The original article I read was entitled The Parable of the Plug. If you Google that plus Economist and go on Google's cache, you can read the entire article. Its point was
it takes more than good design for standards to be adopted globally
That was the point I was picking up on, and nothing else, in this tangent.
Of course this example is quite different from most consumer goods. Going to a new plug system would require either an enormous effort to retrofit millions of homes, or that new appliances, power tools, etc., be sold in both configurations pretty much indefinitely.
The modern UK plug shape (BS 1363) was published in 1947. There have been multiple updates (insulated sleeves on plug pins, ...) but the updates are both forward and backward compatible. The house I grew up in still had some of the older round-pin sockets when we bought it, although they may not have been live (Dad wouldn't let us kids help with the electrical rewiring, so I don't remember).
It was obviously quite a lot easier to change the plug system in the post-war years than it would be today.
The US NEMA 1-15 plug (the standard 2-pin US plug) dates from 1912, and it's earthed cousin isn't much newer.
I do quite like the European ones for their compact neatness. Our (British) extension cords can feel a bit unweildy at times. But not as much as I like the stability (and aforementioned features) of ours most of the time.
Of course this example is quite different from most consumer goods. Going to a new plug system would require either an enormous effort to retrofit millions of homes, or that new appliances, power tools, etc., be sold in both configurations pretty much indefinitely.
It's not a question of mass replacement but of a less-well-designed system conquering the market in the first place.
Of course this example is quite different from most consumer goods. Going to a new plug system would require either an enormous effort to retrofit millions of homes, or that new appliances, power tools, etc., be sold in both configurations pretty much indefinitely.
It's not a question of mass replacement but of a less-well-designed system conquering the market in the first place.
VHS
VHS scored over Betamax in many important ways, the killer being length (how much time you could record). You couldn't record a whole 100 minute movie on a single Betamax tape. They were NOT better-designed. It's an interesting read.
The unfortunate thing about UK plugs and sockets is that they are unique, thus requiring for travellers additional adapters for just one country, like Switzerland where you can never trust they will have Europlugs. I don't recall what we encountered in Ireland. The European 2 pin plugs and UK look interchangeable, but they're not. We also found it odd that UK plug cords seemed usually to be at 90° to the plug and be flat to the wall. We can get such cords here, but most are inline with the plug blades.
I have a bag of plug adapters. It's quite a few, if for example, you're going from Canada to UK, the EU, Switzerland. Thankfully all of things I'd take with me auto switch from 120 volts to 240.
Well Walmart won. My son starts back to work tomorrow. He's been off one month, first with pre-scheduled annual vacation and then with unpaid leave of absence. He knew that he didn't get any more unpaid leave and would have to either officially quit or go back. We were never able to find any assurance of getting his job back later if he quit, if he was able to go back if he would be able to return with the $16 per hour wage he spent 18 years accumulating, or whether he would be able to keep his health insurance. The company has been vague about all this with no clear answers.
I can only blame Walmart so much because everything right now is vague with no clear answers. I don't even feel clear on how the disease will be treated, how many times we can get it, or who is at greatest risk anymore.
There are so many mixed messages from the world at large. We are told to stay home, that we are saving lives by doing so. Then my son sees spots on TV thanking and praising the frontline workers including grocery cashiers such as himself. So he feels guilty, like he's letting his co-workers and customers down by not being there. Now he'll get to feel guilty if he brings it home to me or my husband.
I started my car for the first time in two months today and went to the Dairy Queen. I told him, "Now if I come down with it it wont be your fault but mine for indulging in a coney dog and hot fudge sundae."
We had a quick provincial labour law passed which prevents employers from firing employees who don't want to work so long as the public health emergency is declared. People who are laid off must be hired back after the emergency is over. Plus they're getting fast track unemployment insurance benefits, electric, natural gas and water cannot be cut off for unpaid bills, there are no overdue fees allowed, and you can't be evicted for non-payment of rent. They kinda froze everything.
I shouldn't be so naive. But I had thought there was some similar valuing of people and their well-being.
Of course this example is quite different from most consumer goods. Going to a new plug system would require either an enormous effort to retrofit millions of homes, or that new appliances, power tools, etc., be sold in both configurations pretty much indefinitely.
It's not a question of mass replacement but of a less-well-designed system conquering the market in the first place.
You assume there were two designs on the marketplace at the same time, one of them the British design, vying for customers before the standard was set. Do you have any evidence of this?
According the The Fount Of All Wisdom (Wikipedia), the first two-pin plugs hit the UK market in about 1883 and the first three-pin ones in about 1911. The US dates appear to be 1904 and 1915 (based on the first patents registered), so there was even less time for the two-pin option to dominate the market in the US than in the UK. The answer to why one type became dominant one side of the pond and the other on the other is quite beyond me.
A day without a Blizzard (the DQ one, that is) is like a meal without sunshine . . . or something like that.
Our local DQ was doing drive-thru only but has recently opened up the counter just for take-out. The tables and chairs are off limits, of course. I may pick up an ice cream take to take to my sister's house for dinner this Friday.
I do quite like the European ones for their compact neatness. Our (British) extension cords can feel a bit unweildy at times. But not as much as I like the stability (and aforementioned features) of ours most of the time.
If we're going European, my preference is the Swiss one (hexagonal recessed socket, round pins with offset earth pin) over the round 2 pin-with-grounding-tab-on-side thing.
We also found it odd that UK plug cords seemed usually to be at 90° to the plug and be flat to the wall. We can get such cords here, but most are inline with the plug blades.
This is useful. People usually put furniture in front of sockets. With the cable-flat-to-the-wall plug design, you can push the furniture up to the plug and don't have to accommodate the bend radius of the cable. I've modified a few of the things I own to have 90 degree plugs, and haven't get got sufficiently annoyed with about half the other things.
I have a bag of plug adapters.
What I actually find more useful than the bag of adaptors is my bag of power strips (4-way US power strip with UK plug on the end, 4-way US power strip with swiss plug (and then I have a swiss-to-euro adaptor if I need it) because I've always got multiple devices that need plugging in.
Of course this example is quite different from most consumer goods. Going to a new plug system would require either an enormous effort to retrofit millions of homes, or that new appliances, power tools, etc., be sold in both configurations pretty much indefinitely.
It's not a question of mass replacement but of a less-well-designed system conquering the market in the first place.
You assume there were two designs on the marketplace at the same time, one of them the British design, vying for customers before the standard was set. Do you have any evidence of this?
According the The Fount Of All Wisdom (Wikipedia), the first two-pin plugs hit the UK market in about 1883 and the first three-pin ones in about 1911. The US dates appear to be 1904 and 1915 (based on the first patents registered), so there was even less time for the two-pin option to dominate the market in the US than in the UK. The answer to why one type became dominant one side of the pond and the other on the other is quite beyond me.
Time's not the issue. Were they ever on the market here?
Son's first day back at Wally-world and all his work friends snubbed him. His manager sneered, "Don't you know there's nothing to worry about? It's all a plot to hurt President Trump."
Son's first day back at Wally-world and all his work friends snubbed him. His manager sneered, "Don't you know there's nothing to worry about? It's all a plot to hurt President Trump."
The virus isn't the scariest thing out there.
Wow, really. I find that both scary and unimaginable.
The Walmart where my brother works has all employees wearing masks. He says they are really basic ones that give a false sense of security, but it looks good.
The ignorance (and paranoia) of your son's boss is a real worry. Is it common?
I don't get how someone can say that thousands of deaths across the world is a plot against Trump. Do they mean that it's invented? Every night on TV we see pictures of the latest health workers killed, and their grieving families. And this is fake?
Ground fault wired 2 pronged plugs are actually very safe. Ground fault means the socket goes dead on any short before a shock.
Only if the short is to ground.
Drop a steel rule or straight-edge down a wall and have it slide between the socket and a slightly-unplugged plug, and you'll have some entertainment. (Wasn't me. Did happen to a colleague. Didn't cause a fire, but might have.
That's not what "very safe" means.
On UK plugs the live and neutral pins are insulated for a cm or so to avoid precisely this kind of scenario.
And you'd struggle to drop something past the earth pin above them to get into this situation. And if you did, somehow manage it, the fuse in the plug would go in a fraction of a second.
Some idiots got it into their heads that the Sandy Hook school shooting was fake, despite the intense news coverage.
Once you learn the term "crisis actors" you can either justify disbelieving any event or have a strong desire to drink heavily, depending on temperament and political affiliation.
Oh, I think the appropriate "community" punishment for people who'd deny things like Sandy Hook is obvious. Anyone convicted of libel for suggesting such an event didn't happen should be made to go to the next school/community shooting and do three things:
- first, help to bag-up the bodies
- second, to observe the post-mortems
- third, to attend the funerals to see and experience the grief of those whose relatives have had their lives snuffed out by some NRA supporting nutter with a battlefield weapon.
Oh, I think the appropriate "community" punishment for people who'd deny things like Sandy Hook is obvious. Anyone convicted of libel for suggesting such an event didn't happen should be made to go to the next school/community shooting and do three things:
- first, help to bag-up the bodies
- second, to observe the post-mortems
- third, to attend the funerals to see and experience the grief of those whose relatives have had their lives snuffed out by some NRA supporting nutter with a battlefield weapon.
They'll just be there saying "if I'd been there with my semi-automatic this wouldn't have happened"
You're up against the "good guy with a gun" narrative at that point.
I don't get how someone can say that thousands of deaths across the world is a plot against Trump. Do they mean that it's invented? Every night on TV we see pictures of the latest health workers killed, and their grieving families. And this is fake?
I went to bed telling some representative Republican idiot in my head those very words and he said, "Fake news."
So, I looked right an left and whispered, "You're right about fake news, the real truth if you think you can handle it is that Hillary won the election. The last true thing we saw on election night was that she had won the popular vote -- everything after that, the "electoral vote" stuff, has been scripted fake news. Trump was the perfect person/actor to pretend to be president while actually living in Mar-a-lago, as Hillary secretly controls the presidency from inside the White House. That's why we only see Trump on the White House lawn and at rallies and we barely see Melania at all."
But I had thought there was some similar valuing of people and their well-being.
Someone at a protest in favor of reopening Tennessee had a sign saying "Sacrifice the weak."
The assumption being they won't be one of the weak ... Or that despite all those years of church attendance, they haven't learnt much or paid any attention to anything.
Surely there must be, somewhere in this beleaguered world, an intelligent, public-spirited 12-year old, who could easily render Twitface (and the Twitfacer-in-Chief, the Great Orange God-Emperor) useless?
Ugh. So the grandmas are trying to guilt us into seeing the 3-year-old (one is asthmatic and the other is a recently-quit smoker). Daycare is pressuring us to tell them when he'll be back. The state is on official lockdown until May 4 but schools will be closed for the remainder of the year. My boss was awesome about me having the kid home with me (I work from home), but my company was recently acquired and I have no idea how the new boss will be, or even if they'll keep me on long-term. And the kid is climbing the walls bored, driving his dad and me nuts, even with tons of walks and playing together and a few new toys. I just want to hide in the bathroom with a bottle of bourbon.
Would one of these grandmas be interested in doing the daycare? If she never goes out and the child only sees you two and her, that sounds safe to me. On the other hand, if we're talking about a youngish, still working grandma that's a whole different thing.
{Boy what I wouldn't give for a three year old right now.}
They compete, so I would have to do both of them. The one has a house that is so dirty and unsafe I won't let the kid be there unsupervised (she doesn't count), and the other has a husband and teenage grandkid who will be out socializing as soon as possible. They all think I'm overreacting. And like I said, they both have big risk factors.
Thanks for the reminder that he's a blessing. He's also a very high-strung noisy ball of germs!
But I had thought there was some similar valuing of people and their well-being.
Someone at a protest in favor of reopening Tennessee had a sign saying "Sacrifice the weak."
Kyrie eleison.
As one of the weak, I'm starting to think that I need to find a cyanide pill, à la WW2 Resistance fighters and the like. Call me selfish, but I don't want to die in extreme pain while suffocating.
(startled and concerned) I don't think there's any shortage of morphine, is there? I mean, God forbid any of us die of COVID, and particularly in a "we're out of ventilators" way, but even in that case, they should still be able to hang a morphine drip and keep us from feeling it. (well, maybe not me, but that's my personal metabolic freakery)
A few weeks back (IIRC), various mucky-mucks (member of Congress, maybe a mayor and others) made comments to the effect that seniors should be willing to sacrifice their lives to possible infection, in order to reopen the economy for everyone else.
The member of Congress seemed to not yet be a senior himself, and I figured his opinion might be different if he were 10 years or so older.
Are those protesters aware that obesity (link) is a risk factor for complications with COVID-19? Where obesity is defined as a BMI over 30 and applies to 42% of the population of the USA. Whatever age you are? Jus' sayin' having seen pictures of the protests.
Are those protesters aware that obesity (link) is a risk factor for complications with COVID-19? Where obesity is defined as a BMI over 30 and applies to 42% of the population of the USA. Whatever age you are? Jus' sayin' having seen pictures of the protests.
Are you aware of how flawed the studies are that show that?
Comments
Martyrs like the "suicide squad" at the end of Life of Brian.
The modern UK plug shape (BS 1363) was published in 1947. There have been multiple updates (insulated sleeves on plug pins, ...) but the updates are both forward and backward compatible. The house I grew up in still had some of the older round-pin sockets when we bought it, although they may not have been live (Dad wouldn't let us kids help with the electrical rewiring, so I don't remember).
It was obviously quite a lot easier to change the plug system in the post-war years than it would be today.
The US NEMA 1-15 plug (the standard 2-pin US plug) dates from 1912, and it's earthed cousin isn't much newer.
because it's interesting...
History of British+ plugs The modern one basically being from 1947 (but with 19th C history)
american ones
and current ones including the above
I do quite like the European ones for their compact neatness. Our (British) extension cords can feel a bit unweildy at times. But not as much as I like the stability (and aforementioned features) of ours most of the time.
VHS
VHS scored over Betamax in many important ways, the killer being length (how much time you could record). You couldn't record a whole 100 minute movie on a single Betamax tape. They were NOT better-designed. It's an interesting read.
I have a bag of plug adapters. It's quite a few, if for example, you're going from Canada to UK, the EU, Switzerland. Thankfully all of things I'd take with me auto switch from 120 volts to 240.
I can only blame Walmart so much because everything right now is vague with no clear answers. I don't even feel clear on how the disease will be treated, how many times we can get it, or who is at greatest risk anymore.
There are so many mixed messages from the world at large. We are told to stay home, that we are saving lives by doing so. Then my son sees spots on TV thanking and praising the frontline workers including grocery cashiers such as himself. So he feels guilty, like he's letting his co-workers and customers down by not being there. Now he'll get to feel guilty if he brings it home to me or my husband.
I started my car for the first time in two months today and went to the Dairy Queen. I told him, "Now if I come down with it it wont be your fault but mine for indulging in a coney dog and hot fudge sundae."
Smart move re DQ.
We had a quick provincial labour law passed which prevents employers from firing employees who don't want to work so long as the public health emergency is declared. People who are laid off must be hired back after the emergency is over. Plus they're getting fast track unemployment insurance benefits, electric, natural gas and water cannot be cut off for unpaid bills, there are no overdue fees allowed, and you can't be evicted for non-payment of rent. They kinda froze everything.
I shouldn't be so naive. But I had thought there was some similar valuing of people and their well-being.
According the The Fount Of All Wisdom (Wikipedia), the first two-pin plugs hit the UK market in about 1883 and the first three-pin ones in about 1911. The US dates appear to be 1904 and 1915 (based on the first patents registered), so there was even less time for the two-pin option to dominate the market in the US than in the UK. The answer to why one type became dominant one side of the pond and the other on the other is quite beyond me.
A day without a Blizzard (the DQ one, that is) is like a meal without sunshine . . . or something like that.
Our local DQ was doing drive-thru only but has recently opened up the counter just for take-out. The tables and chairs are off limits, of course. I may pick up an ice cream take to take to my sister's house for dinner this Friday.
If we're going European, my preference is the Swiss one (hexagonal recessed socket, round pins with offset earth pin) over the round 2 pin-with-grounding-tab-on-side thing.
This is useful. People usually put furniture in front of sockets. With the cable-flat-to-the-wall plug design, you can push the furniture up to the plug and don't have to accommodate the bend radius of the cable. I've modified a few of the things I own to have 90 degree plugs, and haven't get got sufficiently annoyed with about half the other things.
What I actually find more useful than the bag of adaptors is my bag of power strips (4-way US power strip with UK plug on the end, 4-way US power strip with swiss plug (and then I have a swiss-to-euro adaptor if I need it) because I've always got multiple devices that need plugging in.
Time's not the issue. Were they ever on the market here?
The virus isn't the scariest thing out there.
Wow, really. I find that both scary and unimaginable.
The ignorance (and paranoia) of your son's boss is a real worry. Is it common?
We've got a shit like that near the reigns of power here: https://www.thenational.scot/news/18325353.cummings-protect-economy-pensioners-die-too-bad/
The fuse would likely stop a fire, true
Once you learn the term "crisis actors" you can either justify disbelieving any event or have a strong desire to drink heavily, depending on temperament and political affiliation.
Then have them publicly apologize, and do a bunch of community service--preferably something icky.
- first, help to bag-up the bodies
- second, to observe the post-mortems
- third, to attend the funerals to see and experience the grief of those whose relatives have had their lives snuffed out by some NRA supporting nutter with a battlefield weapon.
They'll just be there saying "if I'd been there with my semi-automatic this wouldn't have happened"
You're up against the "good guy with a gun" narrative at that point.
I went to bed telling some representative Republican idiot in my head those very words and he said, "Fake news."
So, I looked right an left and whispered, "You're right about fake news, the real truth if you think you can handle it is that Hillary won the election. The last true thing we saw on election night was that she had won the popular vote -- everything after that, the "electoral vote" stuff, has been scripted fake news. Trump was the perfect person/actor to pretend to be president while actually living in Mar-a-lago, as Hillary secretly controls the presidency from inside the White House. That's why we only see Trump on the White House lawn and at rallies and we barely see Melania at all."
I don't actually sleep anymore.
"Sacrifice the Weak." O. M. G.
They'll be thinking it. They won't let it change them.
The same sort of thing applies to certain members of our so-called 'government'...
The assumption being they won't be one of the weak ... Or that despite all those years of church attendance, they haven't learnt much or paid any attention to anything.
{Boy what I wouldn't give for a three year old right now.}
Thanks for the reminder that he's a blessing. He's also a very high-strung noisy ball of germs!
I misread that as 3-year-oldS, and was trying to work out how one could have started smoking, never mind given up.
As one of the weak, I'm starting to think that I need to find a cyanide pill, à la WW2 Resistance fighters and the like. Call me selfish, but I don't want to die in extreme pain while suffocating.
As long as nobody ever leaves the house.
The member of Congress seemed to not yet be a senior himself, and I figured his opinion might be different if he were 10 years or so older.
Can we not, please?
DT
HH
Are you aware of how flawed the studies are that show that?