search
"You've taken on a design challenge and come up with a solution that's been widely admired and won you accolades. But a year or so later, you realize you made a mistake. There's something horribly wrong with your design. And it's not just something cosmetic — a badly resolved corner, some misspaced type — but a fundamental flaw that will almost certainly lead to catastrophic failure. And that failure will result not just in embarassment, or professional ruin, but death, the death of thousands of people.
"You are the only person that knows that something's wrong. What would you do?
"…
"You've taken on a design challenge and come up with a solution that's been widely admired and won you accolades. But a year or so later, you realize you made a mistake. There's something horribly wrong with your design. And it's not just something cosmetic — a badly resolved corner, some misspaced type — but a fundamental flaw that will almost certainly lead to catastrophic failure. And that failure will result not just in embarassment, or professional ruin, but death, the death of thousands of people.
"You are the only person that knows that something's wrong. What would you do?
"…
I told no one about this, I swear, yet everyone seems to know. Word spreads like vermin. All eyes are up to the ceiling. As we walk down the halls of our Madison Avenue office, we hold a suspicious and trembling view of the dirty gray panels which hang, tentatively, above us. We are wary and watchful, cautiously anticipating the sudden fall.
Last night, as I typed, I only barely noticed it. Most of my attention, of course, was directed at the computer screen, so what I glimpsed was simply a shadow. It seemed to be a part of the ceiling. Had Elizabeth still been in the office, it…
I saw this article about a counterfeit antique coin last week and didn't give it a second thought. So what? I muttered. It just shows scammers were ever with us.
One sentence haunted me, however: "'We are not yet aware of any other counterfeit coins like this one,' says Giovannelli." So that makes the counterfeit coin rarer than real antique money, right? And that makes it more valuable than solid silver or even authentic solid-silver antique coinage.
Maybe, I'm just not thinking about this clearly—it is a genuine fake, after all.
Not an earth-shattering insight, just funny…
The story of Carl Friedrich Gauss' schoolboy triumph over a manipulative teacher is well-known, but Brian Hayes discovered a more interesting tale—and a moral.
Carl van Schaik says it's the culture. They learn from one another. I sure learn from the people who read stuff I write.