Jim Medding’s Blog

A book that I would highly recommend is The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Although the framework of this book is Taleb’s life and professional career in the financial markets industry, the applicability of the concepts within the book are wide sweeping. Taleb explains a Black Swan as follows:

Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence…One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird…

What we call here a Black Swan is an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

A Black Swan can be either negative, e.g. 9-11, or positive, e.g. the Internet; negative Black Swans tend to occur quickly while positive Black Swans unfold over a longer period of time. Because Black Swan events can occur in all endeavors in life, traditional statistical sciences can’t always be trusted as a predictor. This, fundamentally, is why I don’t believe in “technical analysis” in stock investing nor do I believe in “six sigma” in engineering.

My grandfather, Walter Lyman Medding, served his entire professional career as an officer with the Army Corps of Engineers. His career began in the spring of 1917 when he earned a BS Engineering degree, a few months early, from MIT and joined up to be part of the American Expeditionary Forces. He retired 37 years later having served in Europe during both World Wars and the Far East during the Korean War. During his time in Japan, he was amused by the frequent language misunderstandings between the Japanese and Americans. The following tale, as retold by my mother, is a typically example of these miscommunications.

The US Army wanted to honor the students in the schools for U.S. dependents during Fire Prevention week. There were 3 of these schools. So they devised a contest for each school. In each, the winner would receive a badge ‘Fire Chief’ with the name of the school underneath. There would be 5 badges for the assistant fire chiefs for each school with the name of the school underneath.
The Army let out bids to several Japanese manufacturers. The U.S. contract read:

1 Fire Chief Badge – School #1
5 Ass’t Fire Chiefs Badge Ditto
1 Fire Chief Badge – School #2
5 Ass’t Fire Chiefs Badge Ditto
1 Fire Chief Badge – School #3
5 Ass’t Fire Chiefs Badge Ditto

Thus, the badges for “Assistant Fire Chief” all came back reading:

Rare book hound (and my brother-in-law), John Jenkins, tells me that the book Buena Vista’s Part in the World War, One Iowa County’s Record of Service and Sacrifice is very rare. He was able to uncover copies of the book in only seven libraries and none for sale in the rare book network he regularly uses. So here’s his list, in case you would like to peruse a copy yourself.

Sioux City Public Library, Sioux City, IA 51101
Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 50112
Loras College, Dubuque, IA 52004
University of Iowa Library, Iowa City, IA 52242
WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Madison, WI 53706
Wisconsin Veterans Museum Res Center, Madison, WI 53703
New York Public Library - Research, New York, NY 10018

Here’s a joke from A Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book that’s too true to be funny:

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

One of the cultural aspects to being an engineer is that people tell you some great stories. The stories are, generally, second hand and difficult to verify. Verifiability rarely stops one from passing a great story on. One of my favorite stories involves Texas Instruments using a very innovative marketing “technique” to sell a FLIR night vision system. Fortunately, I’ve recently been able to locate documentation of the story on the company’s web site:

During the peak of the gunship FLIR development program in 1968, the complexity of the system had grown to such an extent that the customer was concerned that both the sensitivity and the resolution of the system would be adversely affected. TI scheduled a night demonstration for its key customers on the North Building roof, located on the Central Expressway site. The project manager was nervous about the customers’ opinion of the image quality he would be able to achieve. He needed something big to make the point. He had read in the newspaper that a circus was in town, so he dispatched a project engineer to rent elephants for the demo. By the time the customers arrived, the elephants were stationed in the parking lot and could clearly be seen with the FLIR, which, on that night, was indeed the “greatest show on earth” for TI.

John E. Reese of Iowa was assigned to Company F, 316th Engineers Regiment, 91st Division during the Great War. On November 1st the allies began their final drive to victory; John earned the Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism” during the Ypres-Lys offensive. The U.S. Army Center of Military History provides the following brief description of this offensive:

In mid-October Pershing dispatched two American divisions—the 37th and 91st—to the French Army of Belgium, at Foch’s request, to give impetus to the drive to cross the Scheldt (Escaut) southwest of Ghent. A general attack began in this area on 31 October and continued intermittently until hostilities ended on 11 November.

John’s description of this battle and his actions are as follows:

There are three canals and the river Scheldt running through Audenarde, and as all the bridges were blown up and the opposite banks well fortified we had to stop. Not much was known about the conditions of the bridges, etc., but we did know that the Germans were shelling the place so badly that it was impossible to get through. The Allied forces did not have any luck getting information with air service because of weather conditions and heavy bombardment. So volunteers were called for from the engineers. Our captain sent two of us in first to observe conditions. We were busy dodging shells and Germans until 5 o’clock in the morning, but by this time we had learned the location of their batteries and their machine-gun layouts, as well as the condition of the blown-up bridges. “Jerry,” as we call the Germans, is a bear on demolition work.
The next day we were in position to go in there - that is, after our artillery had moved Jerry’s batteries. We had plenty of shell fire even for a few days later while we were building bridges, but we soon crossed the river and had him on a high lope by November 11th.

In addition to the Ypres-Lys offensive, the 316th Engineers Regiment also participated in the St. Mihiel and the Meuse Argonne offensives. For more details about the 91st, and this battle, I recommend The Story of the 91st Division which includes more information about the 316th’s reconnaissance of the destroyed bridges and the town of Audenarde.

In the Internet driven, post 9-11 world, I was struck by the universality of this quote of Richard Feynman from a public address given at the 1955 autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.

Communications between nations must promote understanding - so went another dream. But the machines of communication can be manipulated. What is communicated can be truth or lie. Communications is a strong force, but also for either good or evil.

My daughter mentioned recently that a total eclipse of the moon will occur soon. After a quick web search I found not only information about the coming eclipse, but also a great resource for this subject -Mr Eclipse.com

Here’s what it will look like here on the west coast:

For novices, like me, you might what to check out Lunar Eclipses for Beginners. There’s also a companion Solar Eclipses for Beginners, but it doesn’t look like there will be a total solar eclipse visible here in the NW for a while.

My mother-in-law handed me a copy of the book Buena Vista’s Part in the World War, One Iowa County’s Record of Service and Sacrifice. She has the book because it includes the service records for John E. Reese, her father, during the Great War. The book, published in 1920, is in an incredibly poor state and will probably not last many more years. I will do something to record, and preserve, the portions of the book concerning John Reese but that will be less than a page of information out of a 760 page volume.

Searching though this volume, as delicately as possible, I was able to find three references to John Reese. The first, a photo with his name in the caption, is not him. The second, in the “Honor Roll of Buena Vista County”, has his service records which are quoted below.

Born February 9, 1893. Enlisted September 22, 1917. Sgt. Co. F, 316th Engineers Regiment, 91st Division. Trained at Camp Lewis ten months; to camp Mills. Sailed from New York July 6th on Armeck; landed Liverpool July 20. To France at St. Mihiel September 11 to 16; to Meuse-Argonne September 26; at 1st Station for Army of Occupation; to Brussels; to St. Nazaire. Sailed April 6; landed Hoboken April 23. To Camp Merrit; to Ft. D. A. Russell. Mustered out April 298, 1919. Received the D.S.C. for extraordinary heroism in action at Audenarde, Belgium, November 1.

The editor added the following note: Data on this division shows that thirty members of the division were given the Distinguished Service Cross. John E. Reese was one of the men so honored.

The final reference to John Reese is his own description of his involvement at the Audenarde. Stay tuned.

Some time ago I got a fortune cookie which changed my life. I no longer have the need to read any more fortune cookies.