Maritime is a strange trip. It is worldwide and at the same time feels like living in a small village where everybody knows everybody. Too often you run into somebody in some random maritime den of inequity and you both go: “Great to see you! Was it 30 years ago we last hung out?” When… Read more »
A number of years ago I wrote a blog on the link between science, tinkering and innovation and discussed the need for goal setting in innovation. More recently I have been frustrated by the general apathy of the general population in creating a zero net carbon world, and this has been the subject of discussion… Read more »
Last year I started this list with lots of space flight issues, but when I made my list this year I started with aircraft technology, and then immediately shifted to maritime in item 2. It has been a strange year and that is why I ended my list with a repeat and enlargement of item 8… Read more »
In a prior blog I commented on ignorance and how easy it is to jump to incorrect solutions. In that blog I made reference to Boyan Slat and his Ted Talk as an example of an incredibly awful Ted lecture. In his lecture Boyan Slat proposes a method for removing plastic trash from oceans. The lecture is… Read more »
This story will makes two important points about technical reasoning that in the heat of combat, disasters, disputes, commerce, parenting or politics often get overlooked. They are: 1.If your starting data is flawed, the rest of your argument becomes inherently flawed 2.Just because one thing looks like the other, it does not mean that they are comparable. The… Read more »
In March of 2014, I posted a blog where I expressed my frustration at a lack of simple and affordable NAME programs. This led to a very lengthy SNAME Linkedin discussion, which now, sadly, seems to have evaporated in the mists of time. Regardless, the discussion was not in vain, because it connected a large… Read more »
As a naval architect and marine engineer I have slowly drifted into a bizarre conundrum that actually may be an industry wide problem that is ripe for an industry wide solution. What I am talking about is a loss of all those really great NAME engineering computer programs that were developed in the 70’s, 80’s… Read more »
We all like to kid about acronym soup, and it is pretty difficult to keep up with all the new ones. I remember that as a young engineer I was always hesitant to ask in public, because I was afraid that asking the question would prove my ignorance. Somewhere in my career I crossed that… Read more »
My wife, Anne, has two Aunt Pats. That becomes confusing, and many years ago I dubbed one of them Crazy Aunt Pat. Not because she is crazy, but simply because she is a smart, bold person who is afraid of nothing and I needed a way to distinguish her from the other who is equally… Read more »