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When I was a young man cash registers did not plug in. I can remember, one morning, strolling into a downtown branch of North America’s oldest chainstore: The Hudson’s Bay Company, (now bought out and shortened to The Bay) Upon entering the department store, my ears met a constant, “Beep! Brrring! Cheep! Bing-bing!” I forget the exact stupid sounds, but I well remember a harassed clerk telling me it was their first day using the new computerized cash registers. By the next time I strolled in, the sounds had been dealt with.
Yesterday, science fiction writer John Scalzi blogged, “…we’re still in the early days of electrical vehicle conversion, and I have reasonable faith that things will get better from here.” Sure, like how computers and cash registers got better. Lots of Scalzi’s faithful readers stepped back to look at the big picture of petrochemicals and so forth. Since copper is too expensive now, and pennies have been phased out here in Canada, I added not “my two cents worth” but my nickel’s worth: (while modern nickels are only nickel-plated)
QUOTE
“As for non fuel use for petrochemicals, my favourite is for shampoo bottles so that I don’t have to pick shards out of the bathtub when I drop my bottle.
I can remember when vandals would target the outdoor basketball courts for smashing their bottles. Our response was to sweep just half the full courts, and leave the other half with broken glass.”
“As for decommissioning coal energy, the standard business practise, back in the 20th century, for switching to computers, was to use the old paper style side by side until the computers were proven. If the switch badly hurt or bankrupted your company, as actually happened, then there was no court remedy against the computer consultants as you should have used both for a while.
Hence coal mills should be left in place as new energy sources are being built and proven…
Not like in the province of Ontario, (energy prices and debt shot through the roof, becoming the worst substate jurisdiction in the world) …and not like how the Canadian federal government switched to a new “Phoenix” computer payroll system (without keeping the other one!) that has been a Frankenstein’s monster for many seasons.”
UNQUOTE
Remember kiddies, “history repeats” only if you’re as stupid as the governments in Canada.
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Part Two
As our human ecology tries to cope while minding the history of viruses and supposedly new “woke-ism”
Can a middle aged dog like me learn new tricks? Such as endorsing D.I.E.?
In Canada, that’s the bandwagon for Diversity, Inclusion and Equality of outcome. (Not of opportunity) So far, there’s been little research as to whether D.I.E. training in office towers makes things worse, is neutral or makes things better. If such training has to be rushed in then, as with introducing computers, there should be research being done at the same time. But bandwagons, thought fashions, and those job killing witch hunts of my birth decade (1950’s) are never kind to science. As it happens, preliminary research, out of the U.K. indicates workplace D.I.E. training makes things worse. But while the woke throws hurtful ad hominem labels at you if you question their authority, we don’t have enough research yet.
(Editor: An alternative sort of anti-racism workshops would be the Theory of Enchantment. I came in late to this podcast, but I believe it is explained here by an idealistic black woman still too young (by two years) to be a “member of the older generation” although her podcast partner is an infamous white middle class “establishment” dude)
As for jobs, I’m still contemptuous of the empty stage and lonely little statue at the Academy Awards, when an accused witch could not come forward to pick up his Oscar. Remember kiddies, the self righteous bad guys feed on your fear. Never let the “woke” people make you too terrified to do research.
Jobs? Last week I mentioned the Michael Lewis book Premonition. His research includes a lady doctor in California who sacrificed the income a physician would normally make in order to be a civil servant who could make a difference when the next pandemic came. She asked: Must history repeat the horror of 1918? Not on her watch!
First she earned a proven track record as a county Chief Medical Officer—the only county person, besides the state governor, who could implement health measures. During this time she saw behind the “wizard’s curtain” of the farce that was the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. Hence, when covid arrived, she knew that California could expect no help from the CDC .
The state Chief Medical Officer asked her to join her in Sacramento, to take over when she retired. This was shortly before Covid. Did she soon lead California to set an example for the other states and the world? No. When her chief retired, she was not promoted: As Covid arrived, her new Chief ordered her not to say the word “pandemic” and refused to look at her computer math or whiteboard.
Blame it on D.I.E., or whatever the U.S. equivalent is. A Canadian I work with once dipped her head and grimaced to say, “When I go to the States I’m Spanish.”
In California, and across the U.S., the pandemic raged unchecked, un-admitted and un-researched. No testing, no data. Because our skilled young heroine looked like a blond Barbie, and because they assumed they needed a diverse person, a Latino lady was put in charge… …God counts casualties as the angels weep.
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Sean Crawford
Yes, but what if woke people yell or slogan that whites as a group should (proportionally) make way for Latinos as a group?
North of the 49th parallel,
“This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, (or gleeful and outrageous) but the result is your demise as an individual—and thus the collapse of any political system (or university or business) that depends upon individualism.” From the graphic edition On Tyranny, Heather’s pick, by Timothy Snyder, (bracketed words added by me) page 57.
January
As good people try to learn from history,
2022
