IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Death Sentence - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

My father was a foreman in the Bridge Department of the City of New York.

He told me the story of having worked in that department starting in 1940. Then, in 1942, then Mayor LaGuardia made it official city policy that all city bridges would be put on a deferred maintenance status. My dad, who having just gotten married, got laid off and had to leave New York and his new bride behind to spend two years away working in Harrisburg, PA.

During those two years, the New York City bridges received essentially no attention. They were allowed to rot to the point where collapse was imminent for several of them.

The Nutcracker and Job Creation - Dick LaRosa

This is the third year that our granddaughter Kaitlyn has performed in the Eglevsky Ballet's "Nutcracker". I consulted the program booklet to learn how to spell "Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky" and could not find it there. I had to consult Wikipedia, and learned that Tchaikovsky composed the music, but the story came from other people. When I first saw it two years ago, my initial impression of the first act was that it was cluttered by an awful lot of details and characters. I soon realized that the Christmas celebration in the plot created many roles for young people. This year, the performance that I saw had 10 Dancing Party Children, 6 Children Party Guests, 10 Soldiers, 7 Mice, and 5 Rats. In addition, the first act had 11 Party Guests and 14 Snow Flakes, which I assume were more experienced dancers. There were also the principal dancers and characters.

 

$3.20 per Gallon?? Ask Me How! by Larry Rachman

 It was only a week or so ago that I came across the newly-coined word ‘hypermiling’ in an automotive blog. It’s the art/science of driving your unmodified car in such a manner as to get the absolutely best fuel economy possible. Now, we all know the basic rules: avoid jack-rabbit starts, stay at 55 on the highway, and so forth. And probably most of us, especially those who are <ahem> spirited drivers, give the rules fairly short shrift. Hypermilers (www.hypermiling.com), on the other hand, push these rules to the limit.

 I happen to enjoy driving. And, being an engineer, I was a bit skeptical of the claims of a recent hypermiler of getting more than 30 mpg on a coast-to-coast trip in a 3.6 liter Ford F150 pickup truck, with an EPA rating of 16/22 city/highway) (tinyurl.com/43h29bo). Now, admittedly, these folks used a bunch of techniques that definitely fall in the category of ‘don’t try this at home’, like shifting into neutral and shutting off the engine on downgrades. But it all got me wondering just how much driving technique really does affect fuel economy.

 The test bed for my experiment was my 2.0 liter 2007 stick-shifting SAAB 9-3 turbo convertible. It’s got a few things going for it, such as a turbo and a manual transmission with an overdrive sixth gear. On the other hand, being a convertible, I’m lugging around 3530 pounds, even before adding a driver and passengers. Fortunately (for this experiment, not for me) I make an approximately 350 mile round-trip 80% highway, 20% local drive about once per month. And as the car has an average-reading fuel economy display, I was all set to experiment.

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years by Jerry Brown

If you're like me, you spend a lot of time these days fretting about the current and future state of our country's affairs. One of the problems we all face is that the issues are so numerous and large that it's hard to get your mind around them. So, I'm always on the lookout fact-based articles that boil data down into digestible pieces. In this quest, I recently stumbled onto a remarkable video which I thought was worth sharing.

Hans Rosling's video

An Experiment in How We Think

 

At the September 1, 2010 meeting of LICN, we all participated in an experiment pertaining to our thinking processes.

 

After performing an experiment, you should write it up... which I did. I tried to adhere to the accepted format that we learned in school, but I did allow myself some liberty to deviate.

 

Since we all participated as co-experimenters, I invite you to present you own thoughts, conclusions, discussions, etc.

 

I also want to take this opportunity to thank you for your participation and the lively discussions. It was fun.

 

Murray Kleiner 

 

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