Talking Heads

So this is your Weekly Friday Social Commentary for today

Thoughts on the Minnesota bridge wackiness:

First of all, I'm just about completely uninformed on this subject. My knowledge comes from having Anderson Cooper 360 on when I go to bed, that and being a licensed EIT (sounds good to say that, woot!).

I heard Cooper reading from some report that had come out back in 2001 saying the bridge had some problems or something, but no further word on whether that had been fixed or not. I heard on the radio yesterday I think that it had been rated as structurally deficient back in 05 as well, and that a bunch of other bridges also got this rating. Now here's the weird part: he's reading from this technical report, rambling on about how it's a determinate truss geometry and planes of failure and it was like a warm suffusive glow -- I actually knew what this guy was talking about. Everything made sense! Thank you, UVM, it seems having an engineering degree (well almost) actually did teach me something. That something mainly being that I should not build bridges because I did really badly in my structural analysis classes. And this is evidently God sending me another little message not to do that: "Remember Ryan, if you screw up then the bridge will collapse and kill a bunch of people." Which is ok, because I really hadn't changed my mind on staying away from structural engineering, so an unneeded divine nagging there.

It reminds me of this joke I once read on engineers and why they stress out so much (or something like that). It ran along the lines of: rewards for success: a little plaque in your office. results of failure: catastrophic destabilization and the probable deaths of hundreds of people. People remember the Hindenburg and the Titanic, not the Sears Tower or the Space Needle. I feel strongly that this needs to be redressed so as to be more in balance. Successful engineers should be rewarded with tons of money, fast cars, mansions, and beautiful women. Or woman, if you're the monogamous type like me. The only thing we come remotely close on is money, and even then we only get "lots", not "tons". So we're falling a little short rewarding engineers in our society for building schools that don't collapse and kill fifty kindergardeners. I'm sure Dan would agree with me that society really needs to step up to the plate on this one.

The other thing I got out of this is that talking heads don't really know what they're talking about. They just talk. Like, being someone who knew what AC was talking about, I could tell that *he* didn't know what he was talking about. I don't really know how to explain it, except to make a vague and overly simplified analogy about how you can sometimes tell non-native English speakers because they stress the wrong words in a sentence. Everything they're saying is technically right...but you know it's not their first language. Same kind of gut feeling. It was like he was reading the lines and they made him sound all know-it-ally and like he was totally in control. An average viewer might even fall for it. But as an engineer I saw RIGHT THROUGH HIM.

And that got me thinking, what about everything else? Do teachers feel that way when he talks about education spending? Do doctors feel this way when he talks about malpractice insurance? Maybe talking heads really know nothing about ANYTHING.

From now on I'm only going to have confidence in reporters when they talk about corruption and how hard it is to be a reporter. Oh and I'll listen to CNN discussing the ins and outs of the democratic presidential race, and to Fox News on how hard it is to be the President.