“Why Did A Boom From A Crane Snap Off, Hurtle To Earth, And Kill A Man?”

Engineering, like much of life, is a series of approximations and educated bets, which may end up in failure. In order to create something almost beyond the possibility of disaster, it would have to be as overbuilt as the Brooklyn Bridge, and that’s pretty cost prohibitive at this point in developed countries. 

I can’t explain exactly why I’m so interested in this 1977 video about the Failure Analysis Associates in Los Angeles, which still exists today. It’s a company run by ghostbusters searching for the ghost in the machine, who try to figure out why the best laid plans of mice and men ended up motionless in a spring-loaded trap.