Engineers' Creed of 1954
------------------------
As a Professional Engineer, I dedicate 
my engineering knowledge and skill.. 
I pledge: to participate in none but 
honest enterprise, to place the honor 
and standing of the profession before 
personal advantage.. (and a lot of other
good things..)
(Adopted by the National Society of 
Professional Engineers in 1954.)


Decades later in the U.S.
-------------------------
Our tax dollars at work:

Add up all the pretend engineers
I've been exposed to over the years,
including by way of documentaries,
and divide by the number of those
engineers.. and you get the engineer
described below.

What's the difference between an AA
engineer and an actual engineer?

An AA "engineer"-to-be gets herded 
through a university with abysmally low 
standards, "learns" solely by rote and
mnemonic device, cannot perform any math 
that varies from the example problems in 
the text books, can do nothing but
regurgitate information,
 
gets hired by a firm that can get 
government contracts only if they 
fulfill Affirmative Action requirements,
 
does not, and of course cannot, do any 
engineering whatsoever,

collects an engineer's salary 
(provided by taxpayers),

does nothing but data collection, 
inspections, the simplest of 
arithmetical computations and the 
memorization of other people's analyses, 

keeps the firm on safe ground for 
Affirmative Action by eventually 
being labeled a manager for young 
data collectors, and necessarily 
leaves actual analyses to the 
people who can produce things that 
at least resemble analyses.

The very type of government contract
firm or government agency that plays 
this game is the very type of firm or
agency populated with pretenders who 
validate each other.

The pretend position is assured..

..while society foots the bill.

The pretender spins a tale of a simplistic 
endeavor into something they hope will 
sound otherwise.  But ask them to construct
a solution for a very simple eighth-grade-
level mixture problem involving just
two unknowns and they absolutely cannot
do it.

Perhaps you recognize elements of someone 
you know in the preceding description.

------------------------------------

An actual engineer does engineering.  
And I'm the beneficiary of the marvelous 
products and services resulting from their 
partnerships with real industries.  


Six stories from my days at the 
University of Minnesota which shine
a light on it all:  U of M days


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