The International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC, is currently preparing an international standard to be known as IEC 62740 Root Cause Analysis. I prepared some material for potential inclusion in the standards document but as of writing it appears it will not be used. I think it is quite useful, so I make it hereby available. The…
A bit of intellectual biography, prompted by a couple of days’ free time leading me to a paper written 27 years ago by a pal, which I have just read. I say a little of what’s in the paper, to encourage others to read it. And then I comment on a couple of disappointing aspects…
Just over a decade ago, in July 2002, there was a catastrophic mid-air collision of a Russian passenger aircraft heading westwards and a freighter aircraft of DHL heading northward, near the town of Überlingen on Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Southern Germany near the Swiss border. I wrote a paper on it about a month later,…
Something more mundane, but likely as least as relevant to many readers as yet another post on Hazard Analysis. Also, I have been struggling with the composition of a technical post on TCAS for a while so a bit of whimsy might be in order. I have suffered off and on from gastric ailments for…
I chair a group of specialists (electrical engineers, safety analysts, others) mandated by the German electrical-engineering standardisation organisation DKE to undertake a risk analysis of the process of recharging electric road vehicles. We have been working now for close on one and a half years, on conductive charging, and have a document under internal review…
Here is a letter I just sent to the editor of a prestigious journal. I follow it with some links to the general debate about scientific publishing and publishers’ business models. Dear Editor, On 8/2/12 4:22 AM, SCP Editorial Office wrote: > Ms. Ref. No.: SCICO-D-12-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Title: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX > Science of Computer Programming >…
In Risks-26.86, Tobin Macginnis pointed to a Japanese documentary on the continuing dangers of SFP4, via Dave Farber’s IP list and PGN’s redaction. In Risks-26.87, Dan Yurman claimed in response that this nonsense has been thoroughly debunked by a special post at the blog of the American Nuclear Society as well as Scare the socks…
Can things that look like hard facts and indeed are hard facts be socially constructed? Sure. But many people, indeed quite a few scientists, think not. I remember being quite surprised a decade and a half ago when I realized how many facts were indeed socially constructed. It is more obvious that social facts such…
The British Royal Academy of Engineering, an institution whose membership is nominated and elected only, is conducting a study on the engineering and societal impacts of space weather and has issued a call for evidence. I sent the following note on Sunday 25th March to policyAT[theRoyalAcademyOfEngineering] with a copy to the Office of Nuclear Regulation.…
I don’t have time to write any blog posts or anything else for that matter at the moment. But it seemed to me that an e-mail I wrote today might be converted to a post. Herewith. Steven Tockey pointed to an article in the Huffington Post about delivering tacos by robotic helicopter. Apparently there is…