Col Beausabre: Don’t forget McNamara’s introduction of “build-in obsolescence” in American cars. All it did was allow the Japanese to steal market share because American cars were suddenly found to be build badly and to fail often.

“We shall not see his like again”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus

Jester Naybor – I didn’t come up with “Best and Brightest” on my own, we’ve been here before, when the hubris of our “elite” led to disaster

“The Best and the Brightest (1972) is an account by journalist David Halberstam of the origins of the Vietnam War published by Random House. The focus of the book is on the foreign policy crafted by academics and intellectuals who were in President John F. Kennedy’s administration, and the consequences of those policies in Vietnam. The title referred to Kennedy’s “whiz kids”—leaders of industry and academia brought into the administration—whom Halberstam characterized as insisting on “brilliant policies that defied common sense” in Vietnam, often against the advice of career U.S. Department of State employees.”

As an example, Robert McNamara, who sat out World War II in Washington, presided over the Edsell fiasco as president of Ford, which was a perfect reason to put him in charge of the Vietnam War. His emphasis on statistics – “if you can’t measure it and come up with numbers, you can ignore it ” – no matter how well suited to business (it’s part of the “Scientific Management” school of which so many of his generation were enamored), led to the adoption of attrition warfare, the infamous “body count”. Essentially, the US military was fighting the North Vietnamese birth rate – 200,000 men reached military age each year and it couldn’t kill enough of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest

Nothing to do with the creature, but honoring James A Beaver, distinguished lawyer and judge, Army general, governor of the Commonwealth and long time chairman of the board of trustees. He almost single handedly kept the school alive when the legislature wanted to cut off funding and even served as acting presifdent

tps://www.penncivilwar.com/post/beaver-stadium

Which renders them vulnerable to us more-ordinary souls who graduated from places like the Missouri University of Science and Technology (aka “MIT for rednecks”) and design/manage vital elements in their power supply-chain … and those who are post-dock students in the School of Hard Knocks and Deadlines whose trucks carry the soy to the soibois.

Keep it up, soibois, and you’ll have to kluge a generator on your Peloton to charge your iThingies … if we are even around to keep your 5G access to your Twit feed open. Ordinary people can find more friendly – and safer – places to do business than your urban feedlots and their herd-think.

Well, dang, Col, the only schools I attended were publicly-funded. I took upper division math classes in lecture halls with life-size pictures of farm animals. Guess I’m just not good enough to make my own life decisions.

Amused that Penn State has a Beaver Stadium, and an alma mater, Oregon State, is the home of the Beavers.

From what I understand…..(it’s some ‘traditional thing,’ they do)– everyone is allowed to swarm the field after the game.
Ya’ have to remember– ticketholders are mostly alumni (with a certain minimum income level), who road-trip to see the game, drink, and see their children-students. (not necessarily in that order)

When my young (Dutch) grand-father stepped off the boat at Ellis Island (on his way to Eerie, Pennsylvania) he couldn’t speak English, 20 years later he graduated from Michigan State with a degree in Civil Engineering.
(I drive on a stretch of the Interstate highway he helped design, practically every day.)

As am I, since I went to Penn State, home of Beaver Stadium – capacity 106, 572, making it the second largest in the Western Hemisphere and Fourth Largest in the World. Michigan Stadium seats 107, 601, Dear Leader Stadium in North Korea holds 114,000 (and you had better show up and cheer on game day, comrade) and Narenda Modi Stadium in India has a capacity of 132,000

Col Beausabre-
sign me up, I’m deplorable.

https://www.annarbor.org/university-of-michigan/michigan-stadium/