Big Boo-Boo on 950 tons of bridge

Sure, the public part tells the private part how something has to be done and gives them an unlimited pile of cash to do it. That's

Someone please remind "bitrex the dum dum" that the Boo Boo Bridge was funded by an Obama-era grant. ...Jim Thompson

When I was in engineering school they showed movies of the "Galloping Gertie" Tacoma Narrows Bridge, with emphasis on, "This is what happens when you give partial credit on exams".

At the time there was a big falderal at MIT about whether to allow partial credit for incomplete answers on exams. ...Jim Thompson

Well then they shouldn't do that. If they have unlimited pile of cash to blow why are they lowest-bidding the work, anyway?

I doubt even Nazi Germany gave its engineers an blank check they'd probably have had the atomic bomb in 1943 if they did, the US gave its scientists and engineers a blank check that's why we got it first.

On Tuesday, March 20, 2018 at 10:59:45 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote: .

and many more sub contractors. Say on the order of the Saturn V program?

ars worth of work. There aren't many projects around of that size.

han a million mid-1980s US dollars, and the one for which I knew the number s would have cost 3.8 million UK mid-1980 UK pounds to complete when it was cancelled (and it cost the the company 3.8 million UK pounds to buy itself out of the obligation to complete it).

close to production - as opposed to the proof-of-principle machine it real ly was - the story would have been different, and the PERT charts a lot mor e stable and useful.

I would probably agree with you. A project of only 10 million dollars prob ably does not warrant any time spent on formal project management.

Dan

The way I hear it's done in e.g. some of the EM courses at BU nowadays is the professor gives questions that are too advanced for what has been taught to "challenge" the students, flunks everyone, and then scales the grade based on how badly you failed. Oh shit I failed. No wait actually I got an "A."

As if Obama were some paragon of virtue.

An unconditional love of country is no patriotism. America will probably be OK. Hard to say about the second part.

than

re

They showed us that same film in Physics II IIRC, but by then they had lear ned enough to know it's a lesson in resonance. The winds through the narrow s excited natural resonance modes in the bridge, causing standing waves of large enough amplitude to finally fracture the steel stringers.

Well okay if you want to call 0.01% "less than 100%."

On Tuesday, March 20, 2018 at 5:59:12 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wr ote:

e:

rote:

he concrete with giant bolts.

ed

itical

concrete)

er

d rather

lt failed

hannel.

The engineering proposal calls them "post-tensioning bars."

The section views specify "1-3/4 P.T. BAR."

The tensioning table (right side of the drawing) doesn't show any P.T. bars for truss #11, the one that failed, but we know there were T.B.'s in it--there's at least that one in the post-collapse photos.

After the T.B. snapped, #11 failed, the top and bottom decks snapped, each deck section breaking off approx. where it met truss #10.

Cheers, James Arthur

I'm guessing they erred in properly curing the concrete which would explain how the tensioning process cracked the concrete. There are many hundreds o f concrete mixes used for the many hundreds of applications. These people w ere obviously using a fast cure rate mix, and they were on the margins of i ts performance where there probably wasn't a whole lot of industry experien ce if any.

Chainlink isn't the most attractive material. Sylvia thought her bridge was ugly.

I try to walk about 15mi/day. I've haven't been allowed to go to the gym for a couple of months (maybe I'll break out this weekend), so it's sometimes tough to get it in.

The lights are on, Safeway and Tartine are well stocked, we have no fear of being gunned down in the streets or in our beds. We build cool electronics and people pay for it.

That's plenty enough per cent for me. How you manage to be so unhappy is strange.

I took a lot of courses like that. One prof loved to design tests so the average was around 50. The highest grade in the class was generally about 70 and an 'A' above 50. 30 was usually a 'C'. He designed the exams so he could finish them in an hour. I rather liked the system, too, since a stupid mistake didn't cost much.

One semester he had a transfer student who got ~75 on the first exam and was pissed because it was so difficult. The prof told him not to worry because he had the highest score of all three sections. Not happy with that answer, he studied his ass off for the next exam and got a 100 but the prof took off one point for penmanship.

Great prof, BTW.

I think he wants to trade The Wall for naturalizing the (non-criminal) Dreamers, which makes perfect sense to me. His negotiation strategy outrages the "lead from behind/yellow line in the sand/accepted diplomacy standards" wusses, fine by me.

In the face of a lot more resistance.

Some economic boost is psychological, hence transient. The business tax cut is very real and will take a while to have serious effect.

I have to agree with Fred on n(government) being low, and, their taking, wasting, and meddling is a major impediment to folks on the margins.

It's amazing how much pent-up creativity President Trump has released just by loosening a few reins and cheering people on rather than scolding them.

I'll have lots of fun no matter what--my needs are very small. E.g., Dan stopped by today, and we had a blast. Your name came up a lot too, naturally.

Cheers, James

But that's what government does.

It depends on how important what they were working on was and who they knew. No different than today, except for the magnitude of the budgets.

America isn't doing well, and hasn't been doing well for quite a while on a whole lot of indices of social well-being.

The unfortunate process started under Reagan, and has been getting progress ively worse ever since.

Trump is doing well only in the sense that he hasn't been impeached yet. He 's just fired the Secretary of State he appointed, and he has yet to fire S cott Pruitt.

He's been spectacularly ineffective at anything more demanding than appoint ing like-thinking cronies.

John Larkin's definition of "doing well" may be based on some personal metr ic of a narcissist buffoon's getting away with being a narcissist buffoon f or longer than expected, but previous US presidents provide a more relevant yard-stick. Dubbya would have invaded North Korea by now ...

Efficiency is a measure of output per unit input. The input to a government is taxes collected. The output is things that get done.

Perhaps John Larkin could post an itemised list of things that Trump has go t done? It won't take him long.

Reagan had a lot, too. They were a lot smarter, though.

The psychological preloads the expectations which feeds on itself.