It’s good to see everyone standing up for the honor their profession. I’m sorry, though, engineers—you still aren’t quite off the hook. James Kakalios has informed me of one of your fellows who has besmirched the reputation of the whole lot of you.
Yeah, I know, he’s probably one of those creationist engineers, but that’s still no excuse.
I suppose it is because we engineers design so much stuff we find it hard to believe that all this random, godless stuff could lead to us; the Great Engineer…
In all fairness this is what happens when you take the lowest bidder. Perhaps if Palpatine had used a better prequalifications process they wouldn’t have been beaten by a couple teenagers, a space cowboy, 2 robosexual droids, and a wookie.
And who came up with the stupid Idea to put the shield generator for the Death Star II on freakin’ Endor? I know the natives are just mutant teddy bears but they have a hell of a mean streak.
…and when are the rebel engineers going to get around to fixing the instrument landing on the X-wing series? It sucks. One tiny bit of cloud and you land the f***ing thing tits up in a swamp.
Nardo is in the same rarified league as Discworld’s Bloody Stupid Johnson.
Oh, man. That was funny. Especially Lord Vader’s request for a volume button on his breathing thingie.
i know plenty of software engineers who think creationism is just alright with them. loons.
After having one Death Star blown up and probably wasting trillions of dollars, you’d think the Empire would have thought about a complete redesign. Nope. The next Death Star is basically exactly the same except the Achilles Heel power core is located smack dab in the middle with a tunnel leading directly to it. Kapow, there goes another trillion down the drain for the Empire. They deserved to lose.
Dude, have you ever tried to explain to the customer why the feature he thinks is TehL33tR0xxors is really a catastrophic failure event waiting to happen? When he’s the one who signs your paychecks? When appealing to the ethics code of your professional organization earns nothing more than a new, crude and vulgar nickname?
Try to remember, Doctor Science, we’re labor— not management. And we don’t even have a union anymore. Don’t blame me for your screwups if you won’t give me the authority and power to prevent you from making them, and you refuse to listen to my warnings and pleas for caution.
We all get the engineering work the tiny minority of pinheaded morons in charge deserve.
That Vader mail was great. It was like a real e-mail from a real boss, complete with premature send-aculation.
My father’s an engineer. He specifically taught me maths and science to counter my mother’s fundamentalism, and got her chosen pastor not to give sermons against it. (Unfortunately, this didnt’t stop the Sunday school preaching against it, but he tried).
The Force was with that site.
Except the late head Palpitating shafting dear Nardo (or “Nerdo” as he is affectionally called) with the throne room architecture.
First, the guy asked for it! No, really – the old bastard liked to see the light from the power core. That silly Imperial mail was standard procedure with him, he liked to mess with his subordinates. All of them.
Second, the Death Star wasn’t finished. The mistaken installation of Java instead of Wookie size handrail was supposed to be changed before delivery. If you don’t believe me, look at the requisitions, new railing was ordered. I’m sure you can find them in the New Republic central archives. Somewhere…
The Force was with that site.
Except the late head Palpitating shafting dear Nardo (or “Nerdo” as he is affectionally called) with the throne room architecture.
First, the guy asked for it! No, really – the old bastard liked to see the light from the power core. That silly Imperial mail was standard procedure with him, he liked to mess with his subordinates. All of them.
Second, the Death Star wasn’t finished. The mistaken installation of Java instead of Wookie size handrail was supposed to be changed before delivery. If you don’t believe me, look at the requisitions, new railing was ordered. I’m sure you can find them in the New Republic central archives. Somewhere…
Ehem.
It’s wookiee, for — presumably — some reason.
Ehem.
It’s wookiee, for — presumably — some reason.
I’m pretty sure the Death Star was running Windows 98.
Okay gentlemen, we had a good turn-out on the open forum for engineering in support of evolution. Now we need to work on the whole sci-fi thing.
I know we are all space nerds at heart, but we don’t need to flaunt it. I can hear the foot steps of women running away.
Time for all of you to move out of your parent’s basements.
Have you guys read Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster?
Ahem. Not my kind of woman. My kind of woman has spaceships tattooed on her shoulder.
So there.
I spent 30 years in Automotive (parts and service). My worst cutomers were engineers of every stripe. They knew how it was supposed to work (especially Automotive Engineers) but sometimes something didn’t. Even though I didn’t build it, it was my fault. That’s because people generally take their cars personally. They have faith that it will get them from A to B without problems. Cars are intelligently designed (by engineers). When something goes wrong their faith is challenged. Since it was my job to fix their car I indirectly had to fix their faith. It doesn’t matter that clutches wear out, brakes go, idle control solenoids eventually fail, my job was to restore their faith in the reliability of their car. Eventually their car is so worn out that I had to give them the bad news. The car that over these several years that had sustained their faith in was worn out. Not worth fixing. Ready to be hauled away. It’s my fault of course, I couldn’t fix their car for what they wanted to spend. I challenged their faith so I am evil. Satan incarnate. What did that customer do? Buy a 6 year old car that a slaesmen flimflammed him into (alot of used car salesmen are preachers when it isn’t Sunday). Hopefully, if their really still pissed off at me they take it somewhere else to get their faith challenged.
Oh, I don’t work in Automotiove anymore. I couldn’t handle throwing up every day before going to work. I am now Medical, I can now directly care for my patients. There is far less stress. I start Nursing school in September (if I get in).
Most customers know how ‘intelligently designed’ their cars are now because vehicle quality has improved greatly over the last 30 years (if their old enough).
It appears that Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, is not a creationist: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA07C49#WA07C49
At least not when it suits him.
In criticizing Al Gore recently, he said:
Ahem Tony, I am an engineer AND a star wars nerd, and I found that hilarious. Also because as an engineer I have to deal with clients who want stupid shit, or who want to very cheap option instead of the good option.
This is why Klingon engineering is so much better.
Hmm… I think we have a solution to the Creationist engineer problem…..
Almost as incompetent as Trurl and Klapaucius, of Stanislaw Lem’s Cyberiad infamy.
I have never met a Creationist bartender.
The amazing thing about reading the physics of Superman is that his existence is more plausible than God.
Food for thought.
OEJ
Don’t tell me you want to date the *normal* ones! That is No Fun At All.
So what is is about a certain subset of engineers and doctors, then? Was there a strain of engineering and medical education that focused enough on compartmentalization that people could hold completely loony beliefs while still doing good work? (Or does the same kind of “gosh, not falling over and blowing up wasn’t part of the spec” inhabit some of their day jobs?)
I stand corrected. Wouldn’t want to antagonize a wocky… ehr, wooki-ieee!!! Let go of me, you hairy oaf!
Hmf! I can’t help if I don’t talk grunt! But at least I can see why the vowels slip in.
I stand corrected. Wouldn’t want to antagonize a wocky… ehr, wooki-ieee!!! Let go of me, you hairy oaf!
Hmf! I can’t help if I don’t talk grunt! But at least I can see why the vowels slip in.
…for some reason I’ve never quite figured out. How can a species whose phonetic range is entirely limited to a small selection of grunts and howls come to be called wookiees and have names like Chewbacca and Tarfffful and call their planet Kashyyyykkkkk*? Shouldn’t they all have names like “Ahhrrrrr-Uhhrrrrr” or something?
* or whatever
Close, but not quite. It ran Windows 95OSR1
Reportedly the ewoks are just wookiees, shorter and backwards.
I think you can spot evolution sometimes due to how brilliant some designs are compared with the other ones. For example, check the following code. Design is typically pretty good, evolution is almost pure kludge.
Add 64
Divide 8
Add Memory(0)
Muliply 70
Muliply Memory(1)
Divide 20
Subtract 19
Divide 47
Suffice it to say this code blew my mind. It did things I didn’t know were possible. It was absolutely brilliant. However, look at the first two lines. Couldn’t it have just made that code Add 8?
I think design vs. evolution is quite suggested from the product. If the “designer” is both a complete moron and brilliant at the same time… that’s evolution. If the design is rather modular and would take about the same level of intelligence to make each part… that might have a real designer. I think we can look at something and ask, given what we know about designed things and evolved things… was this more likely to be designed or evolved?
That said, anybody saying that any life on this planet is designed is full of crap. I suppose you could argue that God designing something would be very dis-similar to man designing something. In which case you threw the entire thing out the window and have to explain why the hell God choses to design things like a complete moron at times.
Nardo Pace, unsung hero of the Republic. Seriously, given the famous inaccuracy of the stormtrooper weapons alone, I think this guy probably deserved a posthumous medal after the battle of Endor.
Troops.
Whatcha gonna do.
If you’re being ironic, that brand of idiocy is too tiresome to be amusing. If this was an attempt at humor in the same vein as James G. Watt’s line about “a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple,” OR a serious comment, this guy is even dumber than Nardo Pace.
That said, I think the problem is when you don’t have adequate professional license enforcement; then you get directors and scriptwriters with cartoonish imaginations and no training billing themselves as engineers, and it all goes to hell. x.x
But… but… I’m a woman. I like gadgets and monsters. But I have friends. They are talented, smart, witty, and generally decent-looking. Ummm but I do live in the basement. When I’m not in school. It’s a long story.
Sobaka is the Russian word for “dog” and was the inspiration for the name Chewbacca. Hairy and loyal, I guess.
Mill Wave (#28) that is an excellent question, one I have often asked myself. Perhaps the Wookiees are to some degree telepathic, use extensive body language, and/or have sonic components of their speech that are above or below the range of human hearing, and words like “Chewbacca and “Kashyyykkk” (or whatever) are rough approximations or analogs of whatever Wookiees themselves say and hear.
(Forgive me while I relentlessly rationalize.)
The Wookiee phonetic-range/language paradox is similar to the Pokemon language paradox. Most Pokemon can only say their own name – or, maybe I should say that the distinctive utterance of each type of Pokemon is what gives it its name. But shouldn’t a creature than can say “pikachu” be able to say more than “pikachu?” Shouldn’t it be able to say “chik” and “up” and “chip” and “kap” and “kuchap” and any number of other things?
And what about critters like Kangaskan? Blastoise? Charmeleon? Hey… hey! Where are you going? I’m not finished! Hey, come back!
“However, look at the first two lines. Couldn’t it have just made that code Add 8?”
No, not unless the accumulator is guaranteed to be 0.
Johnny Vector:
One of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met has three tattoos, two of which are illustrations from The Sandman (Dream and Destiny, to be more precise).
Kseniya:
Or, perhaps the phonetics of the Star Wars universe are as poorly designed as the plotting of Phantom Menace. I mean, seriously! Why in the blazing circles of Hell (or Mustafar) did Darth Maul attack Qwi-Gon on Tatooine, when Palpatine’s entire scheme relied upon getting Qwi-Gon, Amidala and company back to Trantor — excuse me, back to Coruscant? Shouldn’t he have sent a luxury space yacht to pick them up instead of an assassin to kill them?
Tony Popple:
Actually, Tony, it appears that you don’t know what you’re missing. My wife is a Star Wars fan, and gorgeous to boot. We also have our own home, and a three year old. We also have several of the Star Wars books, and she’s even read more of them than me.
-Berlzebub
Project Engineer
As an exercise please identify all the posters who responded before looking at the link.
If I recall correctly, I read in one of the Expanded Universe novels that wookiees communicate with each other through growls and grunts, with most of it going on at a level too low for humanoid hearing and a great deal of it non-verbal. Wookiees are extremely intelligent as well as strong – which is why they were used as slaves in the Empire – but most folks thought they were just easily trained because they couldn’t understand wookiee speak. Han Solo was partially raised by a wookiee and just has a knack for languages. In one of the earlier Timothy Zahn books, one of Chewbacca’s cousins is introduced and he’s a translator for the wookiee government. He’s the only wookiee who can speak Galactic Basic, but it’s only because he has a serious speech impediment.
There’s a reason wookiees have such garglely names, but I forget it at the moment in the shame of having the above take up space in my brain.
FWIW, I thought Darth Maul was supposed to fail somewhat, and help stir up the Empire and the Jedi with another threath (by the Sith). Palpatine’s coup relied on getting emergency powers in the crisis.
Of course, I could be wrong – I can’t foresee everything.
FWIW, I thought Darth Maul was supposed to fail somewhat, and help stir up the Empire and the Jedi with another threath (by the Sith). Palpatine’s coup relied on getting emergency powers in the crisis.
Of course, I could be wrong – I can’t foresee everything.
But shouldn’t a creature than can say “pikachu” be able to say more than “pikachu?” Shouldn’t it be able to say “chik” and “up” and “chip” and “kap” and “kuchap” and any number of other things?
Maybe it’s a mental issue rather than a limitation of the vocal apparatus… think Timmy in South Park.
Or compare it to a bird song – chickadees may mix it up a bit sometimes, but probably can’t say something like “kadeechick”.
Regards engineers chasing women away…
My wife is an engineer, (as am I). We both ride Harleys. She does her own maintenance, I do mine.
Engineers may chase “girls” away, but we are magnets to the technologically inclined.
… and yea… we talk about direct inject engine mods over dinner.
That is not correct. Replacing the firsts two lines with “Add 8” will not affect the reliability of the code. If there is no guarantee that the accumulator will be initialized to zero, then the two versions will be equally unreliable. The fact that they yield differing incorrect results when the accumulator is not initialized is not particularly relevant.