An unfriendly nurse orders the gown-clothed patient to climb onto the gurney. Beside the gurney on a table stands an ominous-looking black box with dials and switches, and a cable running from it to a two-armed thing that looks like the doctor’s end of a stethoscope. Only instead of earplugs, it’s got two cloth-covered steel electrodes. The…
Self-Driving Car Fatality No. 1: Joshua Brown Makes History
On May 7 of this year, Joshua Brown, owner of a wireless-network technology company and Tesla car enthusiast, was riding in his Tesla Model S on a divided highway in Florida. Mr. Brown loved his car and posted numerous YouTube videos that showed him using the autopilot function in the “look, Ma, no hands!” mode. …
Take the Moral Limits Test
Every once in a great while I raise a philosophical issue in this space. Most people who have tried teaching engineering ethics know that a little philosophy goes a long way, at least with undergraduates. The subject has a reputation of being dry, abstract, and far removed from everyday considerations. And another count against it…
Has America Finished Growing?
A week before the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan famously asked a debate audience, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Though political circumstances change, the question remains: are we in the U.S. better off than we were in the past? Can we expect to be better off in the future? And,…
Too Much Bang for the Buck: Exploding E-Cigarettes
Last June, a man named Hamid Sadeghy was installing a car windshield in Austin, Texas when he felt a vibration in his pocket. Sadeghy, who owns his own auto-glass company, is a responsible person who had been trying to cut back on his cigarette habit for the previous month or so by using electronic cigarettes…
ATF Says West Explosion Deliberately Set
In an announcement last Wednesday, Robert Elder, Special Agent in Charge of the Houston Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, announced his agency’s finding that the explosion of Apr. 17, 2013 of a fertilizer storage facility in West, Texas was a “criminal act.” The agency has offered a $50,000 reward…
Smart Guns & the Law
Last Friday, President Obama announced a series of actions aimed at making smart guns a reality, rather than a lab curiosity that has never gotten beyond the demonstration stage. A smart gun is one that in principle can be used only by its authorized owner. If we had a magic smart-gun-making wand that we could wave…
The Pemex Vinyl Chloride Plant Explosion
Unless you work in the petrochemical industry, you have probably never been near the substance called vinyl chloride. It is a chlorinated hydrocarbon that is made when one of the four hydrogen atoms in the compound called ethylene is replaced by a chlorine atom. On the other hand, unless you live in a house whose plumbing…
Learning from the Kolkata Overpass Collapse
On Thursday Mar. 31, around noon, the busy Rabindra Sarani-KK Tagore Street crossing in the city of Kolkata, India (population 4.5 million) was crowded with shoppers and people having lunch in open-air eateries. Crowds that a Westerner would consider to be a mob scene are routine in the Indian subcontinent, and the density of street-level…
Dereliction of Duty: The Flint Water Crisis
When a city operates a public water-supply system, it enters into an implied agreement with its customers, most of whom have no realistic second choice as to where to get domestic water. Customers buy water from the city, and the city guarantees that the water is safe to drink. Starting in April of 2014, the city…
Repurposing the Refrigerator
The development of consumer technology is a two-way street. Manufacturers can’t sell a product if nobody wants it, so successful consumer-product firms pay attention to what their customers are using their products for, and adapt new versions to those uses. A good example of how this can work is on display at this year’s Consumer Electronics…
Child’s Play: Hacking the Internet of Things
A company called VTech based in Hong Kong makes smart toys for kids. One of their tablet products can connect to a parent’s smartphone with a service called KidConnect, allowing children to send photos and text messages to their parents. Sounds all nice and family-friendly, yes? Well, in November the website Motherboard revealed that a hacker had…
VW’s in A Fix With Their Fix
Back in September, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused Volkswagen of cheating with regard to emissions controls of many of its cars that use diesel engines. VW admitted as much, its CEO resigned, and now the firm faces the problem of fixing all the cars that violate emissions standards. One way or another,…