Like a piano without black keys - OOOPS! or
maybe without white keys. Gotta be politically
correct, ya know...

A leopard without spots to change.
A Muslim telling the truth.
Al Sharpton donating to a worthy cause.

Governors in six states are now arming their national guards. One of them encouraged soldiers to obtain concealed-carry licenses and the guns to go with them. Do you really want an armed military within the United States?

The Texas Military Department headquarters that I report to does have armed guards at the gates (they work for a different division within the department), with 100% ID check and cargo check for delivery vehicles. At several of the national guard posts I have worked at, while much of the front area is open to the public. to go further, you must show ID to armed guards. The tension, though, is the proper role of the military within a constitutional republic on a foundation of democracy.

(We can debate democracy elsewhere, but I point out that at the local level, anyone who can vote can run for office, while President of the United States must be a natural (not naturalized) citizen at least 35 years of age. That hallmarks the difference between a democracy and a republic.)

Your zippy quip failed to address who actually carries a sidearm in the American military. We inherited and embraced a class-based system from the British: "an officer and a gentleman." Officers carry sidearms to shoot their own soldiers who do not obey orders, and conversely to protect themselves from that rabble. Soldiers on guard duty carry rifles, not guns. Though exceptions are all up and down the line, that is the general rule.

So, now we are arming soldiers with handguns. Maybe that is a good thing and maybe in another generation, we non-coms will call each other "sir" and "ma'am" and salute each other when we pass… and then dance a bit to decide to gets to walk on the right…

There is a lot more involved here. After 9/11, the NY City Hall pushed the people back with hard barriers that are still in place. All federal office buildings, and many state have TSA-type screening. And, riding a Greyhound from Michigan to Texas and back, I met the TSA screening people in Memphis. Think about that. That, the Patriot Act, the NSA domestic spying, and more,l happened because of reflexive responses to 9/11.

If the assaults in Chattanooga (which were only the latest in a series) are the result of an open society, then, I agree, k, that we should discuss those issues, and that analysis requires more than a zippy one-liner.

whoa. I am spattering that everywhere

Not philosophers, not politicians, not writers, poets, artists, or truck drivers. They are all needed to an extent, but it will be the engineers who will save humanity if there is any humanity left to save. (No, I'm not an engineer).

The difference is cultural. I agree that most of the engineers I have known are, as you say, positive and helpful. Anecdotes and confirmation bias aside, I think that the difference is cultural. America is a democracy, and I mean that not in the narrow, political sense, but in the broad sociological sense. Ayn Rand pointed this out in her comments on our labeling Presidents of the United States by nicknames, FDR, JKF, and Ike. I believe that both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were on the ballots under those monikers, rather than James Earl Carter and William Jefferson Clinton. The point is that we are all pretty much equal here.

On the other hand, in the old world, the Middle East in particular, social status is important. In sociology we call then "high context" societies where family connections set your rank. Thus becoming an engineer not only is supposed to elevate you, of course, but your family as well. So, they have a lot riding on this.

As for the stories you opened with, I guess we could call them "evil Dilberts." Yesterday, I bought my fourth collection of Dilbert Comics. I am working on a full set. But as you pointed out, that bitterness is contrary to a general mood. I add that like bittersweet chocolate, you need a little contrast for good enjoyment.

My anecdote: I worked with a Middle Eastern engineer who was incensed at having to drive compacts when renting at the airport. "I look like an unsuccessful salesman," he said. Status: it's so unAmerican.

STEM... the latest Religious Movement.
While so many people complain they can't find high-paying jobs, they simultaneously complain they can't find a good carpenter, roofer, plumber or electrician to work on their homes... while those markets are so poorly served that lots of incompetents exist in the market, degrading the image of 'brain AND muscle workers.'

And migrants flock to the US and permeate the construction business... go figure. Some do excellent, hard work; others sleep on the job. I've seen both at my house in the past few years.

And a few comments about 'engineers.'
Engineers are tasked with implementing or designing solutions that will solve problems or meet needs. Someone defines the problem and engineers research solutions and lay out plans for which solutions would work best, fastest, cheapest (or at least two of those three...)

Science provides the toolbox; engineers conceive of the tools to meet the needs. Worker bees put the parts in place. Customers use the solutions.

And when I entered the job market in 1968, EE's were scarce and in demand. Some years later, as usual, there was a glut of engineers churned out by colleges and we suffered. Same as all the other pendulum-swing over-reactions that always happen in a free market. The pendulum's period might be years or decades, but pretty much everyone insists on 'solutions' that will show results next month. And are constantly frustrated when the results don't show up.

After college, I was at a company with a shitload of engineers, and unlike claims above, it seemed as if a LOT of us had Jewish backgrounds or history. So much for generalizations.

If you read the original papers cited, you will see that this is a factor in the Arab/Islamic countries. Education is supposed to be the path to success, and they find themselves unemployed and impoverished because the economies of their nations are wrecked.

That being true - and that applying here, as a well - I perceive an important cultural difference. Here if an engineer is laid off, she finds some other way to make money, to capitalize on her skills, rather than just blaming the system - which she may well do with full justification. She takes responsibility for her situation, even though it was not of her making. That is a western attitude. In truth - hang on - that is a premise of Existentialism: you did not make the irrational world you were born into, but you are morally responsible for your place in it.

That is different than the Arab/Islamist worldview of the jihadi - or others of their kind, even in here in the USA - who blame others and who cannot get past that.

Seeing armed little kids in black and on the march with the beards of ISIS is pretty creepy.

This is a great point, but still not the same issue. Which is an apparent major inconsistency in epistemological values and practices. I noticed this as an undergrad in aerospace engineering at Purdue (in Indiana). Lots of engineering students who were also devout Born-again Christians.
I struggled to understand (let alone debate) how they could be so analytical and scientific about engineering and physics yet not apply that to their religious beliefs. I still haven't figured it out, but I suspect it's analytical powers turned into powers of rationalization. Given X, a driven analytical mind can figure out a way to arrive at Y in their own mind.
Engineers also love order and predictability.
Maybe Eric Hoffer and his "True Believer" book has some clues for us?

Marshall Thomsen of Eastern Michigan University - my alma mater - has been teaching “Ethical Issues in Physics” for over twenty years. A search of “ethics physics” and similar items will return citations to Dr. Thomsen’s work at websites from the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois, the University of Massachusetts, and Physics Today, among many more.

When I had the class, he was on sabbatical and our professor was Patrick Koehn. The class also has been taught by Prof. Mary Elizabeth Kubitskey. Dr. Kubitskey’s master’s thesis was Teaching Ethics in a High School Physics Class.

By a roundabout way, I have an anonymous citation in a book on engineering ethics. “Of Owls, Wooden Walls, and Flower Girls,” in 4Es: Ethics, Engineering, Economics and Environment by John St. J. S. Buckeridge, Sydney: The Federation Press, 2011.

In 2011, I delivered a program on academic fraud and research misconduct, especially from police crime labs. (See CSIFlint2011.blogspot.com)

So, I approve of your school's requirement that engineers learn to consider the ethical ramifications of their work.

Interesting. I used to fly aerobatics. It was extremely exciting and the perfect of example of fully immersing myself in the physics I had studied in school. "Yep...a stall with rapid application of yaw DOES result in a snap roll! Yipee!"

Jolene, I am not clear on which "thinking nation" the United States attacked. Did you mean Iran? Iran seems formidable, but suffers from all the weaknesses of a controlled society, from intellectual drought to economic instability.

I can accept that they have a good educational system and serious motivation for science and engineering studies. However, a society that hangs homosexuals is going to find itself lacking creative people. Even in America, you do not announce your atheism to your co-workers, but at least here, it is not a capital offense. And what if you do not want to pray six times a day? Here, we do not care if you go to church or not. Over there, the choices are not so broad. The bottom line is that a controlled society cannot stand up to an freer opponent.

Appeals to God are fairly common. Both Germany and Netherlands had "God with Us" on their coins, just as we have IGWT. The coins of Austria declared their last emperor, Franz Josef II, to be an "apostolic monarch." The faith of Muslims is no less assertive or surprising. Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus all find encouragement from celestial beings. I do not mean just the people who happen to believe, but the leaders of those nations. The Dalai Lama is pretty sure that the Great Wheel of Life will restore Lhasa as it carries China downward. Most of the people whom I know who also admire the works of Ayn Rand would ask a more basic question at that point.

You should read the actual papers.
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambet...
and
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/09...

The studies began with investigations of engineers in Arab/Islamic lands, but also included statistics about engineers in the USA and Canada.

Also, your experience with engineers, valid though it may be, can also be a "confirmation bias" in that you limit your validations to what you have experienced without accepting the broader findings of statistical surveys.

The point of the papers that I cited was the the correlation between the mindset of engineering and the mentality of jihad is not accidental.

http://carnegieendowment.org/files/09...
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambet...

"Whether American, Canadian or Islamic, and whether due to selection or field socialisation, a disproportionate share of engineers seems to have a mindset that inclines them to entertain the quintessential right-wing features of “monism” – ‘why argue when there is one best solution’ – and of “simplism” – ‘if only people were rational, remedies would be simple’. "(Gambetta and Hertog page 50)

On the other hand, aviation culture has not been identified with the same psycho-epistemology, even though the work would seem to be like engineering. See my post here in the Gulch on "The Virtues of Aviation Culture."
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts...