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 Saturday, December 6, 2003
Concurrent engineering. More from the AIChE meeting. Jonathan Worstell of Shell Chemical in Houston talked in a a number of sessions about the importance of Concurrent Engineering.
In Worstell's view, the basic problem that Concurrent Engineering solves is that projects are too complex and too long for traditional serial engineering, where each phase of the project is lead by a different group of people. With Concurrent Engineering, a project team consists of representative from all parts of the organization.
At the center of the Concurrent Engineering team are cost engineering, research & development, and simulations. The remaining groups interact with this core, depending on the phase of the project. In Worstell's mind, Concurrent Engineering creates a sense of community around the project with all the stakeholders involved. An in this sense, the project team has a wholistic view of the project.
He also talks about Concurrent Engineering yielding more innovation for the company. He differentiates between invention (coming up with a new idea) and innovation (developing a new use for existing ideas), and strongly discourages heavy reliance on invention in process design. His argument is that invention only increases costs - by 35% - due to the need for untested equipment or processing. Obviously, this has to be balanced with the need for new tools and techniques that may significantly lower overall costs as well. In the Concurrent Engineering model, the cost engineers work with the developers to understand the cost impact of changes and new features, rather than discovering these new costs at the end of the design phase.
[Knowledge Jolt with Jack]
Sounds very much like the differences between a linear hierarchy and a highly linked adaptive network. Now, I would expect than most engineers value innovation over invention. But, as a basic research investigator, I would say that both are about equal on our side. Innovation lets you get me too ideas out but invention allows you to own an area. 9:16:30 PM 
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Quotation Marks. Quotation Marks - Gary Farber finds an article in which a US Army Captain informs us that "The only thing... [Unqualified Offerings]
Great, we have commanders saying things like this: 'You have to understand the Arab mind,' Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. 'The only thing they understand is force [~] force, pride and saving face.'
How nonsensical. If this is true, they how in the world are they EVER going to be a democracy. Now, besides the fact that he may very well be right when describing Arabs and their culture, is humilating an entire town in this way a useful approach? In a society where face is so important, what will really be accomplished by humliation? Once humiliated, does it noe become easier to recover face by killing one's enemies while also removing the humliated? The family would gain some face, some honor while the cause of the humiliation is damaged.
More importantly, if these 3 things are actually the only thinng an Arab mind understands, then how on Earth will we ever see a democracy raised up here that we can feel safe about. Saving face, force and pride do not seem like they are great principles to plan a democracy around. while they do seem to be exactly the sort of principles a sadistic totalitarian dictator cold use quite well to hold power. It sure explains Saddam, it suggests that the neo-cons idea of a democracy rich Middle East is a very lon-term ideal and it presents the idea that the only way we will stabilize this region now is to become what we destroyed. Now a very good thought for this Administration's nation builders. Why could they not have started with something a little easier? Like France ;-) 9:01:08 PM
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this administration's new found interest in the moon smacks very much of a Rovian PR piece that is set to help election possibilities but will have very little real followthrew. For me , the telling point is that it is supposed to resonate with Kennedy. Why in the world do we need a mission to do what we have already done? Buzz Aldrin has a much better suggestion, one that would not only be something new, would help create a new, possibly better NASA and set us up for future solar system exploration, but may well be cheaper. even better, cooperating with other countries would make it even better. As Aldrin writes:China and America are on the verge of a new space race [~] with economic competition expected from Japan, Europe and perhaps India [~] and it is better to start off with cooperation than with confrontation. Unfortunately, i think the moon idea is simply a knee-jerk reaction to China's rapidly moving space program and to deflect the fact that NASA has been pretty moribund for some time. It seems like very little real vision is present. 8:29:31 PM
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Signs of Intelligence: Teacher Sues for Right to Teach. A Maine teacher is suing the school district so that he can teach well-balanced, accurate history rather than Christian fundamentalist sanitized history... [Morons Dot Org]
Scary except that it is a very one-sided article. We only hear one side of the story. I found something more that, while indicating that Maine has extremely weird views about teaching of history, does not exactly indicate that it is Christian fundamentalism driving things. See, they do teach about only about Europe and Christianity in the 7th grade. They teach about the Eastern Hemisphere in the ninth grade. However, ninth grade history is an elective while 7th grade is required. Since I remember that few people whose history as an elective, the basic idea (that few are taught about history of China, India, Japan) is correct.
But is this an attempt to teach only fudamentalist views or simply the incompetency of bureaucracy? Well, the fact that they apparently are supposed to learn about Western Culture and democracy without hearing about the history of Greece (if the teacher's lawyer is to be believed) suggests a very unusual approach to teaching about Europe. this should be an interesting story as it progresses. I expect that the reasons are not a sinister as the lawyer states, but it does seem strange that the kids are supposed to learn European history without bing able to hear ablout any influences from the outside. Very strange. 8:17:23 PM
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Projecting violence
. Glenn Reynolds links approvingly to this classic bit of conservative projection from Gerard Van Der Leun, "Where Bush Hate is Heading." In it, Van Der Leun inflates a toss-off line from Eminem into evidence of the growing virulence and potential violence [Orcinus]
This is becoming more and more the meme of the right. That any dissent, any criticize, about this administration must be because twe HATE Bush, not because we believe his policies are wrong and his actions counter-productive. My guess is that this meme will be used to justify extreme measures to deal with protestors at the Republican Convention. 'See, they hate US, and could have hurt someone really badly if we had not taken the swfit corrective steps we did.'
This idea of Bush Hatred being the driving force of dissent allows the Republicans to simply gnore any sort of rational discussion about fair trade, drugs, Iraq, Afghanistan, NATO, China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the economy, jobs, farm subsidies, and the thousand and one other problems that befall us today. These are just too hard to deal with, so let's just say they hate us and do whatever we want. 8:00:08 PM
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