New Rule: Let’s finally admit it. Man has no clue how to build a safe and reliable crane. Just today, in Miami another came tumbling down as if it’s metal were a junkie clamoring for its Viagra fix. The end result? Killing two and maiming four, the “center of gravity” concept proving ever elusive to the cabal of geniuses bent on designing these things that should now officially be renamed “Lohans.”
Why, if cranes keep crashing down upon us I’m going to start confusing them with my 401(k).
Perhaps it’s all semantics and those who design these things have evidently confused the old phrase “bend not break” with “bend then break.”
Now I attended a technological university and while I gained no diploma there I did do my fair share of vomiting. And even then, awash in liquor-addled befuddlement, I remained keenly aware that you just don’t test the strength of metal beanpoles by asking them to lift something like, oh I don’t know, five ton steel bars. It’s like asking Paris Hilton to remove a manhole cover. Sorry, bad example.
I would wager money that if you pointed out a crane to a six-year old and said, “Now Tommy, see what they’re going to do there? They’re going to lift those thirty sheets of ten by ten exterior glass alllllllllllll the way up to the tenth floor.” Little Tommy would respond “It’ll break Daddy.” To which I would respond “I’m not your Daddy. Your mother and I are just friends.”
I know what you’re thinking. “You’re good at pointing out a problem, Bill, but do you have solution?” Three words that never seem to have troubled the Amish: “rope and pulley.”
BILL
