Quotes from Joel Achenbach

There is nothing scarier than a mediocre man with a mission.

Uncertainty is inevitable at the frontiers of knowledge.

Coffee is one of the special things I have, instead of a social life.

that a lithium ion battery stores 0.54 megajoules of energy per kilogram, while body fat stores 38 megajoules, and kerosene contains 43 megajoules

Pay attention to the stuff that doesn't quite make sense. Don't ignore those anomalies and hope they'll go away of their own volition. Respect the rules. Follow proper procedures. Don't ignore low-probability, high-consequence scenarios. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. The

Another lesson to emerge is that in a complex technological disaster, hardware by itself won't solve the problem. You need to think things through, to diagnose and analyze and interpret.