Human Predicaments: A Bit about the Environment

Energy shortage is a serious matter, and it's not helped by scammers and nutcases promoting "free energy" and "water for gas" nonsense. Other serious problems include pollution, water supplies and food shortages.

We think you need help for your homework, which you probably still haven't done.

With what the various states pay teachers, I'm surprised the problem isn't worse. Have you seen the generation that's coming up? Don't expect to 'retire' until you're 90.

I fear we are looking at a 'brain drain' as various engineers drop put of the work place.

Orpheuse

Actually, teachers are paid fairly well compared to a lot of engineers in industries that havent kept up the engineering salaries. You might retort "Well, just get a new position", but that can involve up-rooting one's family, changing totally one's field of expertise and working back up through the ranks, something most people dont wish to do. Besides, teachers are usually paid from tax revenues and generally dont have to deal with their companies going bankrupt and dumping them on the street just at retirement time. The governments just raise the taxes.

You forgot that public school teachers belong to one of the most powerful unions in the country, on par with nurses, prison guards and law enforcement (way more powerful and influential than construction or teamsters). While engineers and scientists not only are salaried exempt status, like managers, but the government has made a number of efforts, since unionization began in the ealry part of the 20th, to pre-empt the possibility of technical professionals becoming unionized. Note another salaried exempt status group is artistic professionals, and many of them like actors have unions like SAG. There was an early practicalreason for the government to resist unionization amongst technical professionals, the fact is necessary advancements that drive our society occur through the works of technical professionals, and there was the belief in the early part of the 20th that unionization stiffled cost effective production. What you get is a situation where people in charge of the money get paid very well (because they know the true value of the companies and their secrets), the unions members compensation keeps rising, because it is hard for a large corporation to fight with a powerful union, and the individually represented technical professionals become one guy fighting against each other for pennies increases over time. This eventually leads to the current decline in upcoming workers in those job fields, and the governments need to expand the roles of unionized less educated workers to cover some of those necessary roles (much like the expansion of the authority of unionized nurses in to those restricted to medical doctors only, as the number of medical doctors per capit declines)

Homework is due Friday. Party scheduled for Thursday night. Time management and multitasking make life seem untenable.

"Homework is due Friday. Party scheduled for Thursday night. Time management and multitasking make life seem untenable." Kwitcherbitchin.

By now you should have learned enough time management that you have to forego the party to do the homework!

To paraphrase an old saying "All study and no Party makes Good Grades!

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Do Nothing Simply When a Way Can be Found to Make it Complex and Wonderful

OR you can quit, become a business major, hire engineers from india, negotiate some deals with the US government for Visa, pay then minimum wage and sell their services at a premium making claims about quality work and blah, blah. True after a few jobs you might lose a client when they discovered the truth, but like some 60,000+ engineering corporations already know, it doesn't matter just put the right spin on ever job and make it sound like your engineers were the experts and fully involved in the projects helping create superior projects with considerations to future needs and benefits for the client, the environment and humanity...

As a marketer/manager you'd make twice as much as the engineers working for you anyways. Plus there is no deadlines or quatifiable productivity by which to measure your performance, unlike engineers who have to win the actually projects in the proposal, meet deliverables schedules under budget, and maintain the client relationship the marketer "developed". As a marketer all you need to to is take prospective clients to lunch/drinks at the country club/golf in pebble beach/dinners on the corporate credit cards, visit potential clients, make exaggerated claims about the companies capabilities, get information about their future endeavors, and track new projects to give to engineers to propose on.

I concur.

Please clarify your question. "Human predicaments" is too broad. We humans are capable of getting ourselves in all types of trouble. And much of it has nothing to do with engineering.

Are you referring to the book called Ecological Vignettes: Ecological Approaches to Dealing with Human Predicaments? I'm guessing that this may be the case since your original thread-title was "a bit related to the environment".

Human predicament - I catch you with your hand in the till.

Remedial measure - I kick you a** before turning you over to the police.

Get it?

getting your f**king Ass out here......

Profanity is the last bastion of the woefully illiterate. You are smarter than that. Please refrain.

Thank you, most humbly,

Orpheuse

. . . and that goes twice for you, Vermin.

Orpheuse

I'd like you to meet my little friend...

Who's on first what's on second I don't know is on third. Baseball...the American way in the school of your choice (:

Good answer. Very Zen.

Orpheuse

Are you talking about potential health and safety hazards? If so, I can give you a list longer than my arm (37" reach). If something else, please clarify with a better description of what you are thinking about.

The human predicament is being 'aware'. Knowing all the good things we enjoy and all the bad ones. Being aware of our conflicting desires is our predicament. I don't believe in the Adam and Eve story, but realizing their nakedness after eating from the tree of knowledge maybe illustrates it. I don't think there's a viable remedy, apart from perhaps metaphorically getting naked and living with it. Those who don't suffer from conscience/guilt/regret are usually labelled 'sociopathic' or 'psychopathic' (most papers carry stories each week with examples), so you probably don't want a remedy.

Yeah, but when we understood nudity, we realized how sexy it could be, too!!!

Exactly - it's all summed up by saucy knickers ! Life : Sexy Underwear and Cheap Knicker Sales.

hmm, i thnk there is more to the label sociopathic, else the executives from ENRON or Countrywide would all be labeled as sociopathic. One of the things is that you must commit or want to commit blue collar crimes, and lack conscience about such crimes. It is probably still sociopathic behavior technically, but as a society we do not tend to label the commission of white collar crimes with no consideration towards the many 1000s or 1000000s of people injured, and no conscience about what you have done, we usually accept as typical behavior for corporate executives and management.

Crimes get punished according to the will of the powers that be. A senior exec caught snorting coke will have a minor telling off, a line worker caught intoxicated with booze will loose his job. They could both cause as much damage, but it doesn't set much of an example when those at the top can escape penalty. It's an odd world when senior execs can rip off millions of people, yet emerge relatively unscathed. The whole notion of business being 'corporate' allows individuals to avoid responsibility.

Have you read the book, The Sharks?