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America's de facto Daylighting Experts continued...

        Exceptions characterize most 'leaks'; generalizing design solutions to control exceptions almost always creates more problems than the initial exception. Crickets, for example, triple problem likelihood with twice the number of critical intersections added to the unnecessary confusion created whenever more complicated 'solutions' are forced on non-existent problems. Restated, installer skill and care determine drainage system performance, almost to the exclusion of all else. Placing faith in systems, products, or techniques offers emotional options that may or may not make us feel better about things. Performance quality is about who, not what or how. Self-importance is the MINIMUM quality requirement in any system installation or repair. Codes and other intended protections formalized in our construction processes doubly aggravate performance issues by shifting focus from true cause (individual actions) to false pretenses ('right' product, procedure, design, etc.). Knowledge and experience require proper context. Proud ownership of work product provides the sole context for value. All else is games by gamers unwilling to take ownership of anything but their disclaimers.

        Lastly, let me conclude my introduction to the mangled, misunderstood skylight business with the question I'd ask, were I reading this. Doesn't the self-proclaimed 'daylighting product performance expert' share a proportionate share of the blame for the disinformation and misinformation defining the apparent state of his industry?

        My full answer to that question can be found in our Campaign to Return Science to DoE/EPA/E* section. Two brief observations serve as a short excuse/explanation:

        1) the cliché concerning evil's triumph needing only good men doing nothing misdirects attention from the real problem - good men don't do nothing. Doing nothing and/or conniving to avoid real social commitment characterized my dominant lifetime social conscious concerns, along with most of my Boomer peers. Not my problem worked perfectly until it became my problem. FreeLite's most minimal defensible business ethical standards, making good on promised product/service performance and staying informed of industry developments has leveraged all FreeLite personnel into international de facto daylighting preeminence by default. Everyone else in our industry is even more solipsistically preoccupied than we are, diminishing our achievement while thrusting the responsibilities of preeminence upon us by default, also. There are no schools for returning science to political departments/institutions believing their ideology to be TRUTH and SCIENCE. I promise a resurrection of real science; when or how soon is as foggy today as at inception in May 08.

        2) Regardless actual liability (as though quantitative values are applicable to qualitative failures) for a given set of circumstances, only assuming total responsibility for outcomes offers the context for framing policies and practices capable of systemic implementation. Or, systemic success requires all encompassing responsibility for all possible scenarios; laudable necessary and sufficient conditions, like good intentions, get snuffed by reality before our feet hit the floor in the morning. I accept responsibility for permitting America's saddest science chapter to be written in my field on my watch, and I will right my wrong as best I can, within Boomer narcissistic tolerances at whatever level I can sustain and still accomplish the mission.