The Engineers' Song

Godiva was a lady who through Coventry did ride
To show the local gentry there the colour of her hide;
The only one to notice that Godiva rode a horse
Was the local dipsomaniac, an engineer of course.

CHORUS
We are, we are, we are, we are the engineers,
We can, we can, we can, demolish forty beers
Drink up, drink up, drink up and come along with us,
For we don't give a damn for any old man
who don't give a damn for us.

She said, "I've come a long, long way, and I will go as far
With the man who takes me from this horse and leads me to a bar
The man who took her from her steed and led her to a beer
Was a bleary-eyed surveyor and an electrical engineer
(Chorus)
A maiden and an Engineer were sitting in the park
The Engineer was working on some research just after dark
His scientific method was a marvel to observe
While his right hand held the figures, his left hand traced the curves
(Chorus)
Rapunzel let her hair down for two suitors down below,
So one of them could grab a hold and give the old heave-ho
The prince began to climb at once, but soon came out the worst,
For the Engineer rode up a lift, and reached Rapunzel first.
(Chorus)
Now Venus is a statue made entirely out of stone,
There's not a fig leaf on her, she's naked as a bone.
On seeing her arms were broken, an engineer discoursed,
"Why the damn thing's broken concrete and it should be reinforced".
(Chorus)
The Army and the Navy were looking for some fun.
Down they went to the village where the fiery liquor runs.
But all they found were empties, for the engineers had come.
They had traded all their instruments for fiery kegs of rum.
(Chorus)

Some folks die of ulcer, and some from drinking beer.
Some diseases are explained and some we have to fear.
Of all the world's diseases, the one that I most fear,
Is going to UCD and ending up an engineer.
(Chorus)

A student Doctor and an Engineer sat down with a gallon can.
Said the Doctor to the Engineer, "Out drink me if you can."
The Doctor took one drink and died, his face a mouldy green.
But the Engineer kept drinking, for 'twas only GASOLINE.
(Chorus)

My mother is a hooker, my father is a fag.
My brother shot his wife just because she was a nag.
My sister is a Hippie, but it's me they call the creep.
Because I'm an engineer, I'm the family's black sheep.
(Chorus)

_________________________

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What I've recently
been reading

“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a household lemon tree as their unifying theme.

But it's not entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as

See detailed review

+++++

This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability.

Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia.

The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent.

However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness.

It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying.

As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history.

Note: I wrote my own reports on Macondo
in May, June, and July 2010

+++++

A horrific account of:

	how the death penalty is administered and, er, executed in Singapore,
	the corruption of Singapore's legal system, and
	Singapore's enthusiastic embrace of Burma's drug-fuelled military dictatorship

More details on my blog here.

+++++

This is nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s incredible story of survival in the Far East during World War II.

After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939.

From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror.

After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison.

Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,

	part of a death march to Thailand,
	a slave labourer on the Siam/Burma railway (one man died for every sleeper laid),
	regularly beaten and tortured,
	racked by starvation, gaping ulcers and disease including cholera,
	a slave labourer stevedoring at Singapore’s docks,
	shipped to Japan in a stinking, closed, airless hold with 900 other sick and dying men,
	torpedoed by the Americans and left drifting alone for five days before being picked up,
	a slave-labourer in Nagasaki until blessed liberation thanks to the Americans’ “Fat Boy” atomic bomb.

Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book.

There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document.

+++++

“Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”

This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP.

With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife.

Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book.

ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is.

+++++

This much trumpeted sequel to Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment.

It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:

	Drunk walking kills more people per kilometer than drunk driving.
	People aren't really altruistic - they always expect a return of some sort for good deeds.
	Child seats are a waste of money as they are no safer for children than adult seatbelts.
	Though doctors have known for centuries they must wash their hands to avoid spreading infection, they still often fail to do so.
	Monkeys can be taught to use washers as cash to buy tit-bits - and even sex.

The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions.

And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird.

++++++

A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics.

It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as

	Why does asparagus come from Peru?
	Why are pandas so useless?
	Why are oil and diamonds more trouble than they are worth?
	Why doesn't Africa grow cocaine?

It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:

	Argentina protects its now largely foreign landowners (eg George Soros)
	Russia its military-owned businesses, such as counterfeit DVDs
	The US its cotton industry comprising only 1% of GDP and 2% of its workforce

The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest.

However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader.

+++++

This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation.

The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India.

Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness.

He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British.

The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale.

Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan.

+++++

Other books here

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England get the Silver,
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