Hannula Engineering Quotes

No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art. ~ Henry Petroski

In 1989, I retired from Bell Laboratories to become a full-time writer. Not that I didn't enjoy my engineering career, but rather I liked being a novelist just a bit better. ~ Dennis L. McKiernan

It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers. From here on out, it's all can openers. ~ Neal Stephenson

Science, math and engineering can give you the exhilarating power to become not mere spectators or consumers, but the active explorers, makers and doers who will help invent the future. ~ Susan Hockfield

There's a reasonable amount of traction in college education, particularly engineering, because quite a lot of that is privatized, so there is an incentive to set up new colleges of reasonably high quality. ~ Azim Premji

In accordance with the prevailing conceptions in the U.S., there is no infringement on democracy if a few corporations control the information system: in fact, that is the essence of democracy. In the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the leading figure of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, explains that "the very essence of the democratic process" is "the freedom to persuade and suggest," what he calls "the engineering of consent." "A leader," he continues, "frequently cannot wait for the people to arrive at even general understanding … Democratic leaders must play their part in … engineering … consent to socially constructive goals and values," applying "scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs"; and although it remains unsaid, it is evident enough that those who control resources will be in a position to judge what is "socially constructive," to engineer consent through the media, and to implement policy through the mechanisms of the state. If the freedom to persuade happens to be concentrated in a few hands, we must recognize that such is the nature of a free society. ~ Noam Chomsky

If we don't embrace them, then we are as undeserving of life as the caveman who freezes to death because he's afraid to start a fire. ~ Dan Brown

During dark times, real entrepreneurs come out. They are not competing with 10 look-alike companies for engineering talent, so it's a great time to invest and help build companies. ~ Douglas Leone

'Brave New World' dealt with a kind of proto-genetic engineering of the unborn, through really, as many dystopias do, it dealt with totalitarianism. The 1997 film 'Gattaca' updated 'Brave New World,' bringing us to a future where genetic testing determined your job, your wealth, your status in life. ~ Ramez Naam

Engineering college students should be encouraged to start entrepreneurial ventures in their second year itself. It is safer to fail while in college. ~ Kris Gopalakrishnan

The funnel-shaped devices are tremie tubes, which are apparently being used to avoid having the wet concrete free fall into the forms where the 4-cubic-yard buckets could not fit to pour directly. ~ Ray Bottenberg

One fall day in Boston, a tall mechanical engineering student named Joe entered the student union at Harvard University. He was all ambition and acne ~ Dan Ariely

As Rollin put it in his book The Frankenstein Syndrome, 'It is simply false that all genetic engineering must harm animals. Unless one assumes that all species of animals exist currently at their maximal possible state of happiness or well-being of welfare, such a claim is not legitimate. ~ Emily Anthes

The body, whether it be human, mammal or insect, is nothing more than a machine designed as a vehicle intended to be used by the "soul." The brain, is perfected engineering inspired by divinity. Therefore, the world we see and touch is just an illusion because life and death are one in the same; essentially, we are heaven, eternal and ever lasting. ~ Alejandro C. Estrada

Smart isn't enough. The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone else feel happy to be here. p118 ~ Randy Pausch

One of the great inventions of the twentieth century was the studied, methodical engineering of myth for political ends. ~ Caryl Rivers

You can be creative in anything - in math, science, engineering, philosophy - as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance. ~ Ken Robinson

I received my undergraduate degree in engineering in 1939 and a Master of Science degree in mathematical physics in 1941 at Steven Institute of Technology. ~ Frederick Reines

If you think your management doesn't know what it's doing or that your organisation turns out low-quality software crap that embarrasses you, then leave. ~ Edward Yourdon

Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. And there is some group of people that may or may not be associated with government at this point that have this knowledge. They have been attempting to conceal this knowledge. People in high level government have very little, if any, valid information about this. It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn't come out. ~ Edgar D. Mitchell

The dismantling of the vast and wholly parasitic armaments industry had given an unprecedented - sometimes, indeed, unhealthy - boost to the world economy. No longer were vital raw materials and brilliant engineering talents swallowed up in a virtual black hole - or, even worse, turned to destruction. Instead, they could be used to repair the ravages and neglect of centuries, by rebuilding the world. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

But not only medicine, engineering, and painting are arts; living itself is an art in fact, the most important and at the same time the most difficult and complex art to be practiced by man. ~ Erich Fromm

What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world`
With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)??
And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering.
Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time.
Get my point? ~ Chris Colfer

Social Engineering - The art of replacing what works with what sounds good. ~ Thomas Sowell

You must excuse my gruff conduct," the watchdog said, after they'd been driving for some time, "but you see it's traditional for watchdogs to be ferocious. ~ Norton Juster

He couldn't work, as such, but needed to flex himself somehow in ways that felt like work, he thought. Lacking credentials and sight he could not teach, for example. Even reading a cold-call script would be out, although he'd heard of a resourceful blind man who went to the social security office and suggested, "Give me either a job or just my damned check," and received the former, skillfully handling mediation assignments. ~ Edward Hoagland

In total, I have spent 35 years at Hokkaido University as a staff member - 2 and a half in the Faculty of Science, and the other 32 and a half in the Faculty of Engineering. Other than about two years of study in America and a few months in other places overseas, most of my life has been spent at the Faculty of Engineering. ~ Akira Suzuki

...a final word to "the children": do you want to get suckered like your big brothers and sisters? Those saps who spent 2008 standing behind the Obamessiah swaying and chanting, "We are the dawning of the Hopeychange" like brainwashed cult extras? Sooner or later you guys have to crawl out from under the social engineering and rediscover the contrarian spirit for which youth was once known...This will be the great battle of the next generation--to reclaim your birthright from those who spent it. If you don't, the entire global order will teeter and fall. But, if you do, you will have won a great victory. Every time a politician proposes new spending, tell him he's already spent your money, get his hand out of your pocket. Every time a politician says you can stay a child until your twenty-seventh birthday, tell him, "No, you're the big baby, not me--you've spent irresponsibly, and me and my pals are the ones who are gonna have to be the adults and clean up your mess. Don't treat met like a kid when your immaturity got us into this hole." This is a battle for the American idea, and it's an epic one, but--to reprise the lamest of lame-o-lines--you can do anything you want to do. So do it. ~ Mark Steyn

In order to understand how engineers endeavor to insure against such structural, mechanical, and systems failures, and thereby also to understand how mistakes can be made and accidents with far-reaching consequences can occur, it is necessary to understand, at least partly, the nature of engineering design. It is the process of design, in which diverse parts of the 'given-world' of the scientist and the 'made-world' of the engineer are reformed and assembled into something the likes of which Nature had not dreamed, that divorces engineering from science and marries it to art. While the practice of engineering may involve as much technical experience as the poet brings to the blank page, the painter to the empty canvas, or the composer to the silent keyboard, the understanding and appreciation of the process and products of engineering are no less accessible than a poem, a painting, or a piece of music. Indeed, just as we all have experienced the rudiments of artistic creativity in the childhood masterpieces our parents were so proud of, so we have all experienced the essence of structual engineering in our learning to balance first our bodies and later our blocks in ever more ambitious positions. We have learned to endure the most boring of cocktail parties without the social accident of either our bodies or our glasses succumbing to the force of gravity, having long ago learned to crawl, sit up, and toddle among our tottering towers of blocks. If we could remember those earl ~ Henry Petroski

We are more dependent on science and engineering than at any other time in history. However, there is plenty of evidence that far too many people are scientifically illiterate, often having been put off science at school. ~ Robert Winston