Let's Follow Up!
Feb. 6th, 2016 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorHey, LJers! Long time, no see words from me. I'm not dead yet, just busy. I've got a few moments, though, to insert into the journal that is mine some details for readers such as yourselves.
For my first detail, I have discovered something! I enjoy video games. I really, really enjoy them. Which is a problem. I find I have too many other projects in my life that interfere with video games, simply because I want to play video games always.
My solution? A quick and simple game that I can knock off in a half-an-hour or so. I've chosen an obscure little game for the Nintendo Wii. (I know, I know; it's not a "cool" game system, just one for "kids." To explain, please see my detail about how "cool" games are time-sucks.) This is a simple yet addictive combination between Tetris and, say, Bejeweled. Just line up at least three similar images, and they will process and disappear, letting new images spill down from the top screen. Over time, they drop faster and faster, until it Tetris-like jams up and ends the game. The more images moved, the higher the score.
Here's my high score:
I got that on our old telly, a smallish CRT that The Wife™ bought back in '92. (Yes, we don't update our hardware much either.) A neighbor set sail a few months ago—literally, as in he got in his sailboat and probably won't return for a couple years. In the process of clearing out his house, he donated his older but still better than the CRT LED flat screen. Yay!
So I hooked up the Nintendo to the Westinghouse to play my usual fix.
And soon thought I had lost the knack of playing like a champ.
Sadly, where I usually got at least 40,000 in the old days, on the new telly that score was an accomplishment worthy of note. My average was in the high 20Ks, maybe the low 30Ks. What was going on? Was I injured?
Or was it the telly?
After all, LEDs are notorious for "tracers", those blurs that accompany fast action. They have improved dramatically; our "new" telly doesn't visibly trace at all. But are those slow pixels the reason for my non-championship performances? I had to know. So I reconnected the old CRT.
And boom, baby, my scores were back. Mid-40K on the first go, a higher score than I ever got on the flat screen.
So let that be a lesson. Some how.
My last entry was one of those omnibus screeds disguised as an old-fashioned "long form read" (I say "disguised" because long-form essays should at least be interesting). I came across two bits of information that clarify some of the material covered.
The first concerns agriculture as performed by machinery and food production from more labor-intensive operations, such as a home garden or the Singing Frogs Farm mentioned in my post. This clarification comes from The Archdruid Himself, John Michael Greer, through his book Green Wizardry. In that book, he distinguishes between "intensive" and "extensive" agriculture/farming:
I will take exception with a passage in his definition of intensive farming, the assertion that "the labor it requires is too substantial to be applied to acreage of any size." Given enough hands to help the crops through their cycle of life, enough labor, such as employed by the Kaisers at Singing Frogs, I believe that limitation can be overcome.
As to the whole system of land ownership we've inherited in this country from a long tradition of feudalism, this quote from Rousseau sums it up nicely:
I would change "found" to "founder", but whatever. That's probably a translation decision anyhoo.
In other updates and addenda, I also put in my two cents worth about danger at work and who should bear what kind of blame. Well, things are progressing nicely in the "management gives shitty equipment to operators to continue the carnage" department, I'm sad to announce. Just a few days ago I trained on a new bus, an all-electric.
The Protera.
Right off the bat, pay attention to the driver's side window. The designers gave it that swoop at the base probably to show off how cool this new bus it. But since they wanted a slide-open window for the driver, that meant a flat base, not one swooped to be cool. Maybe they thought that swoop would give more visibility, and it kinda does ... of the ground.
First off, that flat slide support piece is a major visibility obstruction. One would have to brainstorm long and hard to find a more distracting obstacle without outright painting the window opaque.
But here's the real problem.
The Deadly, Deadly View.
Once again, management (or someone) has acquired equipment with even more obstruction for drivers to deal with. Why? That should be easy to understand.
Yet I don't.
It's not hard to be cynical when shit this egregious keeps coming and coming. Maybe someone in procurement has a monied interest in a law firm specializing in wrongful death suits in the millions?
Then again, I must remember![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tacit's memorable maxim:
Given an organization of people,
beyond a certain size
incompetence proves indistiguishable
from malice.
Instead of learning from the accidents, folks looking at new buses to buy don't bother evaluating the available side window visibility, or the ease of braking (which is another problem with the Protera), or the ease of smooth acceleration (which is yet another problem with the Protera), or the gadgetry which makes the driving process more complicated (which is still another problem ... you get the idea). Bothering with those details simply isn't in their job description. They probably didn't come up in the ranks as drivers, either, but rather rose through management. They are desk jockeys, not professionals trained through experience to keep others on the road alive. Maybe closing the gap between bureaucrats and drivers in the original procurement team would be a start.
Also, remember that bus manufacturers pay settlements, too. Would it be too much to ask that they correct the defects that cost them so many millions every year with every death, no matter what the cost to the buyers? "Oh, you want those flat windows that are easy to replace? Sorry, Dude. They tend to reflect interior light and blind drivers. We won't put dangerous equipment on the road and therefore be a party to enabling murder."
Done.
If you're interested in this topic, here's a drivers discussion board conversation. From the opening thread:
Seriously, click this single page for an illustration of what happens when you make buses cheap instead of mandating they first be safe.
Also, there's a new article from the one reporter that doesn't seem to be in the pocket of management, asking questions that need to be asked.
Finally, you read some time ago that I was having car troubles, that I was forced to drive a beater with no dash. Well, no; I forced myself to do that.
Remember Old Red's Dash?
Well, I really should get on that. And I have time, too, since ... I did something quite rash.
I bought a new car.
I have never purchased a new car before. I've had it exactly one week, and I still am suffering Imposter's Syndrome. I keep expecting the real owners will finally report it missing and take away The New.
For my first detail, I have discovered something! I enjoy video games. I really, really enjoy them. Which is a problem. I find I have too many other projects in my life that interfere with video games, simply because I want to play video games always.
My solution? A quick and simple game that I can knock off in a half-an-hour or so. I've chosen an obscure little game for the Nintendo Wii. (I know, I know; it's not a "cool" game system, just one for "kids." To explain, please see my detail about how "cool" games are time-sucks.) This is a simple yet addictive combination between Tetris and, say, Bejeweled. Just line up at least three similar images, and they will process and disappear, letting new images spill down from the top screen. Over time, they drop faster and faster, until it Tetris-like jams up and ends the game. The more images moved, the higher the score.
Here's my high score:
I got that on our old telly, a smallish CRT that The Wife™ bought back in '92. (Yes, we don't update our hardware much either.) A neighbor set sail a few months ago—literally, as in he got in his sailboat and probably won't return for a couple years. In the process of clearing out his house, he donated his older but still better than the CRT LED flat screen. Yay!
So I hooked up the Nintendo to the Westinghouse to play my usual fix.
And soon thought I had lost the knack of playing like a champ.
Sadly, where I usually got at least 40,000 in the old days, on the new telly that score was an accomplishment worthy of note. My average was in the high 20Ks, maybe the low 30Ks. What was going on? Was I injured?
Or was it the telly?
After all, LEDs are notorious for "tracers", those blurs that accompany fast action. They have improved dramatically; our "new" telly doesn't visibly trace at all. But are those slow pixels the reason for my non-championship performances? I had to know. So I reconnected the old CRT.
And boom, baby, my scores were back. Mid-40K on the first go, a higher score than I ever got on the flat screen.
So let that be a lesson. Some how.
My last entry was one of those omnibus screeds disguised as an old-fashioned "long form read" (I say "disguised" because long-form essays should at least be interesting). I came across two bits of information that clarify some of the material covered.
The first concerns agriculture as performed by machinery and food production from more labor-intensive operations, such as a home garden or the Singing Frogs Farm mentioned in my post. This clarification comes from The Archdruid Himself, John Michael Greer, through his book Green Wizardry. In that book, he distinguishes between "intensive" and "extensive" agriculture/farming:
Extensive farming, as the term suggests, involves significant acreage. In the days before modern petroleum-based farming, at least, it maintained soil fertility through crop rotation and fallow periods, rather than through fertilizers or soil amendments. The basic tools of the trade are a plow and something to draw it—that meant horses or oxen, in the days before there were factories to produce tractors and fossil fuels to propel them. The food plants you can grow with extensive farming in temperate regions, in the absence of cheap fossil fuel energy, are pretty much limited to grains and legumes, but you can produce these in huge amounts. They store and ship well, so they make good cash crops even if the only way to get them to market is a wagon to the nearest river system and a canal boat from there.
Intensive gardening has to be done on a much smaller scale; among other reasons, the labor it requires is too substantial to be applied to acreage of any size. It maintains soil fertility by adding whatever soil amendments are available—compost, manure, leaf mold, a fish buried in every corn hill, you name it—and the basic tools of the trade are a hoe and somebody who knows how to use it. The crops you can grow in an intensive garden account for radishes to the leeks you overwinter under straw. The chickens, the cow, and the fruit from the orchard also belong to the intensive sector and participate in its tight cycle of nutrients.
(John Michael Greer, Green Wizardry, New Society Publishers, 2013, p. 46.)
I will take exception with a passage in his definition of intensive farming, the assertion that "the labor it requires is too substantial to be applied to acreage of any size." Given enough hands to help the crops through their cycle of life, enough labor, such as employed by the Kaisers at Singing Frogs, I believe that limitation can be overcome.
As to the whole system of land ownership we've inherited in this country from a long tradition of feudalism, this quote from Rousseau sums it up nicely:
"The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say 'this is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true found of civil society."
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Basic Political Writings (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1996), 60.
I would change "found" to "founder", but whatever. That's probably a translation decision anyhoo.
In other updates and addenda, I also put in my two cents worth about danger at work and who should bear what kind of blame. Well, things are progressing nicely in the "management gives shitty equipment to operators to continue the carnage" department, I'm sad to announce. Just a few days ago I trained on a new bus, an all-electric.
The Protera.
Right off the bat, pay attention to the driver's side window. The designers gave it that swoop at the base probably to show off how cool this new bus it. But since they wanted a slide-open window for the driver, that meant a flat base, not one swooped to be cool. Maybe they thought that swoop would give more visibility, and it kinda does ... of the ground.
First off, that flat slide support piece is a major visibility obstruction. One would have to brainstorm long and hard to find a more distracting obstacle without outright painting the window opaque.
But here's the real problem.
The Deadly, Deadly View.
Once again, management (or someone) has acquired equipment with even more obstruction for drivers to deal with. Why? That should be easy to understand.
Yet I don't.
It's not hard to be cynical when shit this egregious keeps coming and coming. Maybe someone in procurement has a monied interest in a law firm specializing in wrongful death suits in the millions?
Then again, I must remember
tacit's memorable maxim: beyond a certain size
incompetence proves indistiguishable
from malice.
Instead of learning from the accidents, folks looking at new buses to buy don't bother evaluating the available side window visibility, or the ease of braking (which is another problem with the Protera), or the ease of smooth acceleration (which is yet another problem with the Protera), or the gadgetry which makes the driving process more complicated (which is still another problem ... you get the idea). Bothering with those details simply isn't in their job description. They probably didn't come up in the ranks as drivers, either, but rather rose through management. They are desk jockeys, not professionals trained through experience to keep others on the road alive. Maybe closing the gap between bureaucrats and drivers in the original procurement team would be a start.
Also, remember that bus manufacturers pay settlements, too. Would it be too much to ask that they correct the defects that cost them so many millions every year with every death, no matter what the cost to the buyers? "Oh, you want those flat windows that are easy to replace? Sorry, Dude. They tend to reflect interior light and blind drivers. We won't put dangerous equipment on the road and therefore be a party to enabling murder."
Done.
If you're interested in this topic, here's a drivers discussion board conversation. From the opening thread:
The point of this thread is WHY these types of accidents are happening ...and by that I mean, what makes it so difficult for bus drivers being able to see pedestrians crossing the street legally in a crosswalk while making a left turn in a bus.
Seriously, click this single page for an illustration of what happens when you make buses cheap instead of mandating they first be safe.
Also, there's a new article from the one reporter that doesn't seem to be in the pocket of management, asking questions that need to be asked.
Finally, you read some time ago that I was having car troubles, that I was forced to drive a beater with no dash. Well, no; I forced myself to do that.
Remember Old Red's Dash?
Well, I really should get on that. And I have time, too, since ... I did something quite rash.
I bought a new car.
I have never purchased a new car before. I've had it exactly one week, and I still am suffering Imposter's Syndrome. I keep expecting the real owners will finally report it missing and take away The New.