Digital BW, The Print

At 03:16 PM 8/1/2002, Keith wrote:
>Blue Ribbon Panel = "cover for justifying the steps some bureaucratic
>entity or key decisionmaker had already decided upon"
>
>see subheadings:
>Challenger Disaster
>Warren Commission
>War against Drugs
>Gore commission on air travel safety and security
>National Health Care Insurance

As I recall, the presence of Richard Feynmann on the Challenger Panel 
resulted in a finding that was actually useful, albeit one that some 
engineers at Thiokol had already warned about. The warnings were 
disregarded. Anyway, as many may recall, while others were speaking (or 
pontificating), Feynmann was soaking a piece of o-ring material in ice 
water. When it was his to turn to speak, he pulled the material out of the 
ice and snapped it in pieces. (See "An Outsider's Inside View of the 
Challenger Inquiry" by Richard P. Feynmann, Physics Today, February 1988, 
pp. 26-37.) Basically, he forced the commission to come to a real, as 
opposed to political, conclusion.


Stan

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Photography by Stan McQueen
http://www.smcqueen.com