Friday, November 1, 2013

No Highway, Nevil Shute, and Communications

Nevil Shute Society Meeting on No Highway

Tomorrow, between 2 and 4 p.m., I will be leading a discussion of the Nevil Shute book No Highway. The discussion will take place at the Howe library in Hanover, and has appeared in the Calendar section of the local newspaper, etc.  Please come if you are in the area!

This talk is sponsored by the Dartmouth Chapter of the Nevil Shute Society.  And this particular talk is an updated version of some material I presented in the course Engineering Adventures with Nevil Shute. 

Here's a trailer from the movie, No Highway in the Sky, that is based on the book.



Nuclear Communications

Nevil Shute's books frequently concern technical subjects.  However, technology or not, they are good stories. In other words, Shute's books are emotionally gripping.

"Emotionally gripping."  "Appealing to emotions."  These are the missing links in my own communications about nuclear power.

Recently, I wrote a post at ANS Nuclear Cafe about nuclear communications: We are not Spock: Emotion and Nuclear Power.  In this post, I noted that opponents appeal to emotions, but we (Spock-like) often appeal solely to logic.  I wrote about my need to be public about my sadness that Vermont Yankee is closing.  I  need to show that I have emotions.

Many of the comments on that ANS post were themselves excellent  short blog posts about nuclear communications.  I think these comments deserve to be discussed more fully.

I have obtained permission to post several of those comments as guest posts on this blog. Watch for them in the near future!

1 comment:

Travelogue for the Universe said...

Meredith, thanks for being scientifically holistic. When I attended engineering school for one year, as a girl who failed, one thing I felt lacking was the subjective, the feelings, ethics. Then I became a nurse. We must balance (and interpret) subjective and objective data. Also as a hardworking taxpayer and power customer, am sensitive to the economics of closing the plant.