Saturday, February 01, 2003

Feynman Come Back I think the failure of the Space Shuttle deeply affects many people worldwide. I believe it so because it reminds us of how precious life is. We can all visualize the horror of astronauts at the moment when they are being blown up right before our eyes. We see the pictures of the astronauts and we can relate to the timeline of events. Few things in the world exist like this. It reminds us that technology is fragile and won't save us from ourselves. The last time shuttle project failed was the Challenger disaster. Physicist Richard Feynman was part of the Presidential commision that investigated the crash and that eventually led to conslusions of the cold-weather shrinking the O-rings. This contraction was to the point that combustion escaped and caused the explosion. We also learned that management zeal was out of control and there had been a brakedown between responsibility and the lust to keep the schedule at any cost. Feynman admits that he was led to this conclusion by an high-ranking NASA official who knew about the NASA engineer's warning of the possibility of O-ring failure in cold weather launches. He showed Feynman a problem he was having rebuilding a carbaretor and how it would not seal when it was cold. Feynman hated small-minded officials and dumb process people. He was always mixing things up whenever stupidity ruled, from his days at Los Alamos to the shuttle investigation. His refusal to compromise in suppressing the management issues at NASA was a gift to every taxpayer in this country. NASA recognized the importance of the video that documented the explosion from angles. They then made an effort to improve the quality and angles from which takeoffs were recorded. No one had really thought about the same possibility on re-entry and how valuable that evidence may turn out be in finding the cause for todays explosion of the Columbia. Here is Feynman's assesment of the safety of various rocket fuels. Here is the link to the Roger's commission report for the Challenger disaster. 12:24:14 PM     The "Just when you think you know it all" Department... Lies About Mature Crabgrass. The Fourth Circuit tells us: Generally speaking, chemical crabgrass control products are most effective when applied to "pre-emergent" crabgrass . . . the products are also effective on early "post-emergent" crabgrass but are ineffective when applied to mature crabgrass plants . . .   Scotts [plaintiff] contends that the Vigoro [defendant] package misleads consumers into believing that Vigoro can kill mature crabgrass. editor's note - I have found that doing nothing until the first frost kills the crabgrass is effective. This is about depicting mature crabgrass on the crabgrass killer package.  Scotts has apparently been in and out of court over the Vigoro packaging which looks something like this.  Scotts argues that because the product only kills crabgrass up to four weeks old, rather than the mature crabgrass depicted on the bag, the graphic conveys the literally false message that Vigoro is capable of killing mature crabgrass.  This sounds a little suspect (I mean are they going to depict crabgrass roots on the package?) until you hear that Scotts came up wth survey evidence that 92.5%  of the respondents understood the package to mean that.  This impressed the District Court. However, the Circuit Court threw the survey into the dustbins of expensive surveys given zero weight due to faulty methodology.  Scotts also wasn't able to show that Vigoro intentionally set out to deceive anyone into thinking it could kill mature crabgrass.  Hit the remand button. Scotts v. United Industrial, 65 USPQ2d 1161, no. 02-1738 (4th Cir. Dec 23, 2002).   [The Trademark Blog] 12:04:59 PM

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