In a recent post we lamented the fact that the real heroes in the rescue of the Chilean miners were being largely ignored while the miners themselves were being celebrated and smothered with gifts, endorsements and other emoluments.
Micah writes to let us know of a couple of stories that do, in fact, give some credit where credit is due.
They can be found here and
here. They're pretty interesting, and I hope you'll take the time to check them out.
It seems to me that in this incident we've gotten things exactly backward. If we want our talented young people to aspire to careers like engineering in which they use their minds to make life better for all of us then we should be directing our gifts and praise toward the wonderful thing those professionals have accomplished in this rescue. If we're going to be showering rewards on people let it be primarily upon those responsible for the rescue and only secondarily on the men whose main achievement, though certainly not insignificant, was to endure patiently until they were rescued.
