Leave the Lights On
"Leave the Lights On"
by SuicideBySafetyPin
Digital Art / Fractal Art / Raw Fractals ©2013-2019
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ReplyDeleteAmy Patrick
Howdy.
To recap: I’m a licensed structural and civil engineer with a MS in structural engineering from the top program in the nation and over a decade of experience on high-performance projects, and particularly of cleaning up design disasters where the factors weren’t properly accounted for, and I’m an adjunct professor of structural analysis and design at UH-Downtown. I have previously been deposed as an expert witness in matters regarding proper construction of walls and the various factors associated therein, and my testimony has passed Daubert.
Am I a wall expert? I am. I am literally a court-accepted expert on walls.
Structurally and civil engineering-wise, the border wall is not a feasible project. Trump did not hire engineers to design the thing. He solicited bids from contractors, not engineers. This means it’s not been designed by professionals. It’s a disaster of numerous types waiting to happen.
What disasters?
Off the top of my head...
1) It will mess with our ability to drain land in flash flooding. Anything impeding the ability of water to get where it needs to go (doesn’t matter if there are holes in the wall or whatever) is going to dramatically increase the risk of flooding.
2) Messes with all kind of stuff ecologically. For all other projects, we have to do an Environmental Site Assessment, which is arduous. They’re either planning to circumvent all this, or they haven’t accounted for it yet, because that’s part of the design process, and this thing hasn’t been designed.
3) The prototypes they came up with are nearly impossible to build or don’t actually do the job. This article explains more:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.engineering.com/amp/17599.html
And so on.
The estimates provided for the cost are arrived at unreasonably. You can look for yourself at the two-year-old estimate that you see everyone citing.
http://fronterasdesk.org/sites/default/files/field/docs/2016/07/Bernstein-%20The%20Trump%20Wall.pdf
It does not account for rework, complexities beyond the prototype design, factors to prevent flood and environmental hazard creation, engineering redesign... It’s going to be higher than $50bn. The contractors will hit the government with near CONSTANT change orders. “Cost overrun” will be the name of the game. It will not be completed in Trump’s lifetime.
I’m a structural forensicist, which means I’m called in when things go wrong. This is a project that WILL go wrong. When projects go wrong, the original estimates are just *obliterated*. And when that happens, good luck getting it fixed, because there aren’t that many forensicists out there to right the ship, particularly not that are willing to work on a border wall project— a large quotient of us are immigrants, and besides, we can’t afford to bid on jobs that are this political. We’re small firms, and we’re already busy, and we don’t gamble our reputations on political footballs. So you’d end up with a revolving door of contractors making a giant, uncoordinated muddle of things, and it’d generally be a mess. Good money after bad. The GAO agrees with me.
[continued]
ReplyDeleteAnd it won’t be effective. I could, right now, purchase a 32 foot extension ladder and weld a cheap custom saddle for the top of the proposed wall so that I can get over it. I don’t know who they talked to about the wall design and its efficacy, but it sure as heck wasn’t anybody with any engineering imagination.
Another thing: we are not far from the day where inexpensive drones will be able to pick up and carry someone. This will happen in the next ten years, and it’s folly to think that the coyotes who ferry people over the border won’t purchase or create them. They’re low enough, quiet enough, and small enough to quickly zip people over any wall we could build undetected with our current monitoring setup.
Let’s have border security, by all means, but let’s be smart about it. This is not smart. It’s not effective. It’s NOT cheap. The returns will be diminishing as technology advances, too. This is a ridiculous idea that will never be successfully executed and, as such, would be a monumental waste of money. ����♀️
This is set to public. Have a blast sharing it.
That's quite something. Hardly surprising though. Thanks for sharing, Puddle.
DeleteGood catch, puddle! Thanks. Where did you find it?
ReplyDeleteQuintus posted it on facebook. No other URL.
DeleteAmerica’s Housing Crisis Could Imperil Trump’s Presidency [Click] “Many of the administration’s most [in]famous policies are impediments to affordable construction.”
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Warren’s Ambitious Fix for America’s Housing Crisis [Click] Sounds to me like a rational approach at the federal level.
The “Incredible” Rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [Click] “Although this seems extraordinary, it’s actually been done repeatedly in American political history…”
1958 TV Series Featured Con Man Selling a Wall [Click]
ReplyDeleteCould be where Fart got the idear. We know he has no original idears of his own.
DeleteEvidently "wall" was a mnemonic invented by the campaign team to help him remember to trash brown people.
DeleteAlan, a quick google last night brought up the suggestion that a green screen indicates something fatally wrong with the display. Believe it or not, I totally forgot about this problem till turning on the computer this afternoon. What a bother! Now I have to try and explain it to Dad and get him upstairs to look at it. He'll fiddle and faddle with it for hours before finally announcing that hedoesn't know what's wrong with it. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteIf you have a free-standing monitor, and another elsewhere in the house, exchange them. If the problem follows the monitor, the problem IS the monitor, which is easy to replace. If the problem stays with your computer, it is most likely IMO to be the video card, which means a trip to the shop for a transplant. Even if that isn't what it needs, it still needs a trip to the shop for diagnosis and cure. I think.
DeleteQuote of the week from De Sailes Weekly
ReplyDelete““We all have a vocation. We believe that God has placed us in this life to fill a special need that no one else can accomplish.”.” - - ~ St. Francis de Sales
As Mr. Rogers used to say (paraphrasing from memory), 'There's no one else exactly like you.' and 'You're the only you there is.'
It's important to be reminded of this truth from time to time.
I don't recall which one it is, having only heard it once about fifty years ago, but there is a RC mass for a particular holy day that begins "Oh, most necessary sin of Adam..." Religious philosophers outside Europe have also pointed out the necessity of "evil." So even DT serves a purpose. Here's hoping that he reinvigorates our democracy.
DeleteFrom the proclamation of Easter, but not at the beginning:
DeleteO certe necessárium Adæ peccátum,
quod Christi morte delétum est!
"certe" ought to be "truly" or "certainly;" barring some change in custom with time or particularly church, it ought to be translated something like "O truly necessary sin of Adam." Well, glad to have that cleared up after fifty years!
I don't recall an Easter mass with those words (or if I did I had a toddler along. LOL!), but the concept of Adam would be meaning all humankind.
Deletehttp://blog.adw.org/2010/08/why-is-the-first-sin-called-the-sin-of-adam-not-the-sin-of-adam-and-eve/
My thanks to you and Quintus both, puddle!!
ReplyDelete