How Civil Engineering Differs from Economics
Atlanta, GA
May 29, 2019
This week, as our days lengthen and my time increases, the pendulum swings from the mental to the manual.
But the pressure is high…and the heat is on.
May in Atlanta is usually beautiful. Skies clear. Temperatures moderate. Humidity is low. Flowers bloom. Birds chirp. Pollen subsides. And a comforting breeze rustles numberless leaves crowding the branches of countless trees.
For the last several days, and presumably a few more to come, Georgia and other southern states have exchanged the charm of Persephone for the fury of Vulcan…like skipping suddenly from fields of daisies in Maine to a bed of coal on the surface of the sun.
But at least it’s a wet heat.
Sweat pours from pores like water from a backyard spigot, shirts cling instinctively to the backs of car seats like a starfish to aquarium glass, and outdoor breathing is akin to sucking oxygen from the inside of a wet sponge.
Under such conditions, we preserve our strength, moderate our activities, and devote our energy to more leisurely pursuits…like afternoons hauling and laying twelve dozen bags of mulch along each side of our one-acre property.
Two words force even the most sympathetic Southern admirer of pre-modern eras, such as your nostalgic correspondent, to re-consider ever wanting to live in an earlier age: Air Conditioning.
To those may be added another that discourage anyone, anywhere…Southern or otherwise…from contemplating such an impulsive retreat into impetuous time: Dentistry.
Mercifully, my teeth are hanging in there. But my stamina wilts under a May sun that barks like the dog days of August.
I retreated indoors, appreciated Willis Carrier’s cool ingenuity…and resigned myself to an afternoon prepping, priming, and painting our basement walls.
Years ago I became a civil engineer without really knowing why. In retrospect, it seemed inevitable.
As a kid I drew detailed street maps of Tampa, dug extensive “rivers” throughout my patient mother’s unfortunate backyard, and constructed make-shift boats capable of floating small children on the oft-flooded streets of central Davis Island. My block-letter handwriting still betrays my destiny and background.
Part of the reason I think I liked civil engineering is that it is real. You manipulate real material to build, sustain, or support real things. The process and result of such efforts are visible, tangible, and (hopefully) durable.
Economics, my second discipline and first love, is also real…but most economists are frauds. The discipline is descriptive, not predictive, but that doesn’t prevent its practitioners from foretelling the future like Saxon witches over avian entrails. And with about as much success.
Wielding mercurial models and mathematical mesmerism, they take a perverse pride in converting individual human action into ethereal collective aggregates that hide more than they reveal.
You can’t distort or phony-up bridge blueprints like a BLS or PCE report. Or, you certainly can’t do it more than once…and definitely not monthly. You can torture economic statistics till they confess what you want to hear. No matter how hot the lights, engineering calculations reveal only cold hard facts.
I can still approach the Ferry Landing in Sausalito, the south anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Blue Route in Philadelphia, or the extension of Georgia 400 through north Atlanta, and see the fruit (or, in the latter case, farce) of my labor.
Perhaps spreading mulch on our lawn or paint on our walls harkens to this palpable sense of accomplishment. I need not await a quarterly earnings call, nor consult contorted calculations, to decipher the impact of my effort.
I see it as I go. It is immediate, a rapid reward to the senses, a prompt compensation to the body, and a precipitous opportunity for the mind to wander a bit…to contemplate new solutions to old problems. Or vice versa.
When burdened by what we think are problems, it helps to try to relieve those of others. Then, we understand our troubles may not be so great after all…and that those we try to help may never have known theirs were problems to begin with.
We spent time yesterday morning at the MDE School…a special needs institution here in East Cobb…that instills “Motivation, Dedication, and Excellence” among several dozen autistic students. Rita knows the director. She, David, Alexander, and I toured the school, met several teachers, and each read to a half dozen kids of varying ages, eliciting smiles from faces on both sides of the book.
The students were impressed that Alexander plays the trombone and David the piano. Both plan to go back, and to demonstrate their musical mastery for their new eager audience.
Back home for the afternoon, I returned to my basement canvas of baseboard and drywall. Before long, the smell of fresh paint pulled Rita to the scene.
She seemed disconcertingly impressed.
“Wow…you’re a good painter”, she observed with a whiff of surprise…and perhaps with visions of additional tasks for a husband who suddenly has some time, and who may have just revealed himself as a skill-set sand-bagger.
I am not sure why my wife would be shocked at my subtle dexterity and profound precision. As noted, her husband is a civil engineer, licensed to practice in three states, with the keen command of detail required of one whose projects still carry the lives of millions of Californians, Pennsylvanians, and Georgians.
In any event, I was pleased she liked my work…despite her inexplicable inability to appreciate my discerning eye.
As I returned to my art, like Le Brun to the ceiling of La Galerie des Glace, my patron considered additional applications of her husband’s newfound talent and impeccable perception.
“What about this blue ceiling? Shouldn’t we paint that too?”, my wife asked, pointing up from the stairwell connecting the basement to the main floor.
“Blue ceiling? Where?”
“Right there. Do you not see that is blue?”
“Hmmm…I guess it is. How long has it been like that?”
“Well, it was that way when we moved in…at least sixteen years.”
“Oh…”
JD
