The other day,I left the house at 2:30 for a doctor appointment. At the corner of the court we live, on a school bus had just arrived and was dropping off a child. The bus then turned in the direction I was going and I fell in behind.
A hundred yards down the road the bus stopped again and discharged another little one. About 100 feet further another one child drop. Then we motored along another 200 yards and 2 more were deposited. Then we turned another corner and sped along for about 200 yards before disgorging about 6 more of the tykes. At this point, the driver of one of the five or six cars behind me had had enough and sped past the waiting cars and the school bus (wish I had been a cop). We went along another 100 yards before releasing two more kids. I didn’t mention that at each of those stops there were Mommy’s waiting for their children, some in SUVs, to transport them to their final destination as much as 300 yards away. The bus driver then pulled to the side of the road to allow the motorcade behind to pass.
Other than the idiot who passed the bus, this didn’t really bother me because I had plenty of time to make my appointment. But it set me to thinking about how times have changed.
I started kindergarten at age five. Although I don’t remember it, I’m certain my Mother accompanied me the first day or two to ensure I knew my way to the school which was only about a half mile from our house. After that, I was on my own and I apparently did quite well. In those days, we didn’t have an automobile and there were no such things as school busses in the relatively small town (pop. ~30,000) that we lived in.
I’m not talking here about a “how hard I had it compared to the spoiled kids of today” scenario, but it occurred to me that the world has changed so much, that the idea of a six or seven year old walking half a mile to school is now unthinkable. In fact a parent would likely be considered unfit and derelict in their duties to allow such a thing.
Why is that?
Granted, there are very few neighborhood schools these days, due to the suburban sprawl that has taken place, and traffic is considerably more hazardous, particularly when we talk about elementary school children traversing intersections. But I believe it may be more than just that. Is it really necessary for children to be delivered to within one block, or even closer, of their homes? And even then for someone to be waiting to escort them to their front door? There seems to be paranoia in society today that leads us to fear and even expect the worst possible situations.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Paper
About 2 weeks ago, International Paper Company, announced the closing of the paper mill in Franklin, Va. The town of Franklin only has a population of ~8,500 people as of the 2000 census. Closing the paper mill will eliminate over 1,100 jobs located at the mill itself, and a ripple effect that will more than double that number, when local businesses that rely on or support the mill are included. In less than 4 months, the mill will cease to operate.
This particular mill manufactured copying paper. IPC stated that the demand for such paper has declined in recent years, and they expect that trend to continue. This is not at all surprising, when you consider how communication is changing with advances in technology. The printed page is not only becoming unnecessary in the corporate environment, and elsewhere, it is expensive.
Every newspaper in the country is currently in a financial crisis. This is the result of reduced income, primarily from advertising, because retailers are realizing better results by investing their ad money in TV and the internet. Also, typical consumers have found “Craigs List”,” Ebay”, etc. to be more cost effective and convenient than classified ads, and finally reduced readership, because people are finding the information they’re interested in on-line as opposed to purchasing a newspaper. Recently our local newspaper reduced the width of the printed page by 1/2 inch. If they hadn’t announced doing this, I doubt anyone would have noticed. The size of the print didn’t change, nor (so they say) did the content of the daily issues. The reason for doing this was because the cost of newsprint paper is the second highest expense they incur, behind employee salaries, and to avoid eliminating jobs, they chose that option.
I recently noticed that the company manufacturing the toilet paper we have been purchasing for use in this house for as long as I can recall, has reduced the size of each roll. Not the number of sheets or the number of plies, but the width of each roll. They haven’t reduced the price, but each roll contains ~6% less paper.
I can remember when retailers such as Sears, Penneys, and now defunct Montgomery Wards, etc, printed catalogs three or four times a year. These were either mailed to consumers, or freely available to anyone who visited their stores. However, they’ve realized that today people prefer to comparison shop on the internet as opposed to leafing through hundreds of pages of various catalogs, and as a result, customers may now purchase a catalog if they wish.
I’m certain there are other similar examples that I can’t think of at the moment, but if I were able to gather the relevant statistics, I imagine there are millions of trees still growing today that would otherwise be in a landfill or recycling facility, if it weren’t for the “information age”. Although I’m fairly certain that saving the environment was not a driving factor in any of these technological developments, never the less it’s a good thing, at least in the big picture.
However, I’ll leave it to someone else, to try to convince a recently unemployed mill worker, with a family to care for, how beneficial this is to all of us.
This particular mill manufactured copying paper. IPC stated that the demand for such paper has declined in recent years, and they expect that trend to continue. This is not at all surprising, when you consider how communication is changing with advances in technology. The printed page is not only becoming unnecessary in the corporate environment, and elsewhere, it is expensive.
Every newspaper in the country is currently in a financial crisis. This is the result of reduced income, primarily from advertising, because retailers are realizing better results by investing their ad money in TV and the internet. Also, typical consumers have found “Craigs List”,” Ebay”, etc. to be more cost effective and convenient than classified ads, and finally reduced readership, because people are finding the information they’re interested in on-line as opposed to purchasing a newspaper. Recently our local newspaper reduced the width of the printed page by 1/2 inch. If they hadn’t announced doing this, I doubt anyone would have noticed. The size of the print didn’t change, nor (so they say) did the content of the daily issues. The reason for doing this was because the cost of newsprint paper is the second highest expense they incur, behind employee salaries, and to avoid eliminating jobs, they chose that option.
I recently noticed that the company manufacturing the toilet paper we have been purchasing for use in this house for as long as I can recall, has reduced the size of each roll. Not the number of sheets or the number of plies, but the width of each roll. They haven’t reduced the price, but each roll contains ~6% less paper.
I can remember when retailers such as Sears, Penneys, and now defunct Montgomery Wards, etc, printed catalogs three or four times a year. These were either mailed to consumers, or freely available to anyone who visited their stores. However, they’ve realized that today people prefer to comparison shop on the internet as opposed to leafing through hundreds of pages of various catalogs, and as a result, customers may now purchase a catalog if they wish.
I’m certain there are other similar examples that I can’t think of at the moment, but if I were able to gather the relevant statistics, I imagine there are millions of trees still growing today that would otherwise be in a landfill or recycling facility, if it weren’t for the “information age”. Although I’m fairly certain that saving the environment was not a driving factor in any of these technological developments, never the less it’s a good thing, at least in the big picture.
However, I’ll leave it to someone else, to try to convince a recently unemployed mill worker, with a family to care for, how beneficial this is to all of us.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Brains
Many years ago, I used to ride motorcycles, I owned 3 of them in fact. In the folly of youth, I enjoyed the exhilaration of cruising down a roadway in a completely unprotected environment, obviously there are no seat belts or airbags on those 2 wheeled death wishes.
One beautiful Sunday afternoon I was rolling down the road, when the bike suddenly flipped on it’s side, most likely caused by a patch of grease or mud that I didn’t see. As luck would have it, I had installed crash-bars on that bike the day before, otherwise I’m fairly certain I may have lost, or severely damaged, my left leg. Also, had I not been wearing a helmet, which was deeply gouged by the crash, I imagine I would be even more brain-damaged than I am now. I’m most grateful for the fact that my girl friend at the time, now my wife, wasn’t along for the ride, as she often was. I believe she had gone to church. After the broken bones healed, I found that my enthusiasm for open air vehicles waned rapidly. I soon sold the bike and haven’t had any desire to ride one since.
At the time, prior to the accident, I was working on the Naval Base in Norfolk. In order to ride a bike on the base, I had to complete a motorcycle safety course. One of the lectures in that course was “How to avoid accidents”. It was an interesting lecture, covering many of the hazardous aspects of operating a motorcycle in various environments both urban and rural. One part of the lecture that has stuck with me all these years, concerns an explanation by the instructor regarding the cause of many motor vehicle accidents. The theory is, that the human brain does not always react based on the information available to it, but by interpreting information as it expects it to be.
For example, when drivers stop at an intersection, look left and right, they are looking to see if any traffic (usually defined as a car or truck) is approaching. The brain doesn’t recognize any of those vehicles in the image presented to it, and therefore assumes the way is clear to proceed. Meaning, if a motorcycle were approaching, the brain might not have been expecting that, and thus disregarded that bit of data.
An example of this is below. Close your left eye, focus on the X with your right eye, and move to within about 12-16 or so inches of the screen. You will notice the O disappears and is replaced by what the brain sees in that general area.
X ---------------------------------- o
Obviously, both symbols are still there, but your brain tells you otherwise.
I find this particularly alarming today with the much publicized use of cell phones, GPS, iPods, etc by people operating motor vehicles. These additional unnecessary distractions can only contribute to an increase in motor vehicle mishaps, injuries and deaths.
I suspect that if anyone, other than my only loyal blog reader, were to read this, they might whimsically say “if you drive with both eyes open, it’s not a problem”, hopefully they know that isn’t true.
One beautiful Sunday afternoon I was rolling down the road, when the bike suddenly flipped on it’s side, most likely caused by a patch of grease or mud that I didn’t see. As luck would have it, I had installed crash-bars on that bike the day before, otherwise I’m fairly certain I may have lost, or severely damaged, my left leg. Also, had I not been wearing a helmet, which was deeply gouged by the crash, I imagine I would be even more brain-damaged than I am now. I’m most grateful for the fact that my girl friend at the time, now my wife, wasn’t along for the ride, as she often was. I believe she had gone to church. After the broken bones healed, I found that my enthusiasm for open air vehicles waned rapidly. I soon sold the bike and haven’t had any desire to ride one since.
At the time, prior to the accident, I was working on the Naval Base in Norfolk. In order to ride a bike on the base, I had to complete a motorcycle safety course. One of the lectures in that course was “How to avoid accidents”. It was an interesting lecture, covering many of the hazardous aspects of operating a motorcycle in various environments both urban and rural. One part of the lecture that has stuck with me all these years, concerns an explanation by the instructor regarding the cause of many motor vehicle accidents. The theory is, that the human brain does not always react based on the information available to it, but by interpreting information as it expects it to be.
For example, when drivers stop at an intersection, look left and right, they are looking to see if any traffic (usually defined as a car or truck) is approaching. The brain doesn’t recognize any of those vehicles in the image presented to it, and therefore assumes the way is clear to proceed. Meaning, if a motorcycle were approaching, the brain might not have been expecting that, and thus disregarded that bit of data.
An example of this is below. Close your left eye, focus on the X with your right eye, and move to within about 12-16 or so inches of the screen. You will notice the O disappears and is replaced by what the brain sees in that general area.
X ---------------------------------- o
Obviously, both symbols are still there, but your brain tells you otherwise.
I find this particularly alarming today with the much publicized use of cell phones, GPS, iPods, etc by people operating motor vehicles. These additional unnecessary distractions can only contribute to an increase in motor vehicle mishaps, injuries and deaths.
I suspect that if anyone, other than my only loyal blog reader, were to read this, they might whimsically say “if you drive with both eyes open, it’s not a problem”, hopefully they know that isn’t true.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Too much information can be a bad thing
For the past couple years or so, I’ve noticed that I’m not as happy as I used to be. I’ve become a lot more cynical regarding the leadership of our country and the world in general. As a result, I’ve also become much more pessimistic about the future. Not in regard to myself, but for my children and future grandchild if any should appear.
Yesterday, I picked the newspaper up in the driveway, took it out of its little plastic bag, looked at the headlines on the front page, pulled out the sports section to see which football games were on TV, extracted the crosswords and comics, and threw the rest of it in the recycle bin.
I’m sure there is a wealth of information in that paper for people who want to keep informed on such things as the latest politician who is admitting to an extra-marital affair, a private plane crash in Arizona killing a family 5, how many children die of starvation every day in Ethiopia, how many people were killed by the latest suicide bomber in Pakistan, how severely the coastlines of the world are going to be inundated by sea water due to global warming, nuclear proliferation, and the list goes on and on.
As if all that isn’t enough, today the Smithsonian Magazine which I enjoy reading, informed me that the Longhorned beetle is poised to destroy the hardwood forests of New England. This would be a bad thing, but since I wouldn’t know a Longhorned beetle if I ate one, I don’t know what I can do to help.
Lastly, according to the EPA http://epa.gov/otaq/consumer/f00013.htm, I have been responsible for dumping 303 tons of bad stuff into the atmosphere from automobiles in the 50 years I have been driving, that’s 33 lbs per day average even on days I didn’t drive. I’m ashamed, but then with a little further research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States , I found that CO2 emissions in the atmosphere increased ~6.3% in the 30 years prior to my kids being born. In the 30 years since their birth CO2 levels have risen an additional ~15.2%. I imagine those 6,000 plus diapers we had to change were a significant factor, but even if not, it’s pretty clear who is responsible for the rapidly approaching disaster. It's not me, it's them. Hell, I didn't even want kids!
So, now that I have no more global warming guilt, I can move on to other concerns like tsunamis, and asteroids.
Yesterday, I picked the newspaper up in the driveway, took it out of its little plastic bag, looked at the headlines on the front page, pulled out the sports section to see which football games were on TV, extracted the crosswords and comics, and threw the rest of it in the recycle bin.
I’m sure there is a wealth of information in that paper for people who want to keep informed on such things as the latest politician who is admitting to an extra-marital affair, a private plane crash in Arizona killing a family 5, how many children die of starvation every day in Ethiopia, how many people were killed by the latest suicide bomber in Pakistan, how severely the coastlines of the world are going to be inundated by sea water due to global warming, nuclear proliferation, and the list goes on and on.
As if all that isn’t enough, today the Smithsonian Magazine which I enjoy reading, informed me that the Longhorned beetle is poised to destroy the hardwood forests of New England. This would be a bad thing, but since I wouldn’t know a Longhorned beetle if I ate one, I don’t know what I can do to help.
Lastly, according to the EPA http://epa.gov/otaq/consumer/f00013.htm, I have been responsible for dumping 303 tons of bad stuff into the atmosphere from automobiles in the 50 years I have been driving, that’s 33 lbs per day average even on days I didn’t drive. I’m ashamed, but then with a little further research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States , I found that CO2 emissions in the atmosphere increased ~6.3% in the 30 years prior to my kids being born. In the 30 years since their birth CO2 levels have risen an additional ~15.2%. I imagine those 6,000 plus diapers we had to change were a significant factor, but even if not, it’s pretty clear who is responsible for the rapidly approaching disaster. It's not me, it's them. Hell, I didn't even want kids!
So, now that I have no more global warming guilt, I can move on to other concerns like tsunamis, and asteroids.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Sticky Notes
How did we ever get along without the little notes we post in various places to remind us of things we think we may forget?
Did you know that Stickies came to be by accident? A chemist at 3M Corporation was attempting to develop a new adhesive and came up with something that would stick a little bit, but could be easily removed once attached. He initially thought of this as worthless, until someone realized it might be useful. Thus, the post-it note was developed and marketed, resulting in a multi-million, perhaps billion dollar profit maker for 3M.
Attached to the pegboard, above my work bench in the garage, I have no less than 31 little reminders to myself. Some are not legitimate sticky notes, but attached with scotch tape. I have found that sticky notes only have a life span of about 2 years, and eventually need to be reinforced with tape, if you want them to remain in place for 15 or more years, as many of mine have.
There is a lot of useful information in that small space including phone numbers, PIN numbers, Dr appt. dates and times, golf tips, business cards, etc. But my favorites are the quips, proverbs, adages and little items that I thought were interesting at the time I attached them.
One of them, that I unfortunately only came across a couple years ago, is this one. Today is my 65th birthday, and I'm just now beginning to understand how true this is.
Did you know that Stickies came to be by accident? A chemist at 3M Corporation was attempting to develop a new adhesive and came up with something that would stick a little bit, but could be easily removed once attached. He initially thought of this as worthless, until someone realized it might be useful. Thus, the post-it note was developed and marketed, resulting in a multi-million, perhaps billion dollar profit maker for 3M.
Attached to the pegboard, above my work bench in the garage, I have no less than 31 little reminders to myself. Some are not legitimate sticky notes, but attached with scotch tape. I have found that sticky notes only have a life span of about 2 years, and eventually need to be reinforced with tape, if you want them to remain in place for 15 or more years, as many of mine have.
There is a lot of useful information in that small space including phone numbers, PIN numbers, Dr appt. dates and times, golf tips, business cards, etc. But my favorites are the quips, proverbs, adages and little items that I thought were interesting at the time I attached them.
One of them, that I unfortunately only came across a couple years ago, is this one. Today is my 65th birthday, and I'm just now beginning to understand how true this is.
An Olde Scottish Saying
You'd nae worry so much what others think of you,
if you realized how seldom they do.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
