Is this too mellow?
 

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:17:49 +0200, "Iain Churches"
wrote:

It is hard for people
here to comprehend that your own city of Detroit, Arny
has an illiteracy rate according to a United Nations report
of 46%.

Makes you wonder if the nearly universal health-care is worth it :-)

Is this too mellow?
 

"Iain Churches" wrote in message


Illiteracy in Scandinavia is unknown.

There are ongoing projects in Scandinavia to combat illiteracy. Ergo,
illiteracy is a known problem.

It is hard for people here to comprehend that your own city of Detroit,
Arny
has an illiteracy rate according to a United Nations
report of 46%.

I suspect that Scandinavians with adequate backgrounds in sociology can
understand the cause of the problem.

I believe that I've given you a quick explanation of it on several occasions
and the explanations were beyond your comprehension.

Admittedly, seeing the situation play out right in front of me over 60-odd
years, an open mind and a good liberal education have been of benefit to me.
I know that Detroit was once a city with a far higher literacy rate.
However, there have been social changes of an adverse nature, mostly related
to welfare programs.

I have to give the Scandinavians in the US credit for the fact that other US
cities with very strong Scandinavian immigrant histories and populations
have managed to avoid suffering similar outcomes. Minneapolis and Duluth
come to mind.

One needs to be neither sociologist nor anthropologist to
see the adverse effect that sloppy American usage is
having on the English language.

Who says that the fact that the English language is dynamic and changing is
adverse?

What constitutes sloppy American usage?

Who is the proper judge of such things?

Iain, who made you such a god in your own mind?

I understood his meaning perfectly .

That's one of your problems Iain, nobody understands anything perfectly, not
even you.

Iain, this speaks to your inability to ascribe even the smallest measure of
one of the most common of all human faults, to yourself.

Is this too mellow?
 

In article ,
bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

What I find interesting is that there were only 2 shuttle failures of about
100 flights, but the failures were widely chronologically separated so that
if you broke the flight schedule into two chronological groups of 50
flights, each group of 50 had a failure. The failures were totally
unrelated
in terms of when or how they happened.



The failures were both caused by exactly the same root cause..NASA engineers
not
foreseeing something totally obvious. In one case the effect of cold weather
on
rubber and in the other the kinetic energy possessed by falling chunks of
foam.

In the first case, as I understand it, engineers did have concerns but
were beaten down by managers.

Stephen

Is this too mellow?
 

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:41:27 +0200, "Iain Churches"
wrote:

The odd unpleasant neologism has crept in, though, like a tendency to
say "can I get" rather than "may I have" in a restaurant. I have
explained that the waiter will get it so that they may have it, but
they don't really understand.

Maybe if, in reply to "Can I get....." the waiter replied:
"Certainly sir, it's on the left, top shelf, as you go through
the kitchen door", then they would understand.

Well, there we go. I took a 25 year old out for dinner tonight, and
she said "may I please have..." to the waiter.

d

Is this too mellow?
 

MiNe 109 wrote:
In article ,
bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

What I find interesting is that there were only 2 shuttle failures of about
100 flights, but the failures were widely chronologically separated so that
if you broke the flight schedule into two chronological groups of 50
flights, each group of 50 had a failure. The failures were totally
unrelated
in terms of when or how they happened.


The failures were both caused by exactly the same root cause..NASA engineers
not
foreseeing something totally obvious. In one case the effect of cold weather
on
rubber and in the other the kinetic energy possessed by falling chunks of
foam.

In the first case, as I understand it, engineers did have concerns but
were beaten down by managers.


Yes you are quite right, thinking about it ISTR that engineers may have warned
about the foam too. It was engineers at fault when one of the Mars probes failed
to land properly though, turned out they'd converted metric units to imperial
incorrectly. Kind of begs the question as to why the good ole US of A is still
using imperial.


--
Bill Coombes

Is this too mellow?
 

In article ,
bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:

MiNe 109 wrote:
In article ,
bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

What I find interesting is that there were only 2 shuttle failures of
about
100 flights, but the failures were widely chronologically separated so
that
if you broke the flight schedule into two chronological groups of 50
flights, each group of 50 had a failure. The failures were totally
unrelated
in terms of when or how they happened.


The failures were both caused by exactly the same root cause..NASA
engineers
not
foreseeing something totally obvious. In one case the effect of cold
weather
on
rubber and in the other the kinetic energy possessed by falling chunks of
foam.

In the first case, as I understand it, engineers did have concerns but
were beaten down by managers.


Yes you are quite right, thinking about it ISTR that engineers may have
warned
about the foam too. It was engineers at fault when one of the Mars probes
failed
to land properly though, turned out they'd converted metric units to imperial
incorrectly. Kind of begs the question as to why the good ole US of A is
still
using imperial.

Here's where the joke about rocket science goes! That is strange,
though, the kind of mistake one would hope to blame on a visiting high
school student.

Stephen

Is this too mellow?
 

On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:10:10 +0000, bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet
wrote:

MiNe 109 wrote:
In article ,
bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

What I find interesting is that there were only 2 shuttle failures of about
100 flights, but the failures were widely chronologically separated so that
if you broke the flight schedule into two chronological groups of 50
flights, each group of 50 had a failure. The failures were totally
unrelated
in terms of when or how they happened.


The failures were both caused by exactly the same root cause..NASA engineers
not
foreseeing something totally obvious. In one case the effect of cold weather
on
rubber and in the other the kinetic energy possessed by falling chunks of
foam.

In the first case, as I understand it, engineers did have concerns but
were beaten down by managers.


Yes you are quite right, thinking about it ISTR that engineers may have warned
about the foam too. It was engineers at fault when one of the Mars probes failed
to land properly though, turned out they'd converted metric units to imperial
incorrectly. Kind of begs the question as to why the good ole US of A is still
using imperial.

They are concerned about all the old people who would be confused by
the change. They are going to wait until all the old people have died,
and then change.

Actually, we haven't really gone SI either. My height is not quite six
feet - I couldn't tell you what I am in metres. And the Conservatives
want to measure alcohol in centilitres rather than "units".
Centilitres - I ask you?

And the weather - in summer the temperature might get into the
nineties, while in winter, like now, it hovers around zero. Fahrenheit
and Centigrade all jumbled up instead of Kelvin for everything.

d

Is this too mellow?
 

In article ,
bcoombes
bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

What I find interesting is that there were only 2 shuttle failures of
about 100 flights, but the failures were widely chronologically
separated so that if you broke the flight schedule into two
chronological groups of 50 flights, each group of 50 had a failure.
The failures were totally unrelated in terms of when or how they
happened.



The failures were both caused by exactly the same root cause..NASA
engineers not foreseeing something totally obvious. In one case the
effect of cold weather on rubber and in the other the kinetic energy
possessed by falling chunks of foam.

Slightly puzzled to see my name above as I didn't actually write any of
what was quoted!

However as others have said, the problem is that 'engineers' often do
forsee failure modes, limitations, etc. But management then decide what to
do (or not) about it. All real products have to come in after a finite
time, with a finite cost, with finite reliability, finite capabilities,
etc. In the real world we learn by our mistakes (if lucky!) and have to
bear in mind that hindsight can make things 'obvious' once it is too late.

That said, Arny's comments do show how easy it can be to produce dubious
'conclusions' after an event using 'statistics'. The earlier comparison of
Shuttle with Concord is a nice example of how you can get a range of
different 'conclusions' depending on how you do the stats. Consider for
example doing the analysis per 'flight' rather than per 'vehicle'. So
the reality is that for such small numbers of events you have to use
statistics with great caution.

Dragging this back towards being on topic for the group, it reminds me
of a paper on 'capacitor sound' sic? I read some time ago where they
did one form of analysis after another, each failing to show any
difference, until then finally found one that seemed to! :-) The
snag was that so far as I could see, most of their analysis was such
that you could check how likely the results would have been to be
due to simple random variations. i.e. the root problem wasn't even
that the level of statistical significance was low - it was that it
wasn't possible to even determine the significance in statistical
terms!

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Is this too mellow?
 

Don Pearce wrote:
On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:10:10 +0000, bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet
wrote:

MiNe 109 wrote:
In article ,
bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

What I find interesting is that there were only 2 shuttle failures of about
100 flights, but the failures were widely chronologically separated so that
if you broke the flight schedule into two chronological groups of 50
flights, each group of 50 had a failure. The failures were totally
unrelated
in terms of when or how they happened.


The failures were both caused by exactly the same root cause..NASA engineers
not
foreseeing something totally obvious. In one case the effect of cold weather
on
rubber and in the other the kinetic energy possessed by falling chunks of
foam.
In the first case, as I understand it, engineers did have concerns but
were beaten down by managers.

Yes you are quite right, thinking about it ISTR that engineers may have warned
about the foam too. It was engineers at fault when one of the Mars probes failed
to land properly though, turned out they'd converted metric units to imperial
incorrectly. Kind of begs the question as to why the good ole US of A is still
using imperial.

They are concerned about all the old people who would be confused by
the change. They are going to wait until all the old people have died,
and then change.

Actually, we haven't really gone SI either. My height is not quite six
feet - I couldn't tell you what I am in metres.

Me neither, I still think of distances in miles too, although if pushed I can do
Km's.

--
Bill Coombes

Is this too mellow?
 

MiNe 109 wrote:
In article ,
bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:

MiNe 109 wrote:
In article ,
bcoombes bcoombes@orangedotnet wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

What I find interesting is that there were only 2 shuttle failures of
about
100 flights, but the failures were widely chronologically separated so
that
if you broke the flight schedule into two chronological groups of 50
flights, each group of 50 had a failure. The failures were totally
unrelated
in terms of when or how they happened.


The failures were both caused by exactly the same root cause..NASA
engineers
not
foreseeing something totally obvious. In one case the effect of cold
weather
on
rubber and in the other the kinetic energy possessed by falling chunks of
foam.
In the first case, as I understand it, engineers did have concerns but
were beaten down by managers.

Yes you are quite right, thinking about it ISTR that engineers may have
warned
about the foam too. It was engineers at fault when one of the Mars probes
failed
to land properly though, turned out they'd converted metric units to imperial
incorrectly. Kind of begs the question as to why the good ole US of A is
still
using imperial.

Here's where the joke about rocket science goes!

Yes, NASA went a bit stupid for a while, bit of a shame really, hopefully
they've sorted it out but now it looks as if they are going to have big funding
problems.

--
Bill Coombes