> Use an example local to you Chuck to make your point. Maybe the Hyatt
> Regency?
Well, that hits pretty cose to home, because I was almost part of that incident. Lucky for me we celebrated my mother's birthday that night at a Chinese restaurant. She really wanted to go down to the Hyatt for the tea dance, but I was a sullen teenager at the time who probably objected to that plan.
My other personal connection to that tragedy is my father, who knew one of the architects who got shit-canned after the skywalks fell. I was supposed to have gotten a tour of the hotel before it opened, during construction, but that never happened.
One of the best overviews of the Hyatt tragedy is in the book "Why Buildings Collapse" or whatever the title really is.
I'm a bit rusty on the details of the Hyatt collapse, but I believe that
engineering changes were made to the design of the skywalks during the construction process. I don't remember if there were people who were concerned about the design or not, but it may have been a case where more eyes and critical thinking could have prevented the tragedy. If this example has anything instructive to offer a discussion about authority and experts on the micro-level, perhaps one could look at how the people involved in the project assumed that other people knew what they were doing. This wouldn't apply if the structural dangers in the revised plan were known and were dismissed for whatever reason. Another possible criticism with this example woudl relate to the division of labor. Perhaps if more trained generalists were involved, somebody would have raised warning flags about the fatal design change.
Chuck -------------------------- Bread and Roses Web Design serving small businesses, non-profits, artists and activists http://www.breadandrosesweb.com/