9/11

Like such an awful many today in this world, I stop and remember. Remember "9/11" ten years ago.

Remember the day, the thoughts, the things I did, the words I spoke, the phonecall with my girlfiriend, the road I traveled home, the disbelief, the shock, the absolute horror as the buildings collapsed, the angriness at CNN for not bringing any NEWs, but endlessly repeating what I already knew, yet, at the same time, the anxiousness, and fear, to find out, "what next"...

I've visited New York, a couple of times. Once before, once after. I've seen the skyline from the Empire State Building both when the Towers were still there and when they were but an outline on a bronze plaque.

The city is a vibrant place, truly with a magic all its own. It's a city where I saw the owner of a hot-dog stand get robbed, and the robber get chased down by a bystander on inline skates, to be handed over to the police a few minutes later.

It's also a city where the first thing that greets you in Central Park can be the police officer investigating the chalk outline of a body nearby, while the next thing you run into is a group of attractive twenty-somethings jogging on their morning workout as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

In a place, where everything goes faster, is closer, and has more impact, the event with such far-reaching and deep-rooted effect on our global society was, without a doubt, a pivotal moment in history.

I mourn for a world that died that day. And with a certain sadness I look at the world we got in its place. One where we have learned to distrust before we trust. Where the excuse of security and false sense of safety precedes the principles of liberty, privacy, respect and democracy. Where a country that prides itself on it's core value of freedom can have an Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and not even feel that they are measuring with a double standard.

But at the same time, it is the energy and spirit in New York, and its people, that show me that not all is lost and there is some hope yet in human nature. It's in their iconic firefighter-hero from that day that we see individual man at his/her best; performing a duty, at great personal risk, to help a perfect stranger, regardless of colour, or calling, to live another day.

New York also shows that things must, and will, move on. Regardless of politics, recession, presidents, governors, and mayors, The City "abhors a vacuum". And I look with admiration to the work being done at the Ground Zero site. Where a country and a people that I sometimes mock for their crassness and their 'industrial lack of subtlety', are constructing with respect, beauty, serenity, and yet with a typical American scale and New York sense of practicality, the new World Trade Center.

I look forward to the day of a next visit, when I can walk across the new World Trade Center and 'feel' the impact the place had on us and our world. To when I can ascend the Empire State building once more, and admire the new skyline. I'm sure the bronze plaque will also still be there.

End of an era; Space Shuttle

This evening, NASA launched the STS-135, the last Space Shuttle mission in its 30-year Space Shuttle program. The first launch was in 1981 and throughout my entire conscious life, the Space Shuttle was, simply, there.

It was the best-available way for humanity to reach space, but even more than that, the shuttle represented manned space-flight. It spoke to the imagination and ambition.


I've always been a big science-fiction fan. From an early age on (cheering for the Colonies with my dad every time they escaped the Cylon menace in the original Battlestar series, enjoying Blake's 7, Doctor Who, Buck Rogers, Star Trek and imagining myself to be a new Jedi Knight) space and our ascent in it was a given, not a question. To me, it simply was where the future lay.

As a symbol, Shuttle was a science-fiction geek's tentative link to these future worlds we could only read, watch movies, or fantasize about. The Shuttle was our "window" through which we could see and imagine, it was the tiniest of glimpse of what it would be to launch a "USS Enterprise", a "Discovery One" or a "Heart of Gold", someday, sometime in the future. Shuttle made StartTrek "real".

Not bad for what was, essentially, a rocket-powered, overpriced, under-capacity, but manned, freighter.

I was 9 years old when the Challenger disaster happened. And I remember how the "regular programming" on tv was interrupted by a single, solemn, message, maybe two lines of text, telling us about the event that had just transpired half a globe away. This was something that should not, could not, have happened. It was the first time (though obviously not the last time) in my life, that I can remember, that news really and truly left me shaken. Somehow this event had... damaged... my certainty in the future.

But the two catastrophic accidents are far eclipsed by Shuttle's achievements. Each facilitating new leaps in science and growth of humanity's "awareness"; Spacelab, Magellan, Galileo, Hubble, supplying Mir, building ISS, the list goes on and on...

With Shuttle's... departure... as with Concorde, I do feel as if we say goodbye to an achievement, without a "next, better, thing" to replace it. Spaceflight costs a lot of money and has a lot of risks, but mankind never got anywhere by only doing the sensible thing. I can confidently say that I was inspired by the vision of Shuttle, long before I could grasp its science and engineering. I can only hope that our younger generations may find something as equally inspiring.


The final mission is on its way now and I hope the crew has as safe and spectacularly successful a mission and return as they had a launch.

Thank you Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, Endeavor, Enterprise.

The Iron Ring of +1 Engineering

Some time ago I was chatting with some friends from Canada, when I noticed they both wore a similar "iron ring" on their pinky. When I asked about it, they told me a story about a bridge in Quebec, that collapsed (repeatedly, it turns out, when I checked on Wikipedia) as a result of poor judgement on the part of the overseeing engineers.

While it is a myth that the rings that are given to Canadian engineers today, in a ritual called "The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer" are made of the steel of this bridge, the ritual (and the Obligation taken therein) is a reminder of the responsibility that comes with an Engineers' power and responsibility to "build structurally sound".

Their story made me pause, and think. Not only think about all those folks in the world who we have met on our travels who are "allowed" to call themselves Engineer with nary the ability to differentiate a nut from its bolt, but also about the (relative) triviality with which I think about my own engineering degree.

Upon my graduation, while it neither being devoid of effort nor of a sense of accomplishment, I have always felt disappointed in the content, the "weight", of the (Computer Sciences) study I attended. I often felt, and still feel, that the school's primary interest was in "delivering me to market" in as short a time as possible, rather than to mold me into a professional and responsible Engineer.

Thankfully, I believe that the time I spent in College was well-spent in learning to be independent and that many of the actual technical, practical, skills I still use in my work today I picked up during that time, but outside the classrooms, being disciple to UNIX Guru's.

And while I am grateful to the College for giving me a way of thinking, an engineer's approach to a problem, the story of the Iron Ring made me feel that, perhaps, we have somehow lost, or forgotten, to convey a similar sense of responsibility to our engineers as they do in Canada.

A lack of this sense that may have given rise to some interesting side-effects.

For one thing we seem to have lost our sense of duty to deliver Sound Engineering.

Under pressure by management, who are driven by a completely different set of beliefs and sometimes seemingly have done away with morals altogether, we all too often succumb, like my College, to their never ceasing demands for lower cost, shorter time to market, etc., etc.

With a predictable, and often catastrophic, result in the delivered product.

Well, catastrophic? Am I exaggerating on purpose? Or are we trivializing what is essentially the perversion of our professional ethic?

Does it really matter that much if my iPod skips a number?
If my cell-phone doesn't connect one in every ten thousand calls?
If my car's engine management system doesn't give me optimal mileage?
If my GPS system has a few meters higher deviation if I leave it on for more than a day?

What if this engine management system and the GPS deviation cause a missile defense system not to fire?
Or the number my iPod skipped is a heartbeat deviation the monitor system missed?
And if I am, essentially, the product of such a shorter time to market, what does that say about me as an Engineer?

If doctors are expected to swear an oath "to do no harm", and even lawyers are bound by a system of professional ethics (the "bar"), why are we not, as Engineers, both bound and empowered by our principle of Sound Engineering?

And why is there not an ethics model for managers limiting them in the extent to which they can ask us to forego said principle?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a small existential crisis to deal with.