Replies

Why, because you say so?

You've attacked my thinking process so I'm going to brag a little and tell you about my intellect. First of all I'm a poor speller, I know. Second I'm also a graduate of MIT class of 67, course XVI aero/astro. I worked for NASA from 67 to 94, put man on the moon, founded the Kennedy Space Center Artificial Intelligence Lab in 86, wrote over a million lines of code for the Space Shuttle and retired with a very nice income when I was 48. I use my real name so you can easy check me out. My thinking process is probably just as good as yours, and since I'm retired, I suspect that I have followed the case more carefully than you have.

Now, is it allright if I have a view point, different than yours?

"...I'm also a graduate of MIT class of 67, course XVI aero/astro. I worked for NASA from 67 to 94, put man on the moon, founded the Kennedy Space Center Artificial Intelligence Lab in 86, wrote over a million lines of code for the Space Shuttle and retired with a very nice income when I was 48. I use my real name so you can easy check me out. My thinking process is probably just as good as yours..."

I know I don't need to tell you who John Augustus Roebling was or where he stands in the pantheon of engineering. Here are some excerpts about him from The Great Bridge by David McCullough:

John Roebling was a believer in hydropathy, the therapeutic use of water. Come headaches, constipation, the ague, he would sit in a scalding-hot tub for hours at a time, then jump out and wrap up in ice-cold, slopping-wet bed sheets and stay that way for another hour or two... He drank vile concoctions of raw egg, charcoal, warm water and turpentine, and there were dozens of people along Canal Street who had seen him come striding through his front gate, cross the canal bridge, and drink water "copiously" -- gallons it seemed -- from the old fountain beside the state prison. ("This water I relish much," he would write in his notebook.) "A wet bandage around the neck every night, for years, will prevent colds..." he preached to his family. "A full cold bath every day is indispensable..." ...

...Not long after his first wife died, he had taken up spiritualism. There had been talk ever since of after-dark gatherings, of table rappings and the like, inside the big Roebling house. The old man, on top of his other acheivements, was now said to be on speaking terms with the dead.

True to form, when Roebling's foot was crushed in an accident, he believed he knew better than physicians, refused their advice, and died ten days later of tetanus. Like many other brilliant engineers, he was not so distinguished in other fields of inquiry -- not that you could ever convince him of that.