Posts Tagged “idiot-engineering”
Things related to failures of engineers in movies and in the real world.
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Andromeda Strain Book Review
13 August 2025
My mom and I listened to The Andromeda Strain (1969) by Michael Crichton.
We really enjoyed listening to it and it was quite the page turner. It has an
exploration of a lot of interesting scientific topics including what exactly is
life, drugs and investigation techniques. Along with quite a few political
topics on how experts are treated by the government and the communication
methods. It’s told through a series of reports and third person descriptions
which is quite enjoyable, reminding me of similar novels told with fake
reports. With this high praise I have quite a few issues with the description
of a few things. I am by no means a biochemist or any other type of expert, but
I do have an interest in logistics and how big things get done. A lot of my
issues can be resolved by realizing that it is a product of its time.
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The Lightyear Movie and Resilient Organizations
27 June 2022
“Lightyear” was a very fun movie. It’s not a timeless classic, but I
enjoyed it. There were some serious issues with it, and the overall
organizational structures. I expect better from Pixar on their research,
after all they made one of my all-time favorite movies “Wall-E”. They
got in an actual doctor of fishes in to explain how fishes move for
“Finding Nemo.” As always there will be unmarked spoilers.
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Humans and Improvised Weapons: A Response to a Writing Prompt
25 December 2021
Humans and safety is a long history, because as they say if you make
something idiot proof they will invent a better idiot. Just about any
piece of industrial equipment can become a weapon when misused. Most
other species in the galaxy weren’t that creative to misuse or find the
failure points in their technology. We took a different path than humans
did. Finding solutions that were safer from the get go, that a culture
of safety was not needed.
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Idiot Engineering #2 - Star Trek: The Next Generation
08 August 2015
Idiot Engineering is exceptionally visible in the ships of Star Trek. This
article will focus on Star Trek: The Next Generation, because each of
the series has more than enough engineering failures for one of these
articles. From the many console explosions to frequent warp core breaches,
the engineers of the Enterprise-D made many failures in design and the
writing of emergency procedures. The designers of the Enterprise made many
serious engineering flaws, and this article will investigate those errors
in design.
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Idiot Engineering #1 - Jurassic World
28 June 2015
I just decided to start a series about idiotic engineering in movies. The
first movie I’m going to do is Jurassic World. Which is an
awesome movie, however it is full of idiot engineering. So fair warning
there will be spoilers below, so if you haven’t seen it stop reading
now, or keep reading for a detailed examination of the engineering
failures in Jurassic World, and how they could have been prevented.