Hokum-Balderdash Assay

A couple of months ago I hired an electrician to completely rewire a small apartment. Now this is a wooden house that's visibly older than I am. The necessary work was actually simple since all the conduits and boxes would be surface-mounted--they would simply be tacked to the ceilings and walls. And we decided to use flexible PVC tubing which made installation a breeze, obviating the need for couplings.

To cut to the chase this electrician fouled up the job and then proceeded to doctor part of it by installing a 20-meter length of SPT wire from the panelboard to one of the junction boxes. He connected an AWG-18 wire to a 15 or 20-amp breaker! Fortunately, he didn't run the wire inside a conduit and so his unforgivable disaster-in-the-waiting was discovered (not threading it in a conduit was, of course, another electrical blunder). Rather than buy yet another box of AWG-12 THHN wire and roll of conduit, I was able to find a length of unused armor-clad BX AWG-12 cable in the storage. Perfectamente! It was only a meter longer than needed. I had the bozo replace the entire length of SPT with the BX, but not after censuring him for several minutes. Geez, did he want the house to join the fireworks of New Year's Day?

Nuf of the intro (nope, this blog entry isn't about proper electrical work). At the end of the job this electrician suggested that since this is an old house I ought to have it blessed by a priest. I thought to myself, "Oh shit!" Outwardly, I took his silliness in stride. An electrician who believes in evil ghosts and spirits, and exorcisms. How peachy.

Reminds me of a telecom engineer (at least that's how he introduced himself on the discussion board) who was through and through into Christian supernaturalism. Strangely, this engineer was completely oblivious to the fact that the field of vision of optical instruments is inversely proportional to magnification. If I remember right, he extolled God's creation of the human eye and constrasted it with binoculars. He declared that the eye can see so much (large field of vision) but a binocular--a human creation--sees so much less. Duh?! (Pray this "engineer" is not with his company's fiber optics division.)

What I find jarring is that there are engineers (and electricians) whose gray matter has supernaturalism as one of its valued residents. I would think engineering (which is allied with science) and supernaturalism would be estranged bed partners. Apparently they need not be.

Ah, the many facets and quirks of the human mind.