Long Term Memories

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

FHWA Memory three - The MIT Professor

During my first year in FHWA (1973- 1974), someone came to me and told me that I was going to get to hear a professor (Marvin Manheim) from MIT give a presentation. This was a very famous professor who was considered something of a guru on highways and transportation thought. I went to the conference.

The professor began his talk by saying, "The impacts of highways are not ubiquitous. Some people bear a disproportionate share of the costs, others reap a disproportionate share of the benefits."

After the talk, someone came to me to ask what I thought of the talk. I decided not to tell what I was really thinking: '1. without a quantitative analysis this thought is essentially worthless 2. as a qualitative thought, it is obvious and not worth saying 3. he uses the word 'ubiquitous' when he means 'evenly distributed'. Instead I said, "well, it was interesting but I don't really see where it is leading".

Many years later (in 2001), I heard a Rabbi (visiting from Israel) use the phrase, "brachot (benedictions) are ubiquitous in [Orthodox] Judaism. This is a correct use of the word. A few years later (2002), I was watching TV. There was an Afghan on the screen. He was being interviewed (I think his name was Abdullah Abdullah). The reporter asked if he thought there would be any arguments between factions of the anti-Taliban coalition after their victory. He said, "Yes, because arguments are ubiquitous in Afghanistan." This is a correct use of the phrase.

I told this story to a group of people. One engineer (Brian Gardner) said, "Misuse of language is ubiquitous in academia". Also a correct use of the word but I'm not sure its true (I certainly hope not).
¶ 1:19 PM

Sunday, November 21, 2004

FHWA Memory two - A nomograph

After a month or so of intro type work, I took a course in Highway Air Quality --- it was taught by some Caltrans people and a consultant. The course was designed for engineers to produce the kind of studies needed for environmental documents. The manual was straight forward but somewhat kludgy -- there were many calculations needed, some of which only made a tiny difference in the final answer. The next month, I took a course in Highway Noise Prediction. They used nomographs.

A few months later I worked on a computer program to reduce the time needed to do the air quality work. When I finished that, I thought about doing a nomograph to solve the very simplist calculation problems (about 95% of all the studies required very simple problems). I asked my supervisor if that would be a good idea. He said, "You mean you could do that?".

So I did. The product was a big favorite among the engineers. One engineer asked me,

"What made you realize that we don't like to use thick manuals which make you do a lot of ultimately useless calculations?"

"Because I don't like stuff like that either." I responded.

"Really???", said the engineer. "I thought you academic types like that (apparently he thought I was an academic type - whatever that is).

"Nope. Hate it." I said.

"Well," the engineer said, "we'll remember that."
¶ 1:01 PM

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

FHWA memory one - Got the Name Wrong

Early in my career in the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), I didn't remember the name of the agency (although I remembered the acronym, FHWA). A few months after being hired (this was in 1974), I was on a govt trip. I came back and filled out a voucher. I requested reimbursement from the Federal Highway Authority (What I thought our organization was). My supervisor came to me with a smile.

"You should realize that we are not the Federal Highway Authority", he said, "We are the Federal Highway Administration."

"You mean we don't have any authority?" I asked.

"Basically, No." answered my supervisor.

"So, we just administer projects... just make sure the numbers add up and the t's are crossed and the i's are dotted?" I asked.

"Basically, Yes." said my supervisor.

"Oh." I said. "That would explain why people are so mellow around here."

"Guess so." said my supervisor.
¶ 6:08 PM