At 06:08 PM 7/15/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Having said that, I feel that Krivit should have paid more attention
to some technical details. He should have made more observations and
reported more facts, such as whether Rossi placed the feedwater
reservoir on a weight scale, and if so, how much did it weigh before
and after. This would not have proved the claim, but it would have
bolstered it. Also, when Rossi removed the hose from the drain,
Krivit might have asked him to hold it before the camera for 5 minutes or so.
I know quite what Rossi would have said: "Too dangerous. I emptied it
just now, so it's safe to hold this up, but water condenses inside
the hose, because the steam cools, and eventually enough will build
up that boiling hot water will spurt out of the hose, so I certainly
cannot allow this."
However, he did allow Lewan to have the hose drain into a bucket or
something. Jed, he allowed sparging. In April. Too bad Lewan didn't
do some measurements of the sparging! Lewan assumed that the
temperature, slightly above "boiling" as he found by boiling water in
an open pot, indicated dry steam. Big mistake!
(That's even worse than assuming you can manage the trick with an RH meter.)
It isn't easy viewing a thing like this and making sound
observations, especially while holding a camera, so you have to
sympathize with Krivit.
Sure. I do. He really needed to have a cameraperson.
Rossi is not very good at demonstrations, in my opinion. That is no
reflection on his skill as an engineer. Doing a demonstration is
like teaching classes or writing technical manuals. Many people who
are good at what they do are hopeless when it comes to explaining or
teaching what they do. That's why companies have both engineers and
technical writers, in different cubicals. You have to maintain the
separation factor, by the way.
Yeah. Get the tech writers too close to the engineers, they will
write like engineers, for engineers. That might be okay if your
customers are all engineers. Maybe. Maybe not.
Basically, the tech writer should write for the most ignorant
customer possible, then the engineers should review it for accuracy.
Repeat cycle until it is both a manual for the Compleat Idiot, and accurate.
Really, that's what they should be doing on Wikipedia, I argued for
that, for setting up a protected class of editor, anyone who claims
to be an expert. Claim to be an expert, great! No controversial
article editing for you, you are COI. But we want your advice on the
Talk page, and we will carefully consider it and check it out and
verify it with sources, and we will maintain this process. You are
allowed to advocate your point of view, on the talk page, but,
please, be nice. Remember that most people aren't as smart as you,
please be generous with them.
We are writing this encyclopedia for Randy from Boise, in fact.
They didn't get it, obviously. Since they block people for being COI
(having a Conflict of Interest), they thought I was suggesting that
experts be blocked. The contrary, actually, but, see, I didn't have a
tech writer to explain this to these Compleat Idiots.
