35th anniversary of Three Mile Island(TMI) accident recently. Continuing coverage on local state network, PCN, just went on forever. Number of people who died in the aftermath of TMI as a result of accident: 0. Meanwhile, an actual person, a 17 yr old HS girl, was brutally stabbed to death 80 or so miles to the east that very same day -- March 28, 1979, and is the only real remaining mystery in PA from that day. TMI is well understood. Looking back, alot of MBAs and 1979 era wide tie three piece suits managing the TMI optics. Poorly. But interesting studies afterwards about community response; continuing loss of trust in authority, especially with regard to issues of use of complex technology. Rightfully so, because in the end, these things are managed as group projects, subject to the unavoidable fact that on average, we are average, and that group effort is what is managing these massive technological effors. Can't finesse our way around that, it is true. We can have our licensing schemes and our boards and our bureacracies, and make them as arbitrarily large and powerful as we want, but in the end, no matter how large we make them, they are ultimately staffed by folks whose eye's glazed over in jr high algebra I, and are in no position to have a clue what it is they are regulating, or how to interpret the bullshit being fed to them by equally clueless business managers trying mostly to sqeeze a buck out of something they don't have the first clue about. The regulators can only deal with the business managers, because they are of the same tribe in the Two Tribe Problem, and neither has any idea what the frings nerds are saying or doing at any given moment in time. Take the slightest amount of effort to research what was going on at Morton-Thiokol in the runup to the 1986 Challenger disaster, and see the exact same tribal dynamic at work. Our tribal mistrust is poorly aimed, but then, politically, how could it be anything but? regards, Fred
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