I read, I engineer.

I enjoy old, out of print books. But I never understand them the way my peers do. Perhaps I am not social, or I have a tendancy to let my mind wander, but mostly because I am an engineer; I pull out concepts and try to apply them in new places.

Since I was young, I never understood the world the way other people did. I was always a bit more mechanically minded. For example, my mother gave us a job of digging a hole in the backyard because she had dreams of building a water feature. I think it was going to be a water fountain and pond, but I don’t know because we never finished it. My brothers and I went out to the back yard with a shovel, a rake, a small pick, some hammers, and eventually a few spoons. Our small 8yr old bodies couldn’t do much with the shovel, but we did learn how to make mud houses for our little matchbox cars. Then one day our basement flooded and I learned what a wet-vac could do with dirty water, really dirty water. Perhaps it could do the same with mud? The next day out mother found us in the backyard trying to dig with the hose and a vacuum. (It would have worked, but we needed a bigger vacuum, or less water..) the Vacuum quickly gave out.

I’ve gotten older, but I still persist on putting concepts, like a wet-vac removing muddy water, in places most people would know better than to apply them, like a backyard mud pit. Or republican government, the concept that people elect governors (managers) to manage an organization, to corporate offices. It’s amazing how much monarchies (family owned companies), dictators (where a CEO decides who does what) and communism (where the people work for the company’s benefit over their own at a pay rate defined outside of free commerce) is celebrated in this country.

So why start a blog? Well, I’m not writing for you as much as for me. Perhaps through writing I can make sense of this world. If, by some miracle, you can understand what I write, please help me understand how it could be better understood. It is not my intention to make popular arguments on this blog. In fact, if you like everything you read here, then you are in the wrong place and should seek out other media to increase your understanding. If you don’t agree with me, please tell me why. I’m not looking to argue with anyone, I want to understand.

So as I read, or listen (I’m a big fan of audiobook on libervox.) I try to pick out concepts that are presented in the book. I will then present these concepts to you with a few examples of how they can be applied, or not. I’ll let you decide, I just want to foster some thinking.