I was thinking today. I got a story. Graduated HS 1996. Graduated college 1999. In college we had a guest speaker. "Retired" NASA Engineer. He was a guest speaker for the IEEE whistleblowers association or some such thing. He was an Engineer at NASA and came to our school to talk about how when he was an Engineer at NASA he helped blow the whistle on how management blew up the Space Shuttle Challenger. I was in 2nd grade and the whole class was sitting in a room watching it on one of those big TV's with the knobs they used to have a a stand that it was ratchet strapped to. Anyway it wasn't just my class. Like the entire grade came one class room and piled in to my homeroom and we watched it blow up live on TV. All the school kids were watching b/c it had a female teacher on board. She had won a contest to be the first teacher in space or something. Trained to be an astronaut and they built the whole thing up while she trained. Then it exploded on live tv in front of everyone.

Anyway on the morning the crash it was a cold and frosty morning. All the Engineers had warned that it was too risky to launch. Management was under pressure to have a launch that day b/c of the TV audience and the launch had been scrubbed so many times before they had to get this thing going. So they chose to launch despite the warnings. After having previous knowledge that launching during such times was dangerous.

If you didn't know the frost and cold weather caused an oring to fail b/c it had a flaw of allowing gas to blow by it in cold weather. They knew of the problem and launched anyway, after being told it was a really bad idea.

Anyway that guy came to my school to speak and thats what he told us. The point of his speech was to join the IEEE b/c they had insurance for whistle blowers.

Our friends up north have a great ceremony, the Calling of the Engineer, where a new engineer takes an oath of professional ethics and accept an iron ring as a reminder of their responsibilities. It's a great tradition. The USA has their own version called the Order of the Engineer that began in 1970, but my respect goes to Canada for the concept.

Licensed professional engineers have to remain in good ethical standing before the state's professional board, but outside of construction jobs, becoming a licensed PE isn't often demanded for the job. Perhaps that's a shame for safety-critical fields like this.

Interesting

My old boss was a certified engineer PE i think it was. He had a stamp to stamp drawings official whatever it was.

He grew up in chicago. Was there in the riots. He was the only white kid. His dad walked to the factory down the street everyday carrying a lunch box. So king was assassinated and they rioted in Chicago.. like sent in the national guard riot. They didnt have a gun in the house. And the riots were getting closer. His dad went across the street to borrow a gun. They didn’t have one to spare. They'd only give up a single shoot .22 so he came home with that. They stayed up all night ight watching the glow of the fires get closer. The tanks were lined up on a street just one or two over from theirs to make a barrier. They layed there all night and listed to the tank tracks on the road scared to death. How they can have those gun laws there after that is beyond me.


They had swimming in gym class in Chicago and bussed them all to the ymca where they all swam buck naked. he is a good dude. Old factory rat like me.

I became a certified PE when I lived in Iowa, mostly as a challenge. My employer never asked me to stamp anything and it hasn't made a difference in my career. From what I have seen, it is the construction industry where this is the norm. That said, I think there would be more accountability if people were putting their stamp on their work. Professional standards are a good thing, although I'm sure there are libertarians who will argue that it's a slippery slope to government overreach or something.

As for Chicago, it's as racially charged as it has ever been, but thankfully I live in the suburbs away from the city itself. I certainly own guns, but we require a so-called FOID card here; I don't know why an ID card is needed for my 2nd Amendment right but not to exercise the right to vote.