[Ansteorra] OT Engineering and Government actions

[Leslie Snipes]

"Care to repeat that slander?"
Technically, it would be libel or defamation since slander is spoken rather than written and truth is an absolute defense to any of those.

Having worked for 3 federal agencies, I am quite comfortable saying that the SOP is often spending huge sums without doing proper research and that's both elected and employed persons who do so.

"Every engineer who signs off on a design puts his professional license

his professional reputation, his job, the reputation of his employer, and

a great deal of money at risk. His job is to create a design that, first

and foremost, is safe; it has to do a lot of other things, too, but it

*must* be safe. The other people involved in the design put their jobs and

reputations at risk, too, as do the contractors who actually implement the

design in concrete, steel, asphalt, and other materials."

No matter how good the design, it may not be built to design which I'm sure you know.  Beyond that, if it is designed well enough to outlast the designer's life, that's usually sufficient to protect one's reputation.  We all still want to believe that most think this way but I'm not at all sure that it is or ever was true.
"70,000 bridges nationwide structurally deficient"
"In Oklahoma, nearly 27 percent of bridges were cited by the federal
government as being structurally deficient, the highest percentage
among the states."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/08/03/national/w091454D87.DTL&type=politics

"In mundane life, I work for the highway department. When we don't do our
research, people are injured or die, and a great deal of pain and suffering
ensues."

You are absolutely correct.

"We're not in the business of causing pain, suffering, injury, or
death. Our business is to provide a safe transportation network (air, rail,
water, and road) for all to use."

No comment.

Pandora