Norm Dicks Building: Fill & Download for Free

I spent the first 15 years of my engineering career working for the Seattle District USACE. I was New Employee of the Year, and a few years later I was Engineer of the Year. There are some great engineers working at the Corps and the organization works better than most government agencies. On the other hand, there are many nominal engineers and virtually no one ever gets fired.The Corps is given their mission by congress. The organization does not pick and choose what it wants to do. Back in the 80’s, Representative Norm Dicks (from the sixth congressional district of Washington) was on the appropriations committee. He routinely directed money to the Corps to study the flooding problems at Aberdeen Washington - which was in his district.The Corps produced a feasibility level design for South Aberdeen that was estimated to cost over 20 million dollars. The project was included in the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 with a not to exceed amount of $28.2 million. This is where I began to work in the design…There were some aspects of the design that didn’t make much sense. I eventually took over the design and turned it into an $11 million dollar project. I made some seasoned engineers look silly. It was almost as if they wanted to kill the project by making it expensive.My co-workers assured me that the project would never get the required permits from the Department of Ecology and Fish and Wildlife - but I pulled that off.This was happening around the time that Global Warming and Sea Level Rise was a hot news story. The Project Manager and I both came to the conclusion that sea level rise projections were exaggerated. The rate of sea level rise near Aberdeen was less than 2mm/yr and the rate was not increasing. It has remained constant since then. Pointing this out made me a pariah in some circles, so after completing the design and managing the construction of this project I moved to Military Projects where I became the Program Manager for hundreds of millions of dollars of Construction - none of which had anything to do with Global Warming and Sea Level Rise.The moral of my story is that The Corps is not above politics and sea level rise due to global warming is entirely political. You buck the system at your peril.I personally believe that the climate I have experienced for the past 50+ years is slightly warmer than it used to be. However, I am certain that sea level rise projections have been a gross exaggeration. I see what being a skeptic can do to your professional aspirations. I think I know why this is happening and why skeptics must be crushed.I would love to know where the science fiction ends and the real science begins.

Edit: I’ve expanded this answer in response to some very good comments. The new content is delimited with << and >>.<<Based on the answers so far, there are some science-fiction and fantasy fans who don’t understand what “literary” means in the context of this question! (Click on the question comment, which has the question details that everyone saw originally.) In short, “literary” means the characters are fully-rounded human beings rather than types, and the prose style is distinctive and satisfying rather than what’s called “transparent,” where the writing gets the story across with admirable efficiency but neither adds to nor subtracts from the reader’s enjoyment.>>But not all sf / fantasy readers are oblivious to those qualities. For most of twenty-plus years I ran the program at a convention that was in part dedicated to outreach to literary readers like you, those who were unfamiliar with sf and fantasy. I and my colleagues were sf and fantasy readers who also loved Nabokov, Borges, and the like. I was a Harvard English major (and one of Elizabeth Bishop’s penultimate group of poetry workshop students).It’s true that some of the biggest names in science fiction are unsatisfying writers in terms of prose style and depth of characterization— Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Frank Herbert, to start with (Arthur C. Clarke wasn’t much into character, but could be a very fine stylist). This isn’t to say their work doesn’t have merit; in certain ways it can have astonishing merit. I’m fond of asserting that (Herbert’s) “Dune is a genuinely bad book, and I’ve thought so all four times I re-read it.” That gets a laugh from people who share my tastes. <<The literary qualities are entirely absent, but it has popular and strictly science-fictional qualities (the story and the world-building, respectively) that are compelling.>>There is in fact a well-defined subgenre of literary science fiction and fantasy. The groundbreakers were Theodore Sturgeon and Ray Bradbury (both better known for their short fiction than novels). The titans are Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Samuel R. Delany, John Crowley, and J. G. Ballard. In the next (still monumental) tier are Harlan Ellison and James Tiptree, Jr. (pen name of Alice Sheldon) carrying on the tradition of short fiction brilliance, and Stanislaw Lem, Octavia Butler, Thomas M. Disch, Barry N. Malzberg, Brian W. Aldiss, and a number of other novelists. And then there are many newer writers who stand on their shoulders.<<Of those writers, only Crowley is primarily a fantasist, and only Bradbury and Le Guin have an equal reputation in both fields (although nearly everyone has written fantasy of note, with Wolfe’s Peace and Butler’s Kindred ranking among the inner-circle classics). I think this is a direct result of the nature of the genres. Sf is a literature of ideas, which means that a career in the field by a great writer usually produces a wide range of works in terms of thematic concerns and even novelistic approaches; Dick is the supreme example. In contrast, the open-ended and unlimited nature of fantasy attracts singular, highly personal visions. Most of the great achievements in fantasy, other than those by moonlighting sf writers, are the only things their author is known for: either they are large bodies of connected work like Tolkien’s “legendarium,” or are singular efforts like Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the Mist, which may be the single work in the history of fiction with the highest ratio of influence to fame. And of course quantity and variety are key components to a literary reputation. >>The book that best matches your desire is Gene Wolfe’s epic The Book of the New Sun. (The related sequence The Book of the Long Sun and The Book of the Short Sun might be even better). <<It’s a perfect starting place for sf readers who have some affinity for the literary and wish to expand their horizons. But you and other readers with a primarily literary bent>> might want to start with the earlier and much shorter The Fifth Head of Cerberus, a novel composed of three closely linked novellas. There are people who think that Wolfe is the greatest living writer in the English language, period.More of my inner-circle canon of literary science fiction and fantasy:The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin. And then much more, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea. Why hasn’t she won the Nobel Prize in literature? There’s no good answer. (Unlike Wolfe, who like Nabokov is more interested in pure aesthetics, Le Guin’s fiction is very politically engaged, something the Nobel committee has always emphasized.)Engine Summer (sf) and Little, Big (fantasy), John Crowley. After that, the four-volume Aegypt. I think that Engine Summer is in some ways the best novel I’ve ever read. Like the Fifth Head of Cerberus, it’s a relatively quick read.A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick. Not necessarily his best novel (although it would be, for almost anyone else), but perhaps the one that best combines fine writing and strong story. Next, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which probably is his best), for the 200-proof PKD experience. As is often the case with Dick, the writing’s a little sloppy (it’s a first and only draft), but full of energy and wit. If those ring your bell, there are at least 16 more that are good enough to be necessary. I sometimes think that Dick was the most important creative artist (in any medium) of the second half of the 20th century, but it is true that (like J.R.R. Tolkien) a lot of his value lies outside the literary norm.Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany. Experimental and post-modern, but a page-turner.The aforementioned Kindred, Octavia Butler. It’s criminal that Hollywood is unaware of this novel (as evidence by the fact that the creators of 12 Years a Slave claimed they looked for and couldn’t find a great novel about slavery to adapt).I could go on and on … but that should get you started.

We only need to look at John’s Gospel to support that contention, since the author of John seems to have been more aware of Jewish culture and norms than any other gospel author. This author avoids a night trial before the Sanhedrin, merely having Jesus questioned by Annas and then by Caiaphas before being taken before Pontius Pilate for trial. The night trial is only in Mark’s Gospel and the directly dependent synoptic gospels.Richard Carrier says, in On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, “Likewise trials for capital crimes had to be conducted over the course of two days and could not be conducted on or even interrupted by a Sabbath or holy day, nor ever conducted at night”. As long as the priests considered the charges against Jesus to have the potential of resulting in capital punishment, they would have to delay the trial until daylight on Sunday, yet Mark portrays them as arresting him at night and proceeding with a night trial. Burton L. Mack concurs, in Who Wrote the New Testament: The Making of the Christian Myth, “The list of improbable features in Mark’s passion story is quite long and includes such things as the trial by night, which would have been illegal.” Mack actually tells us:Mark's Gospel is an obvious fiction, masterfully composed by someone who had to be doing his work at a desk as any author would.That’ a bit harsh. If true, then we should accept that the author did indeed invent Jesus' night trial before the Sanhedrin, but what evidence do we have that Mark's Gospel is a fiction?Rhoads, Dewey and Michie say, in Mark as Story, that we should “Read Mark as story rather than as history.” They add:The composer of this story has used sophisticated storytelling techniques, developed the characters and the conflicts, and built suspense with deliberateness, telling the story to generate certain insights and responses in the audience.Evidence is building that the night trial is a fiction written within a work of fiction. That is not to say that Jesus was not tried and crucified, but that these details were added for effect.