Thoughts On A Sunday

Yesterday saw a gathering of the WP Clan up here in New Hampshire to celebrate the WP Mom’s 90th birthday. Friends and family came from all over the Northeast for the party, said party put together by the youngest WP Sister. We managed to squeak the party in after some snow and heavy rain swept through New England.

It was nice being able to see cousins, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren we hadn’t seen in a while.

All in all, it was a great time and I know the WP Mom enjoyed the party!

==++++==

It looks like we’ll be experiencing a mixture of weather over the next few days between snow squalls (later today), below zero wind chills (tomorrow), more snow (Tuesday), and warmer temps (Thursday). In other words, a typical New England winter.

Having talked with a number of friends and acquaintances, we’d prefer to see more snow, a lot more snow as it seems we’ve been on the wrong side of some of the cold fronts which means we’ve gotten rain where normally we’d have snow. But there’s still a lot of winter to get through so we’ve got some time to experience more normal winter weather.

==++++==

It used to be Boeing was one of the premiere aircraft manufacturers in the world. That is no longer true and its slide was self-inflicted. The thing that started Boeing’s downfall was when it bought out McDonnell Douglas.

As one commenter explained it:

The only thing Boeing has in common with the company of 25 years ago is the name. They are two very different companies. The old Boeing that created such high quality aircraft was destroyed by the McDonnell Douglas merger in the late 1990's.

The move of the HQ from Seattle was to get rid of all the high level old schools engineering focused upper management to be replaced by the bean counting bottom feeding management sharks from McDonnell Douglas. The same management who made McDonnell Douglas's civil aircraft such a disaster they had to abandon the market. After a whole bunch of crashes.

Once all the old school Boeing senior management was pushed out all the engineering experience walked out the door in the next decade. The reason for the 737 Max and other Boeing disasters over the last two decades is there are no longer enough experienced engineers and engineering management left in Boeing to actually produce a new aircraft from scratch. Or at least one as good as anything Boeing produced pre merger.

So just like IBM, AT&T etc Boeing is now just a brand names with little or no real connection to the company of decades ago that actually produced very high quality technical products which made them so trustworthy in the first place.

First sign the bean counters run the show - stock buy backs. And sooner or later follows Chapter 11. Which will be Boeing's fate. When the McDonnell Douglas management kill enough people in enough aircraft crashes.

One thing my late father, a consultant, told me more than once was that once the beancounters start replacing experienced managers in a company, the company is doomed. All of their decisions are based upon the bottom line, on their spreadsheets. The problem is their spreadsheets don’t include factors that are just as important as the bottom line, things like morale and quality. They ignore those factors at their peril because they can both adversely affect the bottom line.

And so it goes at the once great Boeing.

==++++==

It looks like EV disasters come in threes.

I covered one of them – Hertz selling off a good part of the EV inventory – yesterday. The other two are also showing the public’s dislike of EVs, with a survey showing that dislike being one and yet another electric vehicle immolating itself.

Deloitte’s Global Automotive Consumer Study found: “Consumer interest in Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) vehicles is rebounding in some markets surveyed as affordability concerns continue to weigh heavily on forward intentions.”

Specifically, in the United States, 67% of consumers said they prefer an internal combustion engine in their next vehicle purchase – up from 58% last year. Just 6% prefer pure EVs and 21% prefer hybrids…

--snip--

Then to top it all off, an electric double-decker bus burst into flames in London causing rush hour chaos and what the Daily Mail called “an inferno.” It took three fire engines to put out the blaze. There you have it folks: the cars and trucks of the future.

Yeah, everyone wants EVs...yeah...everyone.

==++++==

Rice University is offering a class in “Afrochemistry”.

WTF?

According to the university the purpose of the class is to explain “alleged ‘inequities in chemistry and chemical education.’ ”

“Students will apply chemical tools and analysis to understand Black life in the U.S. and students will implement African American sensibilities to analyze chemistry,” the course description states. “Diverse historical and contemporary scientists, intellectuals, and chemical discoveries will inform personal reflections and proposals for addressing inequities in chemistry and chemical education.”

What’s next, a similar class to deal with racist math?

When will this nonsense end?

==++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is coming again, windchill is gonna get bad, and where Monday is returning...again.