Botched Designs
by MikeGeneI'm sitting here on a hot, humid summer day, trying to print out some pages and my printer keeps jamming paper. After several rounds of printing out a few papers and unjamming the jam thing so I can print out a handful of others, it finally dies on me with one loud thump. Now, this is the third jam printer I've had. At this point I'm reminded of David Barash's misguided anti-ID article .
Complaining about the human body, Barash writes, "An engineer who designed such a system from scratch would be summarily fired."
Yeah? Well that's exactly how I feel about my dead printer. Except those engineers weren't fired, otherwise I wouldn't have such a kludge of a printer taking up space on my desk. Barash cites other botched designs:
There's much more that the supposed designer botched: ill-constructed knee joints that wear out, a lower back that's prone to pain, an inverted exit of the optic nerve via the retina, resulting in a blind spot.
Look, all I can say is that while many of my cars, tape players, toasters, and computer/printers have worn out on me over the years, my knees are just fine. So let me just say something to all you engineers out there:
If you can't make a jam printer that works as well as my botched knees, you should be fired!
July 13th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
Take it easy on us. You might consider changing your paper supplier
Comment by inunison — July 13, 2005 @ 12:19 pm
July 13th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
I guess that goes to show you that the printer is a botched design. If intelligent agents had designed the printer, it's ability to function would not be dependent on the paper you used. Look, I have no experience designing printers. I'm just following the path paved by Barash.
Comment by MikeGene — July 13, 2005 @ 4:03 pm
July 13th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
MikeGene wrote:
If the designers had used evolutionary computation to solve the problem there would have been no need to rely on their own limited imaginations.
Comment by Brian Sell — July 13, 2005 @ 6:22 pm
July 14th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Telic Thoughts
I looked up the blog Telic Thoughts because I was told that I wrote some rather telic thoughts by a half-wit who cannot think such thoughts. Maybe that was meant to be, although that might be of some annoyance to the half-wit.
Trackback by Into Good and Evil — July 14, 2005 @ 9:44 pm
July 14th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
Into Good and Evil wrote:
Maybe your thoughts are truly telic and it is not you who is doing the thinking.
Comment by Brian Sell — July 14, 2005 @ 10:05 pm
July 14th, 2005 at 10:54 pm
"Maybe your thoughts are truly telic and it is not you who is doing the thinking."
That might be the best Thought of all, don't you think?
Do you ever let your words be your thoughts for you?
Comment by mynym — July 14, 2005 @ 10:54 pm