Thank goodness it is Friday. Nothing too scary this week. Typical Glenn, teething, screaming, but sleeping well.
Work has been keeping me busy, as always, but not too busy.
Even though I an Electronics Engineer, I have a growing respect for purely mechanical things. In particular, mechanical watches. To me, it is fascinating how something designed 100 years ago works so well. No battery, no motors, just some springs and cogs and gears. Automatic watches are an even more amazing chunk of technology. Just the motion of your arm winds the watch. This is done using what is known as a rotor, which is just an uneven weight.

(This is a Seiko 7S26 automatic movement.)
Just look at how much stuff gets crammed in a watch case. This modern movement is based on designs from the late 50’s. It has about 40 moving parts. The more I read about mechanical watches, the more respect I have for long dead engineers and watchmakers.
Iraq Irony
I find it ironic that ‘success’ in Iraq is defined by returning to a previous state of hell. Casualties are at the lowest level since June of last year.
Mission accomplished.
I don’t know about you, but just being a good as you were a year ago doesn’t seem much like meaningful progress to me. How about zero combat fatalities? How about returning vital infrastructure to pre war levels? How about having less than 3,000,000+ refugees? That is success. What we have now is a return to the previous levels of failure.
Posted by admin on October 1, 2007 in General Comments
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