Germany – Page 80 – understand-culture

The quiet guy in the basement

Tom Scholz. MIT graduate. Engineer. Focused on his craft. Uninterested in money or fame or music labels. Taught himself how to play the electrical guitar. Scholz. An American. Of German descent.

YouTube comments:

“I was 16 and (fortunately) working at a local record store on release day for the first album. The boss / owner and I unboxed all the new releases and put them on the hit wall before opening. We maybe got 30 copies. I thought the cover was pretty intriguing so cracked the album for some in store play. We stopped what we were doing and listened to the whole album play through just looking at each other in amazement. Still remember what he said: “Every damn song is a hit.” He placed an order for at least 60 more before we even opened the store. The album stayed in play all day and …every customer that came in that morning bought a copy. Never saw anything like it, before or since.”

“I’m 61 and remember hearing “More Than a Feeling” sitting in the back seat of our station wagon while heading to Atlanta from my home in south Georgia. When we got back home a few days later, I gathered my savings from working in the fields and caught a ride with my sister to a local record store. I bought the album and still have it to this day. I was floored after putting it on my dad’s big stereo. I read the back cover over and over as I re-played the album several times straight through some massive earphones. I’ll never forget that glorious day. Thanks, Tom!”

“I’m 64 and I can remember the first time I heard the debut Boston album like it was yesterday. I was 16, in another town playing hockey. My buddy were walking around and saw a cool looking long haired dude setting up 4 house speakers on his lawn. More Than a Feeling started and I was mesmerized. The sound, the guitars, were like nothing I had ever heard. Still get goosebumps from this record. A true masterpiece from a Master.”

“A good friend of mine met Tom when they came through Spokane in ’77 or ’78. My friend was working as a bellhop/waiter at the new Sheraton hotel, Boston was in town for a concert. My buddy knew they were staying at the hotel, and when he delivered room service up to Tom’s room, he brought his copy of that first Boston album up to the room with him. Got all the signatures (as I recall) on the album. I was jealous a bit, but happy for him.”

German inventions

Did you know that these ten important everyday items were actually invented by Germans? From transportation to information technology, Germany made some of the most crucial inventions of our time!

YouTube comments:

“Fritz Haber invented the Haber-Bosch process which converts atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia needed for fertilizers which aided in feeding millions. Unfortunately, the same process was used in the war effort in WW1.”

“Helmut Gröttrup was not only co-inventor of the smart card, but also an outstanding rocket engineer. During World War II, he worked in the German A4 (aka V-2) rocket program under Wernher von Braun. From 1946 to 1950 he headed a group of 170 German scientists who were forced to work for the Soviet rocketry program under Sergei Korolev.”

“Thanks for the Aspirin!”

Dem Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwör!

Qualität. Quality. Latin qualitas, how something has been made, a characteristic; how crafted; the sum or totality of characteristics; the level of workmanship.

Beschaffenheit. The outer, inner, material, make-up of something.

Tüftler. Tinkerer. Someone who with patience and stamina can work on a complex problem; a kind of inventor; a person who finds new ways to solve a difficult problem.

Ingenieur. Latin ingenium, an ingenious person, inventive, complex thinker; to create, produce; one trained at a university.

Dem Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwör! For the engineer is nothing too difficult, with Ingenieur and schwör rhyming, from the Engineer‘s Song by Hinrich Seidel, a German engineer and novelist of the 19th Century.

The text of the song contiues: Dem Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwere – Er lacht und spricht, geht dieses nicht, so geht doch das! For the engineer is nothing is too difficult. He laughs and claims: It this doesn‘t work, then that will!

Wo man ihm ein Rätsel schenkt, steht der Ingenieur und denkt. When he‘s given a problem, the engineer stands still and ponders, with schenkt (to give) and denkt (to think) rhyming. Engineers are tinkerers. They‘ll work on something until they find an acceptable solution.

“Hard times for Tesla”

A comment from Oliver in Berlin on an article from March 5, 2025 in the New York Times online with the title “Tesla Sales Slump in Europe as Anger Toward Elon Musk Grows.”

“Having worked in marketing for automotive a lot, image is half the hill when you consider high investment purchases like cars. In Germany you think a lot about what your neighbors think. That’s why even ultra rich Germans almost never would buy a Rolls Royce or Bugatti because it sends the ‘wrong’ message about themselves. That said, it’s not just the negative image Tesla has because of Musk. Germans are very detailed and technology obsessed when it comes to cars. And Tesla lost a lot of ground recently while Germany’s car makers not only caught up but even leading in many ways. In design and tech and, definitely in reputation and image. Hard times for Tesla are coming.”

Books about process

For “business processes and procedures” amazon(dot)com returned 1,800 titles. “business process management” yielded 26,000 books.

And “business processes” led to over 490,000 book titles.

Four hundred and ninety thousand. That’s a lot of books. Does this mean that Americans consider internal processes critical to the success of companies?

German Unification (19th Century)

The unification of Germany under Otto von Bismarck was achieved through a series of carefully timed wars, diplomatic negotiations, and internal reforms. Bismarck was known for his patience and strategic waiting, choosing the right moment for each diplomatic or military move. Unification was not forced by immediate pressures but was the result of long-term planning and waiting for favorable conditions.

Deductive reasoning

In mathematics, if A = B and B = C, then A = C. Since all humans are mortal, and I am a human, then I am mortal. All dolphins are mammals, all mammals have kidneys, therefore all dolphins have kidneys.

Since all squares are rectangles, and all rectangles have four sides, so all squares have four sides. If Dennis misses work and at work there is a party, then Dennis will miss the party.

MAN truck manufacturing

How MAN trucks are made. Production by robots and employees in Scania, Renault, DAF, MACK, Freightliner etc. Manufacturing video from start to finish.

https://youtu.be/MWa2U9Rqgy8

YouTube comments:

“Convincing efficient precision machinery and correspondingly qualified personnel. My admiration.”

“Just as Tesla is revolutionary car assembly and dominate in BEVs with its Gigafactories and Gigacastings it will soon be revolutionizing in SemiTruck production and dominate in BE Trucks.”

Astronaut checklists

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is well-known for its excessive use of checklists. Over the history of this organization, checklists could be found placed all over its spacecraft, and covered everything from launch operations to spacewalk procedures and even to unlikely sudden multiple system failures. In fact, astronauts used so many checklists that Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins called his crew’s mission checklists the “fourth crew member.”

For the first few missions of a particular program (Apollo, Gemini, etc.) the astronauts have always been far less familiar with the checklists and standard procedures than the astronauts for later missions. This is because it was more likely that something unexpected would happen during the earlier missions, and the astronauts might need to “think on their feet” in order to stay alive.

In fact, it was somewhat common for the astronauts to modify their checklists “on the fly,” although they only did so reluctantly. Collins spoke about this reluctance during his post-flight briefing, saying “I don’t enjoy making changes to procedures. It seems like the crew only does that when they feel there’s some good need for it.”

Examples of NASA Checklist deviations:

Gemini 3 – the first manned Gemini mission, which had the primary goal of testing the new Gemini spacecraft. The astronauts deviated from the post landing checklist to accommodate for extra smoke from the thrusters.

Gemini 4 – the second manned Gemini mission, which included the first spacewalk by astronaut Edward H. White. Following White’s spacewalk the hatch initially failed to open, and the astronaut inside the capsule had to deviate from standard procedure in order help White to return to the spacecraft.

Mercury 9 – the last manned Mercury mission, in which the astronaut Gordon Cooper would remain in space for one full day. Electrical problems led to the failure of several systems, and as a result, Cooper prepared a revised checklist to finish his mission.

For Americans, checklists are guidelines more than fixed rules, and often are not taken very seriously. For example, NASA checklists are also places of amusement – for the Apollo 12 mission, the backup crew managed to sneak playboy pictures into the checklists which were attached to the wrists of the moonwalkers’ space suits.

Amazon’s Assembly Line

Automation, surveillance, and scientific management, or Taylorism, in the digital age compares in uncanny ways to that of the factory era spoofed by Charlie Chaplin in his film Modern Times (1936), as Sheheryar Kaoosji, Executive Director of Warehouse Worker Resource Center, Ontario, California, suggests in his 2019 commentary.