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“In the past, I have heard there was conflict between the “two cultures” of science and the humanities. I don’t see a lot of evidence for that type of conflict today, mostly because my scientific friends all are big fans of the arts and literature. However, the two cultures that I do see a great deal of conflict between are those of science and engineering. “
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“The less you know about your doctor the better.”
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“Football fever grips the globe as we reach the final stages of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Alongside the traditional game where one winning team takes all, leaving 31 losing teams to go home earlier than expected, there is another competition running in parallel. Which losing team can come up with the best excuses for formidable football failure? All manner of feeble and pathetic excuses are offered, but many aren’t backed up with proper citations of peer-reviewed research published in scientific journals. So let’s set the balance straight.”
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“I closed the door and leaned against it, taking a deep breath. “I saw it,” I said. “Going for Italian.”
Andrew craned his neck towards me. He yawned. “Saw what?”
“The Higgs.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Higgs boson,” I said. “I saw it.”
He laughed, sitting up. “Right,” he said. “No one’s ever seen it. Not Fermilab, not CERN, and certainly not us.” He waved his arm around the lab. “I’m beginning to think half of this equipment does nothing.””
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“[T]here are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning.
I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called “World War II”.
Let’s start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn’t look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn’t get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.”
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“The post office plans to raise stamp prices again. The usual groans about government inefficiency are sure to follow. But the post office doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Contrary to popular perception, it receives no federal funding for its operations, subsisting almost entirely on the fees it charges for delivering mail. It’s a great bargain: It’ll take your letter anywhere in the country for what’s still a modest fee. And when Consumer Reports compared package services, it concluded that “the good old U.S. Postal Service is often cheapest by far.””
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Huh? Engineers love the unknown. We also love making the unknown useful. It’s not about things being known and applied, it’s about stretching the limits of what we know and don’t know and how to apply it.
Maybe some scientists just don’t understand what engineers actually do.
Agree with #1; I went to go comment on at The Scientist site to say the same thing (but their registration process turned me off more than their attitude riled me up).
When the engineer in the anecdote asked “what do you want this software to do?” (i.e., “what is my job?”) and the scientists answer was “I don’t know… stuff”, yeah, that’s a red-flag on any project. Right there you know there will be feature-creep, slipped deadlines, and at the end, either an unfinished project, an unhappy boss/client, or wrangling for more money. (Which can happen on any project; but “do stuff” guarantees it.)
Scientist answer questions (which involves accomplishing tasks). Engineers accomplish tasks (which involves answering questions).