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.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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.
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