalists to go to their manufacturing facility and listen to some lame marketing talk and have a look around. Is this the problem? Or is the problem that AMD wanted to stipulate "any confidential information from this visit would need written approval from corporate communications before it could be used"? I quote that from Tech ARP since that seems to be the request that caused them to stamp their little feet.
AMD wants to protect their confidential manufacturing secrets. This is outrageous how?
Don't be harsh. Proactively leveraging six sigma synergies in a blue-red shift discontinuously changing ecosystem leads to a re-efficiently contracting contingency workforce paradigm tending toward the rightsize.
Only a fool would ignore the gainshare effect of empowerment strategies that insourced intellectual capital reallocation due to lean Kaizen open door management obviously creates. The mosaic effects of capital market global forward-trends account for fully 4 points share of Sun's complex-component earnings per diluted ownerstake last quarter.
With two new colors to work with, things can only improve.
My two favorite science fiction movies happen to have the around the worst physics. The Fifth Element and Independence Day, the former for it's charming intent (and Bruce Wills' bonked-over-the-head scene), and the latter for gigantic explosions done the right way.
Which is testament only to suspension of disbelief. However, I will point out one thing. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu refers to variation of parameters in an appropriate way. In the recent Transformers, some character or another (who can remember), a signals analyst, refers to it as "Foiray" analysis.
If that's indicative of a decline in the standing of science, I'm tempted to say it's due to a general decline in appreciation for people who actually know how to do things, and the ascent of people who can sell. But my life experience tells me otherwise, people I actually know generally admire engineer types who can do the mysterious things that make stuff work.
Another thought I had was that possibly it's opportunity-related. Maybe there just aren't as many jobs for wonks any more. Again, my experience is to the contrary, every company in my line of business is chasing the same fairly small pool of people, and that includes the offshore talent.
So I don't know. It could be as simple as the fact that there is so much money to be made in the entertainment business, movies don't have to be good anymore and directors don't have to passionate about their material. Because mispronouncing Fourier tells me that someone surely didn't give a damn.
...I don't care how much money you make in a year. Anyone would be insane to waste that kind of money.
The people who would buy such a ticket don't make any money in a year. Their money makes money.
Most large business jets in the $30-$50 million range are impulse purchases. There's a guy out there who has ordered a private Airbus A380. The world's largest private yacht is not much smaller than the Titanic.
And on and on. There are people with literally more money than they can spend. If one was to suggest to them that they should save $50,000 on the price of an airline ticket, one would be met with a blank stare of incomprehension.
In the case you describe the power is available if you put your foot down. In this case the extra hp are unusable because the system is limited by the output of the fuel cells. So you carry the extra weight of the bigger-than-necessary motor around for no reason.
I'm just a lowly engineer who reads sometimes, so so my main knowledge of Foucault relates to physics. Which is to say, I might be wrong. But my thinking about deconstructionism is along these lines.
In my own words: analysis that attempts to extract the fundamental meaning from text.
Bound to fail in the strict sense, but I find it useful to expose those who exploit the natural fuzziness of language to manipulate people. Which includes anyone who has something to sell, economically or politically.
Once, I was in a meeting with about 20 people, including a VP of manufacturing. I, as a very young and wide-eyed engineer, presented my view of things which was quite equivocal. My stupid boss at the time, I suppose, imagined this would be a good learning experience for me. I guess he was right come to think of it.
At any rate, I was called a "Philadelphia lawyer", an "obstructionist", and "bloody minded" by the VP. What a dick.
My sin was that I applied what I understood about science to an issue that had economic consequences. When money, and other peoples ambitions, are involved, marketing soon follows. And engineers are poorly equipped to deal with marketing type arguments.
So I got eviscerated by arguments that had more to do with bully tactics than knowledge. Would that I could go back to that meeting as the 48 year old me and give that VP what for. He was wrong, and I was right, but he won because he knew rhetoric.
What I should have said to him, all those years ago, was "OK smart guy, if you are so bright, YOU sign the release documents and I'll just go back to my desk".
What someone needs to tell Mr. Dyson, and all the other loud-mouths, is ok smart guys, YOU stake your precious legacies, or whatever it is you value, on the lives of the people that will live 100 years from now.
I know about numerical analysis, I do a lot of it, albeit not in fluids. But I have a feel for how it works. One run, two runs are just for fun, but after 500 or a thousand that show a trend, you have to pay attention. You have to, especially when the underlying physics make sense. CO2 is opague to infra-red.
So ok Mr Feemon Dysoon. Let's put you in suspended animation and bring you back in 100 years and you can explain to the poor slobs why you condemned them to live in a desert. How's that sound, smart guy?
Does anyone know how/if NASA handles things like micrometeorites?
Dunno exactly, how's that for a start? I do know the shuttle's glazings are replaced about once every 10 flights due to impact, mostly with man made stuff like paint chips from exploded satellites. Just guessing here and don't quote me, but the way they deal with this is probably with stats. As in, if a chip of paint can ding a window, I guess a gram-sized piece of debris can poke two holes in the orbiter (an in and an out). Although, that might not be fatal if it doesn't pass through someone's body, the little hole can probably be patched with, you know, the space shuttle hole patch kit they must have.
The Orbiter is maneuvered to avoid known space debris, but that only goes down to about tens of centimeters. So stuff smaller than that has to be handled with stats.
NASA doesn't exactly come across as a "crack" outfit anymore...
I understand why you might say that, but it's a little bit unfair to cast your net that wide.
At one time in my long and sorted career I participated in a NASA sponsored symposium on UBE engines. Have to admit, there was a rush to riding the bus that had NASA written on it, and I had a NASA badge. It was really something, just being associated with that acronym.
My point is, the young lads and lasses that work for NASA are just pumped to be there. Don't disparage them for feeling that way. It's the older bunch that should know right from wrong, and that's where you have a point, they don't always act like they do.
NASA has a unique problem engineering-wise, which is that the very name psyches out the people that work there. Anywhere else, a highly qualified young person would feel protected to call bullshit, but not at NASA.
If I could give any advice to a 20-something working at that place it would be: don't act like you work for a legendary establishment. Act like you work for ACME spaceships Inc. Call it like you see it, and if you find it hard to do think of this: if NASA turfs you out, there are plenty of opportunities for people with those 4 letters on their resume to make obscene amounts of money. So, theres absolutely no reason to worry about your future. Do the right thing.
Sorta reminds me of the time the de Havilland Comet blew up in mid air and aviation engineers learned about fatigue and decided to go look at other airplanes for signs of fatigue cracks and found them everywhere. Talk about freaking out.
Then, after that, several smart people[1] figured out that cracks always had been everywhere and, you know, chill. The airplanes we fly around on have lots of cracks. The thing that saves our collective butts is that they are understood.
1 P Paris and F Erdogan (1963), A critical analysis of crack propagation laws, Journal of Basic Engineering, Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, December 1963, pp.528-534.
...using Endeavour's 100-foot robot arm and extension beam. Lasers on the end of the beam...
You know what bugs me? Ok? They have this 100-foot robot arm but they don't have the 250-foot robot that it must have come from. I mean if it has lasers on its ARM, imagine what else it has lasers on. Like, for example, on it's frikken head.
Which it's important to know if theres a 250-foot frikken robot with frikken lasers on its frikken head out there roaming around all mad because NASA ripped its arm off.
Oh boy come on. Grade 12 is what they have in high school in Ontario right before grade 13 which is the last year of high school in that province except that they discontinued that a couple of years ago leading to a double sized group of college freshmen that year. Except in Quebec they have CEGEP which is after grade 10 for two years its like prep college for university or tech college for the auto shop types. 300 math is a fan flick remake of that movie from last year about, um, about 2 hours too long.
This really needs to be parsed in some detail, because it's a wonderful example of marketing techniques applied to social debate.
In modern society, we have a thing called "decency."
What It Says
This is a declaration that asserts three things: that there is a thing called "modern society"; that we are part of it; and that "decency" is a mandatory characteristic of "modern society".
What It Literally Means
Since it is written in the present tense, for any of it to be true "modern society" must mean the collection of all people in the modern age who are alive right now. It must be that generalized, because of the further assertion that "we" are part of it, and "we" could well be people from anywhere, living in any circumstance.
This group of people has a defining characteristic called decency.
Its Marketing Purpose
Modern marketing has a few crude tools that get used over and over again. One of them is what I like to call "The Boss". The Boss tells you things with presumed authority so they sound axiomatic while in reality they are no more than unsubstantiated statements. This is popular amongst amateur marketing enthusiasts who have read "How to Win Friends and Influence People", and various books on how to pick up women. Those types of books tell you to give people orders in such a way the targets don't realize they are being pushed around. For example, have you ever heard a person start a pitch to you like this..."Listen, I have something to tell you..." The word "listen" is a command. You are being ordered to listen to that person.
In this case we are presented with three declarations that, objectively, are various degrees of wrong. Any definition of "modern society" that is so general as to include anyone who might read this can only share the most basic of characteristics. Any property as nebulous as "decency" can't possibly be uniformly defined. But the Boss tells us it can.
Part of it is that we have enough self-respect so as not to debase ourselves with needless profanity.
What It Says
"We" are members of "modern society" who share a new property called "self respect". This property is responsible for making use feel like "needless profanity" reduces our self worth.
What It Literally Means
All members of modern society are now presumed to share two characteristics: decency and self respect. A further characteristic is implied, the ability to tell the difference between "needless profanity" and (presumably) "mandatory profanity".
What's more, we members of "modern society" agree that "needless profanity" is debasing.
Its Marketing Purpose
This is more Boss talk. The purpose here is to inject the words "self-respect", "debase" and "needless profanity" into the text. The implied meaning is that we must share these properties since we are necessarily part of modern society.
We start to see the emergence of a second age-old marketing bludgeon here: Exile. Don't be left out. Don't be left behind. Don't be a loser. This second use of the meme "we are part of modern society" starts to sound like a threat: if you don't act this way you won't be a member.
The problem with The Boss is that if you hit people over the head too hard for too long they start to notice. This second sentence starts to sound a little preachy, reducing the overall effect of the spot. The Boss is completely useless if the target catches on.
It's pretty much the same reason that we tend to use more formal language in formal writing - we similarly don't consider our everyday conversation so uncouth as to warrant whatever curses we can think of.
What It Says
Formal language is to formal communication as lack of profanity is to everyday conversation. We consider it uncouth to use profanity in e
Slashdot Mirror
I thought of this when I read about the joint damage. As far as I know they never found the source of the crunching noise.
It could also be something as mundane as a bad heat treat in a bearing leading to launch-load brinelling and subsequent low cycle fatigue. Or maybe they got the launch loads wrong because something resonated and that caused the damage. Or something could have been assembled too tightly.
What I'm curious about is how the metal chips got on the outside of the thing, I would have thought there would be a casing around the mechanism.This is just another in a long line of hot button issues with sexed up titles designed to rouse the rabble. Playing the radio in a commercial establishment has been against the rules as long as I've been alive, which is a long time.
Also, who's to say the popular kids aren't us? Yes, it's a bit fun to play the nerd outcast sometimes, there is something I've noticed about life: you are what you label yourself.
The other day I was costing out some midrange systems and I got some interesting AMD vs Intel results when I factored in the cost, power consumptions, AND chipset features...
Oh crap. Sorry, I thought this was slashdot. My mistake...I wonder where it went...
I'm just winging it here, but maybe the reason for making a lamella-type composite is that the matrix has to be thin on the order of molecule-size in order to get the unusual slip-stick behavior they compared to Velcro.
So, the clay lamellae they used are geometrically what is needed to organize the microstructure into planes, with very thin and controlled layers of matrix between the strong plates. A tangled mass of fibers would result in disorganized and uncontrollable inter-fiber regions.
What might be interesting is using the whole composite structure as described in TFA as a replacement matrix material in a classic fiber composite where the fibers, measured in microns, are much bigger than the dimensions of the platelet microstructure.
It's not obvious how such a material could be commercially built.
It wasn't my post, but it's an interesting discussion. I suppose there is the argument that with a natural U reactor you can get bomb material without any complicated and expensive isotopic enrichment. I believe this is how India got the bomb.
The counter argument is, as you said, at least you have cut off one way of making bombs using U235. Another anti-proliferation benefit is that Pu only works in implosion bombs which are harder to master than gun bombs (which casts an interesting light on N. Korea's apparent dud). Also, to get usable Pu239 the fuel can't be left in the reactor for too long, so it makes the job of monitoring potential bomb-grade material sources easier: all you have to verify that fuel is put in the reactor and left there for a certain period of time. After that Pu239 is contaminated with other isotopes and chemical separation is no longer enough.
At what point can we expect an AdBlock Plus, Ron Paul edition? Because, I'm wanting one.
Where would you store these billions of tonnes of dry ice until their half life rendered them inert?
And another thing, radioactive waste products make your drink BOTH bubble and glow the most interesting shade of blue. I bet your precious dry ice can't do that!
While I can't agree with the sibling post's tone, I can understand his/her frustration that the plutonium toxicity myth continues. I suppose once these things get started they never die, particularly if the alternative is cognitive dissonance.
The standard delusional fantasy is that a pound of Pu 239 can cause 8 billion cancer deaths, plus or minus. Which begs the question, what are we all doing here? What with the hundreds of pounds of plutonium atomized into the atmosphere in the 40's & 50's.
Another thing is, I wonder if you could concentrate the "badness" of CO2 into a small enough volume that would enable you to store it indefinitely instead of releasing it into the biosphere, how nasty would that substance be? Pretty nasty I would think. But if you could, would you? I bet you would. So in fact what the Munch-style disaster fantasists consider to be nuke's Achilles tendon is actually something you would like to do with other technologies, if only you could. Funny, huh?
And finally with regard to the BWR design...once again it's the American approach of using partially enriched uranium. Which goes way back to the original decision to use that fuel strategy because you can make smaller cheaper reactors and what the hey, the U.S. has all those enrichment facilities sitting around that were built for...other things. Too bad it would be impossible to buy Candus because, well a) no enrichment facilities needed, they take natural U (if Iran really just wants to generate power they could do it without all those scary centrifuge thingies) and b) its a clever reactor structure that consists, and I'm not kidding here, of a series of tubes instead of one gigantic bucket, which makes it structurally redundant and intrinsically failsafe (did you know Canada had their own TMI event where the main reactor structure cracked and the big result was, radioactive water on the floor?) and c) you can shove fuel in one side and take it out the other while it's running and you never have down time for refueling.
But that's a pipe dream. What the US will get is unfortunately, glorified aircraft-carrier power plants, because, you know, might as well monetize some military technology that's just sitting around. More profitable that way, don't you know.
I seem to remember this. IIRC NTP won on a technicality, something like they got a ruling of infringement before RIM got the patents invalidated. So how are they back for more with the same patents?
Ok, AMD paid for a trip for a bunch of journalists to go to their manufacturing facility and listen to some lame marketing talk and have a look around. Is this the problem? Or is the problem that AMD wanted to stipulate "any confidential information from this visit would need written approval from corporate communications before it could be used"? I quote that from Tech ARP since that seems to be the request that caused them to stamp their little feet.
AMD wants to protect their confidential manufacturing secrets. This is outrageous how?Don't be harsh. Proactively leveraging six sigma synergies in a blue-red shift discontinuously changing ecosystem leads to a re-efficiently contracting contingency workforce paradigm tending toward the rightsize.
Only a fool would ignore the gainshare effect of empowerment strategies that insourced intellectual capital reallocation due to lean Kaizen open door management obviously creates. The mosaic effects of capital market global forward-trends account for fully 4 points share of Sun's complex-component earnings per diluted ownerstake last quarter.
With two new colors to work with, things can only improve.My two favorite science fiction movies happen to have the around the worst physics. The Fifth Element and Independence Day, the former for it's charming intent (and Bruce Wills' bonked-over-the-head scene), and the latter for gigantic explosions done the right way.
Which is testament only to suspension of disbelief. However, I will point out one thing. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu refers to variation of parameters in an appropriate way. In the recent Transformers, some character or another (who can remember), a signals analyst, refers to it as "Foiray" analysis.
If that's indicative of a decline in the standing of science, I'm tempted to say it's due to a general decline in appreciation for people who actually know how to do things, and the ascent of people who can sell. But my life experience tells me otherwise, people I actually know generally admire engineer types who can do the mysterious things that make stuff work.
Another thought I had was that possibly it's opportunity-related. Maybe there just aren't as many jobs for wonks any more. Again, my experience is to the contrary, every company in my line of business is chasing the same fairly small pool of people, and that includes the offshore talent.
So I don't know. It could be as simple as the fact that there is so much money to be made in the entertainment business, movies don't have to be good anymore and directors don't have to passionate about their material. Because mispronouncing Fourier tells me that someone surely didn't give a damn.
The people who would buy such a ticket don't make any money in a year. Their money makes money.
Most large business jets in the $30-$50 million range are impulse purchases. There's a guy out there who has ordered a private Airbus A380. The world's largest private yacht is not much smaller than the Titanic.
And on and on. There are people with literally more money than they can spend. If one was to suggest to them that they should save $50,000 on the price of an airline ticket, one would be met with a blank stare of incomprehension.
In the case you describe the power is available if you put your foot down. In this case the extra hp are unusable because the system is limited by the output of the fuel cells. So you carry the extra weight of the bigger-than-necessary motor around for no reason.
I'm just a lowly engineer who reads sometimes, so so my main knowledge of Foucault relates to physics. Which is to say, I might be wrong. But my thinking about deconstructionism is along these lines.
In my own words: analysis that attempts to extract the fundamental meaning from text.Bound to fail in the strict sense, but I find it useful to expose those who exploit the natural fuzziness of language to manipulate people. Which includes anyone who has something to sell, economically or politically.
350 kw = 469 hp. Why the 770 hp motor?
Darn it I was doing so well up until the end there. My apologies to Mr. Feemon Dysoon. Whomever you may be.
Once, I was in a meeting with about 20 people, including a VP of manufacturing. I, as a very young and wide-eyed engineer, presented my view of things which was quite equivocal. My stupid boss at the time, I suppose, imagined this would be a good learning experience for me. I guess he was right come to think of it.
At any rate, I was called a "Philadelphia lawyer", an "obstructionist", and "bloody minded" by the VP. What a dick.
My sin was that I applied what I understood about science to an issue that had economic consequences. When money, and other peoples ambitions, are involved, marketing soon follows. And engineers are poorly equipped to deal with marketing type arguments.
So I got eviscerated by arguments that had more to do with bully tactics than knowledge. Would that I could go back to that meeting as the 48 year old me and give that VP what for. He was wrong, and I was right, but he won because he knew rhetoric.
What I should have said to him, all those years ago, was "OK smart guy, if you are so bright, YOU sign the release documents and I'll just go back to my desk".
What someone needs to tell Mr. Dyson, and all the other loud-mouths, is ok smart guys, YOU stake your precious legacies, or whatever it is you value, on the lives of the people that will live 100 years from now.
I know about numerical analysis, I do a lot of it, albeit not in fluids. But I have a feel for how it works. One run, two runs are just for fun, but after 500 or a thousand that show a trend, you have to pay attention. You have to, especially when the underlying physics make sense. CO2 is opague to infra-red.
So ok Mr Feemon Dysoon. Let's put you in suspended animation and bring you back in 100 years and you can explain to the poor slobs why you condemned them to live in a desert. How's that sound, smart guy?
Lucky for you my young padawan I have no life.
Dunno exactly, how's that for a start? I do know the shuttle's glazings are replaced about once every 10 flights due to impact, mostly with man made stuff like paint chips from exploded satellites. Just guessing here and don't quote me, but the way they deal with this is probably with stats. As in, if a chip of paint can ding a window, I guess a gram-sized piece of debris can poke two holes in the orbiter (an in and an out). Although, that might not be fatal if it doesn't pass through someone's body, the little hole can probably be patched with, you know, the space shuttle hole patch kit they must have.
The Orbiter is maneuvered to avoid known space debris, but that only goes down to about tens of centimeters. So stuff smaller than that has to be handled with stats.
I understand why you might say that, but it's a little bit unfair to cast your net that wide.
At one time in my long and sorted career I participated in a NASA sponsored symposium on UBE engines. Have to admit, there was a rush to riding the bus that had NASA written on it, and I had a NASA badge. It was really something, just being associated with that acronym.
My point is, the young lads and lasses that work for NASA are just pumped to be there. Don't disparage them for feeling that way. It's the older bunch that should know right from wrong, and that's where you have a point, they don't always act like they do.
NASA has a unique problem engineering-wise, which is that the very name psyches out the people that work there. Anywhere else, a highly qualified young person would feel protected to call bullshit, but not at NASA.
If I could give any advice to a 20-something working at that place it would be: don't act like you work for a legendary establishment. Act like you work for ACME spaceships Inc. Call it like you see it, and if you find it hard to do think of this: if NASA turfs you out, there are plenty of opportunities for people with those 4 letters on their resume to make obscene amounts of money. So, theres absolutely no reason to worry about your future. Do the right thing.
No no no no. That's an obvious cia attempt to misdirect people's attention.
Lots (yes it's a pdf so kill me). See page 9.
Sorta reminds me of the time the de Havilland Comet blew up in mid air and aviation engineers learned about fatigue and decided to go look at other airplanes for signs of fatigue cracks and found them everywhere. Talk about freaking out.
Then, after that, several smart people[1] figured out that cracks always had been everywhere and, you know, chill. The airplanes we fly around on have lots of cracks. The thing that saves our collective butts is that they are understood.
1 P Paris and F Erdogan (1963), A critical analysis of crack propagation laws, Journal of Basic Engineering, Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, December 1963, pp.528-534.You know what bugs me? Ok? They have this 100-foot robot arm but they don't have the 250-foot robot that it must have come from. I mean if it has lasers on its ARM, imagine what else it has lasers on. Like, for example, on it's frikken head.
Which it's important to know if theres a 250-foot frikken robot with frikken lasers on its frikken head out there roaming around all mad because NASA ripped its arm off.
Oh boy come on. Grade 12 is what they have in high school in Ontario right before grade 13 which is the last year of high school in that province except that they discontinued that a couple of years ago leading to a double sized group of college freshmen that year. Except in Quebec they have CEGEP which is after grade 10 for two years its like prep college for university or tech college for the auto shop types. 300 math is a fan flick remake of that movie from last year about, um, about 2 hours too long.
HTHThis really needs to be parsed in some detail, because it's a wonderful example of marketing techniques applied to social debate.
What It Says
This is a declaration that asserts three things: that there is a thing called "modern society"; that we are part of it; and that "decency" is a mandatory characteristic of "modern society".
What It Literally Means
Since it is written in the present tense, for any of it to be true "modern society" must mean the collection of all people in the modern age who are alive right now. It must be that generalized, because of the further assertion that "we" are part of it, and "we" could well be people from anywhere, living in any circumstance.
This group of people has a defining characteristic called decency.
Its Marketing Purpose
Modern marketing has a few crude tools that get used over and over again. One of them is what I like to call "The Boss". The Boss tells you things with presumed authority so they sound axiomatic while in reality they are no more than unsubstantiated statements. This is popular amongst amateur marketing enthusiasts who have read "How to Win Friends and Influence People", and various books on how to pick up women. Those types of books tell you to give people orders in such a way the targets don't realize they are being pushed around. For example, have you ever heard a person start a pitch to you like this..."Listen, I have something to tell you..." The word "listen" is a command. You are being ordered to listen to that person.
In this case we are presented with three declarations that, objectively, are various degrees of wrong. Any definition of "modern society" that is so general as to include anyone who might read this can only share the most basic of characteristics. Any property as nebulous as "decency" can't possibly be uniformly defined. But the Boss tells us it can.
What It Says
"We" are members of "modern society" who share a new property called "self respect". This property is responsible for making use feel like "needless profanity" reduces our self worth.
What It Literally Means
All members of modern society are now presumed to share two characteristics: decency and self respect. A further characteristic is implied, the ability to tell the difference between "needless profanity" and (presumably) "mandatory profanity".
What's more, we members of "modern society" agree that "needless profanity" is debasing.
Its Marketing Purpose
This is more Boss talk. The purpose here is to inject the words "self-respect", "debase" and "needless profanity" into the text. The implied meaning is that we must share these properties since we are necessarily part of modern society.
We start to see the emergence of a second age-old marketing bludgeon here: Exile. Don't be left out. Don't be left behind. Don't be a loser. This second use of the meme "we are part of modern society" starts to sound like a threat: if you don't act this way you won't be a member.
The problem with The Boss is that if you hit people over the head too hard for too long they start to notice. This second sentence starts to sound a little preachy, reducing the overall effect of the spot. The Boss is completely useless if the target catches on.
What It Says
Formal language is to formal communication as lack of profanity is to everyday conversation. We consider it uncouth to use profanity in e