Comic for Wednesday, Oct 2, 2024

[Darth Fluffy 364]

Comic for Wednesday, Oct 2, 2024

This is the first indication of this weakness in immortals.

Jill appears to have lasted slightly longer, with similar results; but she is a young child, with low magic resistance, stated a few comics back. Hmm.

Voltaire backed off when Tara demanded it. I guess the EGS universe can mount a resistance when they need to.

(Voltaire needs a MIGA hat, but he'd be too classy to wear it. Because he does not wear trucker hats. He's fine with his slogan.)

[mlooney 3,733]

4 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Voltaire needs a MIGA hat

Took me a moment to get what you meant there.

All that aside. yeah, this has been the darkest sub-arc since the Grace fought Damien.  Might even be darker.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,647]

 

Jill coud have handled a AAA battery.

Pandora could have given a household extension cord.

Instead she tried to plug Jill into Three Mile Island using herself as the fuse.

 

[Darth Fluffy 364]

11 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

 

Jill coud have handled a AAA battery.

Pandora could have given a household extension cord.

Instead she tried to plug Jill into Three Mile Island using herself as the fuse.

 

Three Mile Island parody song.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,647]

 

Am I so old that the largest disastars of my youth require footnotes?

 

[Darth Fluffy 364]

19 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

 

Am I so old that the largest disastars of my youth require footnotes?

 

Short answer, yes.

Have you never read those 'the kids graduating this year never experienced XYZ' lists? Three Mile Island incident happened in the late 70's.

The Vietnam conflict is further behind us than WW II was when I was a kid. No, wait, it's further behind us than WW I was when I was a kid.

(Trivial side note, stegosaurus is further back from T-Rex than T-Rex is from us.)

[ijuin 603]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

 

Am I so old that the largest disastars of my youth require footnotes?

 

Like the sinking of Atlantis?

[mlooney 3,733]

I was alive when Eisenhower was president.  Granted I wasn't aware of much, being only 1 a the time.

[ChronosCat 158]

4 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Have you never read those 'the kids graduating this year never experienced XYZ' lists? Three Mile Island incident happened in the late 70's.

The Vietnam conflict is further behind us than WW II was when I was a kid. No, wait, it's further behind us than WW I was when I was a kid.

What bugs me is when those "kids never experienced XYZ" lists present it as "kids don't know about XYZ". You don't need to have experienced something to know about it. Sure, you'll always be able to find people who really don't know about XYZ, but a lot of time the things on those lists are things with such a big impact on the culture that lots of people too young to have experienced them first-hand will still be aware of them.

The Three Mile Island incident took place over a year before I was born but I still know about it. Then again, I haven't heard it mentioned very often, so I could see someone not being aware of it. (Actually, now that I think about it, the first time I heard about it was when the Chernobyl disaster happened, and my parents informed me that wasn't the first Nuclear Power Plant disaster.)

The Vietnam war was also before my time but I've known the basics of it since I was a kid, and it gets talked about so much to this day that I continue to learn more about it without ever seeking the information out.

It does strike me as strange to think there are adults today who were born after 9/11. I can't imagine there aren't too many Americans who haven't heard about it though, given it gets talked about every September.

[Darth Fluffy 364]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

I was alive when Eisenhower was president.  Granted I wasn't aware of much, being only 1 a the time.

Kennedy was elected (ignoring controversy over the election) and sworn in when I was 6. I vaguely remember Eisenhower speaking on TV, but I could not tell you what he was talking about. I also remember Nixon campaigning, about the same. Kennedy I remember more clearly, from a bit later; it recall "We will go to the moon", and of course where I was when I heard he had been killed.

[Darth Fluffy 364]

31 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

What bugs me is when those "kids never experienced XYZ" lists present it as "kids don't know about XYZ". You don't need to have experienced something to know about it. Sure, you'll always be able to find people who really don't know about XYZ, but a lot of time the things on those lists are things with such a big impact on the culture that lots of people too young to have experienced them first-hand will still be aware of them.

The Three Mile Island incident took place over a year before I was born but I still know about it. Then again, I haven't heard it mentioned very often, so I could see someone not being aware of it. (Actually, now that I think about it, the first time I heard about it was when the Chernobyl disaster happened, and my parents informed me that wasn't the first Nuclear Power Plant disaster.)

The Vietnam war was also before my time but I've known the basics of it since I was a kid, and it gets talked about so much to this day that I continue to learn more about it without ever seeking the information out.

It does strike me as strange to think there are adults today who were born after 9/11. I can't imagine there aren't too many Americans who haven't heard about it though, given it gets talked about every September.

You lack context to relate the information to when you are very young. As you mature, the circumstances of XYZ become clearer as you live through them. 'experienced XYZ' presumes you have enough context to retain the information in a meaningful way.

To your point, you do pick up a lot of that from your parents. The Great Depression was years before my time; but my parents and the parents of my friends and our teachers lived through it and even as kids would have been affected, and it weighed heavily on them. So my generation all knows about the Great Depression in a way my kids won't access. Ditto WW II, it was a big deal for our parents. Vietnam was very real to me. I had a low draft number, expected to have to go, like most of my generation, thought the 'war' was a dumb idea. A classmate down the block ran off to Canada and as far as I know, never returned. I've met vets who had returned traumatized, and the commanders I worked for in the Air Force were all Vietnam vets.

I also recall Three Mile Island as a current event. (BTW, the second link is a parody song) Also the moon landing, pretty much the entire space race. I was too young at the very beginning, and needed to have it explained what Sputnik was and the whole notion of a satellite going around the earth.

I also recall rail travel in its fading heyday, we took a family trip on one of the last trains to NYC from the Lehigh Valley. Modern rail in the US is very sparse, but we used to be very connected.I also recall my dad flying to meetings in other cities on propeller airliners.

Where it gets troublesome are when lack of context escalates recent events to far more importance than they deserve. The most recent presidents become the norm (think about that!).

This is why history is important, it give context for assimilating new information, and an understanding of how we got to where we are.

[Don Edwards 572]

7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Modern rail in the US is very sparse

As stated, no.

Modern PASSENGER rail, yes.

But the EU is reportedly on a campaign to increase the share of internal freight transport that goes by rail to 30% by 2030. The US has been running 50% for at least a couple decades.

"Why is Europe so absurdly backward compared to the U.S. in rail freight transport" - Freightwaves

 

[Darth Fluffy 364]

7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

As stated, no.

Modern PASSENGER rail, yes.

But the EU is reportedly on a campaign to increase the share of internal freight transport that goes by rail to 30% by 2030. The US has been running 50% for at least a couple decades.

"Why is Europe so absurdly backward compared to the U.S. in rail freight transport" - Freightwaves

 

Well, I meant passenger rail, which the context at least suggested.

The US uses a lot of freight rail, for specific large volume freight. It's an efficient use. There is no longer a need for individual boxcars to sit at sidings for individual businesses. Still, in spite of this statistic, I see far less freight trains than in the past, and much shorter. We must have been in the 70% to 80% range in the 60s.

I am surprised at the lower EU statistic. One factor might be the shorter distances; the vast distances demand attention to transport. Russia and Canada both have notably comprehensive rail systems to connect east and west.

[Don Edwards 572]

The article I linked to discusses multiple factors about railroad operation and track design that contribute to Europe's low freight-rail usage. Train-length rules, functionally allowable train height...

... doesn't mention that western Europe doesn't have the vast quantities of nothing that can be found in the central US, central & northern Canada, eastern Russia, western China, most of Australia...

(I'm currently near the north end of a 70-mile stretch of US federal highway, running through desert, that has a single-digit number of stop signs - and no traffic lights - facing down intersecting roads. Most of which aren't paved, have no identifying signs, and have no buildings near them that are visible from the highway.)

[Darth Fluffy 364]

Article - Much smaller payload, makes sense that would not pay off as well. They'd have to redesign their system to catch up. I was not aware of the short train lengths.

It may be relevant that the railroad design is very different as well. Europe uses tightly coupled trains, with buffer to maintain pressure between each car (wagon in Europe). The entire train starts as a unit, which means the engines have to be capable of moving the entire train at once. The US has slack between cars, when the engine starts pulling, it only pulls one car, then two, then three, . . . for a long train, it will be minutes before the back end is moving. Our engine do not require the high initial torque that the European trains do. A long as the run is flat, a US train gets by with moderate torque.

Also, just like our NE corridor, European railroads are heavily electrified, with overhead wires. This is much easier to accomplish when the distances are shorter.

 

[Don Edwards 572]

There's a passenger train that runs about 700 miles across northern Montana. The largest urban area it stops in has fewer than 10,000 people, and is the 12th-largest city in the state.

This passenger-rail route is obviously not intended to provide much inter-city travel for residents of Montana. Rather, it's for people traveling back and forth between Seattle and Chicago.

But that's a straight-line distance of over 1700 miles, and the train's route is not exactly straight. Normally a 45-hour jaunt (can be much longer in winter - one time I rode it, it was 18 hours late getting to a city near the middle of North Dakota), with fares from US$180 to $600. You'll probably want about 6 meals plus a few beverages; those cost extra.

In comparison, one can fly between Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport and Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a flight of about 6 hours, for about $120. Some beverages and the one maybe-needed meal probably included.

Gee, I wonder why passenger rail isn't more popular in the US...

[mlooney 3,733]

Europeans, and to a lesser extent coastal Americans, don't seem to understand just how vast the middle part of America is, and how empty of people it is.  They sorta assume population density similar to their own and wonder why there isn't more public transport.

[Darth Fluffy 364]

4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

There's a passenger train that runs about 700 miles across northern Montana. The largest urban area it stops in has fewer than 10,000 people, and is the 12th-largest city in the state.

This passenger-rail route is obviously not intended to provide much inter-city travel for residents of Montana. Rather, it's for people traveling back and forth between Seattle and Chicago.

But that's a straight-line distance of over 1700 miles, and the train's route is not exactly straight. Normally a 45-hour jaunt (can be much longer in winter - one time I rode it, it was 18 hours late getting to a city near the middle of North Dakota), with fares from US$180 to $600. You'll probably want about 6 meals plus a few beverages; those cost extra.

In comparison, one can fly between Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport and Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a flight of about 6 hours, for about $120. Some beverages and the one maybe-needed meal probably included.

Gee, I wonder why passenger rail isn't more popular in the US...

It is competitive for some runs. Trains in the NE corridor are heavily used; granted, the cites are massive. I priced rail travel from NC to the northeast, and it does not compare well. Nor does bus, fwiw. It has advantages, depending on your goal. Would be superb for a sight seeing trip, where time pressure mattered much less. But that's not going to keep it afloat.

[mlooney 3,733]

2 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Nor does bus, fwiw.

That's sorta sad in a way.  Bus used to be the cheap way to travel longish distances.

[Darth Fluffy 364]

2 minutes ago, mlooney said:

That's sorta sad in a way.  Bus used to be the cheap way to travel longish distances.

They've (Greyhound and Trailways) been hurting for a while.

[mlooney 3,733]

2 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

They've (Greyhound and Trailways) been hurting for a while.

I suspect they started having trouble about the time of the first "energy crises" and never really recovered.

[Darth Fluffy 364]

12 hours ago, mlooney said:

I suspect they started having trouble about the time of the first "energy crises" and never really recovered.

That sounds right.

[mlooney 3,733]

I used to remember, as a solo child under 10 or so, riding the bus from Tulsa to Oklahoma City to visit my grandparents.  This would never happen today, not the least of which because of cost.

[Darth Fluffy 364]

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

I used to remember, as a solo child under 10 or so, riding the bus from Tulsa to Oklahoma City to visit my grandparents.  This would never happen today, not the least of which because of cost.

I took a similar distance bus from NYC to Hazleton, Pa. back in the day. It was very affordable, then, but it was not an express, it stopped at a half dozen podunk towns and took much longer than necessary. (Interesting, the spell checker does not like 'podunk'.)

[mlooney 3,733]

Tulsa to OKC was just straight down the Turner Turnpike.  No stops on the way.