Saturday, May 12, 2018

If you are reading this, thank an engineer

No, engineers didn't invent writing (bureaucrats and businessmen did). But they did invent ways to use electricity, computer chips, and the internet.

Radicals on the universities are complaining that engineering is a white patriarchal bias

 academic theorists crusade to purge whiteness from STEM courses, because critical thinking and research are regarded as tools of “white hegemony.” Engineering students at Purdue must contend with the school’s indictment of “racist and colonialist projects in science,” while a UC-Irvine professor condemns even “technical prowess” as a white male construct.

Uh, maybe you need to read the history of engineering/applied science.

Podcast at FLP:Simon Winchester | The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
mp3link

or maybe read this oldie but goodie from L SpragueDeCamp on the Ancient Engineers: available at Scribd (requires paid subscription) and on Internet Archives (free registration).

or you can read Braudel's series of books on how technology interacted with societies.

Civilization usually began when there was a need to regulate water for irrigation, and then spread. Yes, there are plenty of cultures in places without irrigation (ancient Greece?) but even the ancient Greeks admitted a lot of their technology originally came from Egypt, and then they improved it and went on from there to invent stuff.

and Fagan's book Elixir, about water (and irrigation) begins with describing the ancient irrigation systems of south and east Africa. LINK2

but of course, the snowflakes probably would just say these ancient Africans, Egyptians, Cushites, Semites, Indians, Chinese, etc. are just honorary whites.





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