Engineering Materials

Who Is to Blame For GM's Collapse? All of Us

It’s great that Chinese companies may want to buy Chrysler or GM. That’s how the free enterprise system works. Companies are priced at a fair market value in public exchanges (if they’re publicly held) and then anyone with the cash can buy them, just like any products are bought and sold a la Adam Smith. IBM was able to unload its no-longer viable personal computer business to Chinese investors. It’s a great way to get money back into the hands of American businesses and investors. And as John Dodge pointed out on his Facebook page, GM has a capitalization of  only $1.35 billion at current stock prices. GM has a large product development center in China and Buick is one of the top-selling brands in China.  Most importantly, a Chinese buyout of GM or Chrysler saves US taxpayers a lot of cash.

Divestiture of assets to foreign investors is not a great long-term strategy, however. Our weak financial situation is a result of years of deficit spending and a bulging federal debt.  If you’re mad about General Motors going bust—don’t be mad at me. Be mad at your own spending and voting patterns.

Microsoft PowerPoints Are Terrible for Engineers

Engineers over use PowerPoints to make technical presentations, and the results can be disastrous. So says Edward Tufte, professor emeritus at Yale University, who is an expert on statistical evidence and analytical design. Example: NASA executives had a fatal misunderstanding of the potential danger to the space shuttle Columbia because of overly simplistic PowerPoint presentations made by Boeing engineers. That may seem hard to believe, but Tufte made a convincing case when he spoke at a seminar in Boston yesterday. His viewpoint was validated by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in a report issued in 2003. “The board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communications at NASA,” the board wrote.

Why are PowerPoints a problem for technical communication? 1) They oversimplify complex technical data, 2) They tend to reflect the biases of the presenter, and 3) Information becomes even more filtered as PowerPoints are summarized and moved up a bureaucratic hierarchy. Tufte puts it simply: “Serious problems require a serious tool: written reports.”

A separate NASA task force investigating escalating communications problems in the agency made this damning statement: “It appears that many young engineers do not understand the need for, or know how to prepare, formal engineering documents such as reports, white papers, or analyses.”

Is Rachel Carson Important in 2008?

A Design News staff discussion yesterday about green engineering got me thinking about Rachel Carson. The publication of her Silent Spring in 1962 created an enormous sensation by raising questions about how the widespread use of pesticides would impact human health as well as the well being of animals other than unwanted fire ants. She was ruthlessly attacked by major chemical companies, whose spraying practices were later reined in by government policy.

Silent Spring today is considered one of the four or five seminal American books that created major shifts in thinking and policy. Others include Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 and the Jungle in 1906. Among many honors, the Ninth Street Bridge in Pittsburgh was renamed the Rachel Carson Bridge on Earth Day 2006.

The specific ideas in the book are now somewhat dated, and I find the book a hard read without really studying the context. . And while we understand the risks of widespread use of chemicals such as DDT, what does Rachel Carson mean to us today? A few quick thoughts:

1)    She raised fundamental questions about man’s right to interfere with the environment. She didn’t oppose use of pesticides. She said society had a responsibility to study the overall impact of its actions. We seem to have gotten the message with nuclear power, but not so much with global warming. Our concerns are sharper edged today: bisphenol A in polycarbonate bottles, antimony trioxide as a polyester catalyst and phthalate plasticizers in vinyl film. But this is still the same: for every concern, there is a well-financed lobby to attack any tough questions.

2)    Opponents of regulation argued that Carson’s ideas stifled economic freedom. She truly made a valid case for regulation. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970 incorporating some of the recommendations she proposed in Congressional testimony in 1963. The issue of whether environmental (or financial) regulation is appropriate is still very alive today.

3)    Very importantly she made a powerful statement about personal courage. She and a few friends stood up against one of the most powerful corporate groups in America.  One chemical producer, Velsicol, threatened legal action against her and her publisher, Houghton Mifflin.  Rachel Carson was personally insulted and her thinking was pilloried by scientists on corporate payrolls. She battled cancer while she researched and wrote Silent Spring. She died at age 56 in 1964, two years after the publication of the book.

She was a pioneer of environmentalism, and some would say she was a pioneer of feminism as well. I admire her most because of her guts.