@archae86 : Joe Salk ( one of the polio vaccine pioneers in the 1940's + 50's ) actually expressed the concern that if the vaccines were to be as successful as hoped - and they have been - there would come a generation when the prevalence of the given illness would be so low that people would not really know what was being protected against. This prophecy has come true in as little as three generations.
For instance the triple antigen ( diptheria, whooping cough and tetanus ) immunisation rate in kids ( from the demographics of tertiary educated parents I might add ) has plummeted. So our regional children's hospital has opened a dedicated ward for infants with whooping cough, with several dozen new cases per week and some tragedies. This has deeply disappointed the paediatric care community. The cause is simple : presently, young highly educated people will not take instruction under any circumstances. Alas this hasn't reached wider acknowledgement due to news outlets being shy of telling their subscribers that they might be idiots ie. truth aside, you don't sell copy by criticizing motherhood and apple pie ( especially to articulate people with plenty of disposable cash ). When polled upon the topic their heads are revealed to be full of all manner of trendy egocentric social commentaries, faux* science and almost no true biological information resides. Contrast this with our many immigrants who come from a range of shocking contemporary circumstances elsewhere : they cannot believe that people who live in what is effectively Nirvana can be so utterly stupid. I have lost more than a few clients as a result of me suggesting that ( to obtain irrefutable proof ) they visit the local cemetery to read the little gravestones ( the cause of death is nearly always chiseled in ) in the older section. The comeback on this is a drive to (re-)immunise the grandparents of newborns who may not have ever been immunised ( or the decades have diminished the primary course ). That generation often has living memory of what we speak of and is commonly capable of taking advice. This may form another, admittedly de-referenced layer of shielding for the neonates, and just might flip the young parents in their views. Believe me, the conversations I've had can be quite surreal. If I were to suggest that a newborn child ought be cast upon freeway tarmac then the parents would be horrified. They don't appreciate that non-immunisation is in reality an equivalent risk.
In any case David is right, let's lighten up ! Mea culpa ..... :-)
I found this great piece on youtube describing the clearing of a rail line in the Sierra Nevada during the early 1950's after a prolonged blizzard season. What I really liked was the steam train with this big fan gizmo on the front which clears the big snow drifts. It also reminded me of a cooling fan with shroud for a graphics card ! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
* The issue here is not lack of studies by Professor Bob & co, but lack of studies done by Prof Bob & co that include meaningful metrics that refer to processes occurring in this universe. Chatterboxing by referral to specious 'authority' has replaced traditional effective scientific inquiry ie. displaced or arm's length psychosis.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
That is why, in the US anyway, they say anyone over 50 and children should get it, not necessarily the middle group of normally healthy people.
Um, this thought is a problem, as the "normally healthy people" are a large part of the herd that Mike Hewson alluded to, and the shots are much more effective at increasing immunity in the middle group than in the aged.
Herd immunity is not so complicated at it may sound. Think about how we fight fire--all that is necessary for a fire to die out instead of growing is for the density of flammable material to be low enough. Similarly, if the conditions of physical exposure (for potential transmission) and relatively immunity (governing how likely a potential transmission is to turn into an actual new case) set the growth rate below unity, a disease dies down in a particular setting, rather than increasing.
All of us who are part of the herd do the larger population a favor by making our personal corner a bit more unfavorable to disease transmission. This includes basic hygiene (yes, handwashing matters for more diseases than you might think), flocking behavior (mass public gatherings have been a significant transmission path in more than one disease) and vaccination.
Unless you have an egg allergy, I think the moral thing to do is to get the flu shot, early in the season, every year. If not for yourself, then for others.
This is another area of medical discussion sorta like Mike is talking about and the newborn shots, is it better for a HEALTHY person to be exposed to little bits of bad things and let them build their own immunities, or is it better to just give them a shot and make the same thing happen artificially? or instance do you wash your apples before you eat them, some people do and some don't. The ones that don't think getting that small amount of bad things in them keeps their immune systems working hard. The ones that do think they are 'saving' their immune system for the times when they really need it.
One other wrinkle is that the 'flu' changes every year, do we keep sticking ourselves full of stuff, when we are HEALTHY YOUNG ADULTS, that makes antibodies for something we may never see anyway? Are we doing it for the 'what if' scenario, and will the antibodies be strong enough if we ever do need them if they are 30, 40 or even 50 years old?
The medical community has been having these discussions for a LONG time, they probably won't be answered definitively for a LONG time yet. And by then the answer could be extinction!!
Did anyone watch the Apple thing yesterday? I did, well after about 20 minutes as it kept cutting out on me up until then. I like the new 'apple watch' but think at $350 it better do more then track my steps every day!! Tim Cook said it would do 'over a hundred things', I do NOT need a way to answer messages or even the phone, I WOULD like a way to near constantly monitor my blood sugars though without anymore finger sticks!! I have to put my glasses on to read my phone, I can't imagine trying to see all that on my wrist without putting them on for that too. And if I am pulling out my glasses I can just as easily pull out my phone too!!
@archae86 : Joe Salk ( one of the polio vaccine pioneers in the 1940's + 50's ) actually expressed the concern that if the vaccines were to be as successful as hoped - and they have been - there would come a generation when the prevalence of the given illness would be so low that people would not really know what was being protected against. This prophecy has come true in as little as three generations.
For instance the triple antigen ( diptheria, whooping cough and tetanus ) immunisation rate in kids ( from the demographics of tertiary educated parents I might add ) has plummeted. So our regional children's hospital has opened a dedicated ward for infants with whooping cough, with several dozen new cases per week and some tragedies. This has deeply disappointed the paediatric care community. The cause is simple : presently, young highly educated people will not take instruction under any circumstances. Alas this hasn't reached wider acknowledgement due to news outlets being shy of telling their subscribers that they might be idiots ie. truth aside, you don't sell copy by criticizing motherhood and apple pie ( especially to articulate people with plenty of disposable cash ). When polled upon the topic their heads are revealed to be full of all manner of trendy egocentric social commentaries, faux* science and almost no true biological information resides. Contrast this with our many immigrants who come from a range of shocking contemporary circumstances elsewhere : they cannot believe that people who live in what is effectively Nirvana can be so utterly stupid. I have lost more than a few clients as a result of me suggesting that ( to obtain irrefutable proof ) they visit the local cemetery to read the little gravestones ( the cause of death is nearly always chiseled in ) in the older section. The comeback on this is a drive to (re-)immunise the grandparents of newborns who may not have ever been immunised ( or the decades have diminished the primary course ). That generation often has living memory of what we speak of and is commonly capable of taking advice. This may form another, admittedly de-referenced layer of shielding for the neonates, and just might flip the young parents in their views. Believe me, the conversations I've had can be quite surreal. If I were to suggest that a newborn child ought be cast upon freeway tarmac then the parents would be horrified. They don't appreciate that non-immunisation is in reality an equivalent risk.
In any case David is right, let's lighten up ! Mea culpa ..... :-)
I found this great piece on youtube describing the clearing of a rail line in the Sierra Nevada during the early 1950's after a prolonged blizzard season. What I really liked was the steam train with this big fan gizmo on the front which clears the big snow drifts. It also reminded me of a cooling fan with shroud for a graphics card ! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
* The issue here is not lack of studies by Professor Bob & co, but lack of studies done by Prof Bob & co that include meaningful metrics that refer to processes occurring in this universe. Chatterboxing by referral to specious 'authority' has replaced traditional effective scientific inquiry ie. displaced or arm's length psychosis.
There was an episode of Emergency, a TV show in the early-mid 1970s about paramedics and the hospital ER staff they worked with, in which a little boy was diagnosed with polio. His mother said she didn't have him immunized "because they beat that, no one gets it any more" (or something to that effect). It was a fictional show, but it tended to get stories from real cases, so the trend must have been going on already, even then.
Now there is a movement against getting all the childhood immunizations. "The medical establishment is lying to you, your child doesn't need them. You're a bad parent if you get them!" This isn't among the lower-intelligence hicks, either, it's among the better educated people who prove the saying "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
I'll have to check the video of the rotary snow plow later, but thanks for the link.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
I found this great piece on youtube describing the clearing of a rail line in the Sierra Nevada during the early 1950's after a prolonged blizzard season. What I really liked was the steam train with this big fan gizmo on the front which clears the big snow drifts. It also reminded me of a cooling fan with shroud for a graphics card ! :-)
[Pardon the double post, but it's my thread, so I can do that.]
Union Pacific and BNSF Railway still have rotary snow plows, although they try to use them only when absolutely necessary. Part of the reason is that once they use a rotary, they have to keep using it for the rest of the season because no other method of snow removal will be effective after the rotary has gone through.
Last January, BNSF moved a rotary to Illinois, but managed to clear the tracks with conventional plows and front end loaders before it got beyond Galesburg Yard. Too bad; I would have liked to see it run.
Cumbres & Toltec Scenic (one of two narrow gauge tourist lines running on segments of the former Denver & Rio Grande Western) recently did a successful hydrostatic test on the boiler of one of their rotaries. They say it will need a lot of work before it can operate, though.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
The railroad museum here in town has an old steam engine they've restored. It's record speed, back in it's prime, was 103 mph, and it's wheels are taller than a man.
It actually has a powered auger feeding coal to the firebox. At full power it consumes 200 lbs of coal per minute. No fireman could possibly keep up with that.
The monster weighs over 800,000 lbs. Contrast this with the engines I run on Norfolk Southern today which weigh in around 400,000 lbs.
On the topic of railroad devices for moving snow, I happened to visit a railway museum near Novosibirsk in 2010. They had at least three specimens of Soviet-style snow removal equipment.
Here is one--and, no, I don't recall whether I figured out where the snow actually was supposed to wind up.
I also note that 'trainspotting' has been re-labelled as 'railfanning' which makes me far more comfortable about my mild to moderate obsession with trains. :-)
I remember the first steam train I saw, about age 10 ( which I think is the ideal age to induct children to rail fandom ), being rotated on a turntable, shunting and the like. It was big and black, choofed alot and had that funny combo smell of burnt coal and steam. I would place a copper coin on the track in advance of the train and inspect the results later. For me this was high experimental science, or alternatively I was easily amused ! :-)
I quite avidly inspected the train's underbits, and of course the key question was reciprocating to rotary motion. The thermodynamics came later. One late afternoon - when the show was over, so to speak - I just looked at it for about an hour before wandering home. I later had dreams about it, I was that sort of kid.
Now I clearly remember seeing that very same train - I am quite certain of the 'K 183' designation - some twenty years later. I believe it is a sister train to the one first listed on this page here. Let's hope it is still doing something other than sitting in some local park rusting.
In Novosibirsk I think the snow goes where the lady on the right is pointing : into it's belly. I think it just eats snow. :-)
Actually there's some hatches on the lower lateral face of the chomper, I could conceive of the snow shooting to the side from there if they were opened.
Until 2002, K 183 was also operated by Steamrail Victoria. On 13 October 2002 this locomotive was involved in a serious level crossing accident with a B-double semi-trailer near Benalla, Victoria, derailing after impact. Tragically, three people on the footplate died in the collision. The locomotive was extensively damaged and is currently stored out of service. As of 2013, the locomotive is still receiving insurance money from the accident in which will go towards the future restoration of the steam train to its former glory.
( edit ) I've discovered a new remedy for a sore throat. Normally I advise good old honey and lemon drinks. Quite nice. My novel treatment, if that fails, is topical alcohol. :-)
( edit ) If I've understood my research correctly the Newport Workshop designed, built, maintained and finally retired the K-class. One thing I see with railways - which is very marked I think - is how their history parallels that of the communities it serves. Obviously you might say. But thesedays, what with being all global, connected, electronic and the like, that style of perspective is lost. It's not the only industry that has that strong character eg. Bethlehem Steel or copper mining in Montana, and I think I miss the sort of cohesion in society that I felt when younger ie. local industry-centric communities. Naturally that's the sort of whimsical codswallop emitted by older codgers like myself, but I still think that accounts for serious levels of nostalgia with trains. :-)
( edit ) You're quite right David, having less intelligent ( or less privileged ) parents will enhance the survival of the offspring. The clever ones may yet be educated by the death of their children, as to date no immunisation-contrary argument has explained the death of children by the illness ( because immunisation-contrarians never discuss death ). No doubt the paediatric medicos are killing the children in hospital as part of a conspiracy against the parents, with the microbiology being the cover story. One suspects more than a tad of marijuana in the relevant burbs here, THC is an outstanding cognitive fragmenter, virtually any proposition seems great after two decent sucks on the bong, and the paranoia comes for free.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
@archae86 : Joe Salk ( one of
@archae86 : Joe Salk ( one of the polio vaccine pioneers in the 1940's + 50's ) actually expressed the concern that if the vaccines were to be as successful as hoped - and they have been - there would come a generation when the prevalence of the given illness would be so low that people would not really know what was being protected against. This prophecy has come true in as little as three generations.
For instance the triple antigen ( diptheria, whooping cough and tetanus ) immunisation rate in kids ( from the demographics of tertiary educated parents I might add ) has plummeted. So our regional children's hospital has opened a dedicated ward for infants with whooping cough, with several dozen new cases per week and some tragedies. This has deeply disappointed the paediatric care community. The cause is simple : presently, young highly educated people will not take instruction under any circumstances. Alas this hasn't reached wider acknowledgement due to news outlets being shy of telling their subscribers that they might be idiots ie. truth aside, you don't sell copy by criticizing motherhood and apple pie ( especially to articulate people with plenty of disposable cash ). When polled upon the topic their heads are revealed to be full of all manner of trendy egocentric social commentaries, faux* science and almost no true biological information resides. Contrast this with our many immigrants who come from a range of shocking contemporary circumstances elsewhere : they cannot believe that people who live in what is effectively Nirvana can be so utterly stupid. I have lost more than a few clients as a result of me suggesting that ( to obtain irrefutable proof ) they visit the local cemetery to read the little gravestones ( the cause of death is nearly always chiseled in ) in the older section. The comeback on this is a drive to (re-)immunise the grandparents of newborns who may not have ever been immunised ( or the decades have diminished the primary course ). That generation often has living memory of what we speak of and is commonly capable of taking advice. This may form another, admittedly de-referenced layer of shielding for the neonates, and just might flip the young parents in their views. Believe me, the conversations I've had can be quite surreal. If I were to suggest that a newborn child ought be cast upon freeway tarmac then the parents would be horrified. They don't appreciate that non-immunisation is in reality an equivalent risk.
In any case David is right, let's lighten up ! Mea culpa ..... :-)
I found this great piece on youtube describing the clearing of a rail line in the Sierra Nevada during the early 1950's after a prolonged blizzard season. What I really liked was the steam train with this big fan gizmo on the front which clears the big snow drifts. It also reminded me of a cooling fan with shroud for a graphics card ! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
* The issue here is not lack of studies by Professor Bob & co, but lack of studies done by Prof Bob & co that include meaningful metrics that refer to processes occurring in this universe. Chatterboxing by referral to specious 'authority' has replaced traditional effective scientific inquiry ie. displaced or arm's length psychosis.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Goodnight everyone.
Goodnight everyone. :-)
Back at the top, and WINNING!!!!! :-)
TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join SETI Refugees
RE: RE: That is why, in
This is another area of medical discussion sorta like Mike is talking about and the newborn shots, is it better for a HEALTHY person to be exposed to little bits of bad things and let them build their own immunities, or is it better to just give them a shot and make the same thing happen artificially? or instance do you wash your apples before you eat them, some people do and some don't. The ones that don't think getting that small amount of bad things in them keeps their immune systems working hard. The ones that do think they are 'saving' their immune system for the times when they really need it.
One other wrinkle is that the 'flu' changes every year, do we keep sticking ourselves full of stuff, when we are HEALTHY YOUNG ADULTS, that makes antibodies for something we may never see anyway? Are we doing it for the 'what if' scenario, and will the antibodies be strong enough if we ever do need them if they are 30, 40 or even 50 years old?
The medical community has been having these discussions for a LONG time, they probably won't be answered definitively for a LONG time yet. And by then the answer could be extinction!!
Did anyone watch the Apple thing yesterday? I did, well after about 20 minutes as it kept cutting out on me up until then. I like the new 'apple watch' but think at $350 it better do more then track my steps every day!! Tim Cook said it would do 'over a hundred things', I do NOT need a way to answer messages or even the phone, I WOULD like a way to near constantly monitor my blood sugars though without anymore finger sticks!! I have to put my glasses on to read my phone, I can't imagine trying to see all that on my wrist without putting them on for that too. And if I am pulling out my glasses I can just as easily pull out my phone too!!
RE: @archae86 : Joe Salk (
There was an episode of Emergency, a TV show in the early-mid 1970s about paramedics and the hospital ER staff they worked with, in which a little boy was diagnosed with polio. His mother said she didn't have him immunized "because they beat that, no one gets it any more" (or something to that effect). It was a fictional show, but it tended to get stories from real cases, so the trend must have been going on already, even then.
Now there is a movement against getting all the childhood immunizations. "The medical establishment is lying to you, your child doesn't need them. You're a bad parent if you get them!" This isn't among the lower-intelligence hicks, either, it's among the better educated people who prove the saying "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
I'll have to check the video of the rotary snow plow later, but thanks for the link.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
RE: I found this great
[Pardon the double post, but it's my thread, so I can do that.]
Union Pacific and BNSF Railway still have rotary snow plows, although they try to use them only when absolutely necessary. Part of the reason is that once they use a rotary, they have to keep using it for the rest of the season because no other method of snow removal will be effective after the rotary has gone through.
Last January, BNSF moved a rotary to Illinois, but managed to clear the tracks with conventional plows and front end loaders before it got beyond Galesburg Yard. Too bad; I would have liked to see it run.
Cumbres & Toltec Scenic (one of two narrow gauge tourist lines running on segments of the former Denver & Rio Grande Western) recently did a successful hydrostatic test on the boiler of one of their rotaries. They say it will need a lot of work before it can operate, though.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
The railroad museum here in
The railroad museum here in town has an old steam engine they've restored. It's record speed, back in it's prime, was 103 mph, and it's wheels are taller than a man.
It actually has a powered auger feeding coal to the firebox. At full power it consumes 200 lbs of coal per minute. No fireman could possibly keep up with that.
The monster weighs over 800,000 lbs. Contrast this with the engines I run on Norfolk Southern today which weigh in around 400,000 lbs.
Phil
On the topic of railroad
On the topic of railroad devices for moving snow, I happened to visit a railway museum near Novosibirsk in 2010. They had at least three specimens of Soviet-style snow removal equipment.
Here is one--and, no, I don't recall whether I figured out where the snow actually was supposed to wind up.
Good afternoon everyone. :-)
Good afternoon everyone. :-)
TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join SETI Refugees
I also note that
I also note that 'trainspotting' has been re-labelled as 'railfanning' which makes me far more comfortable about my mild to moderate obsession with trains. :-)
I remember the first steam train I saw, about age 10 ( which I think is the ideal age to induct children to rail fandom ), being rotated on a turntable, shunting and the like. It was big and black, choofed alot and had that funny combo smell of burnt coal and steam. I would place a copper coin on the track in advance of the train and inspect the results later. For me this was high experimental science, or alternatively I was easily amused ! :-)
I quite avidly inspected the train's underbits, and of course the key question was reciprocating to rotary motion. The thermodynamics came later. One late afternoon - when the show was over, so to speak - I just looked at it for about an hour before wandering home. I later had dreams about it, I was that sort of kid.
Now I clearly remember seeing that very same train - I am quite certain of the 'K 183' designation - some twenty years later. I believe it is a sister train to the one first listed on this page here. Let's hope it is still doing something other than sitting in some local park rusting.
In Novosibirsk I think the snow goes where the lady on the right is pointing : into it's belly. I think it just eats snow. :-)
Actually there's some hatches on the lower lateral face of the chomper, I could conceive of the snow shooting to the side from there if they were opened.
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Bless whom-so-ever wrote this Wikipaedia page :
( edit ) I've discovered a new remedy for a sore throat. Normally I advise good old honey and lemon drinks. Quite nice. My novel treatment, if that fails, is topical alcohol. :-)
( edit ) If I've understood my research correctly the Newport Workshop designed, built, maintained and finally retired the K-class. One thing I see with railways - which is very marked I think - is how their history parallels that of the communities it serves. Obviously you might say. But thesedays, what with being all global, connected, electronic and the like, that style of perspective is lost. It's not the only industry that has that strong character eg. Bethlehem Steel or copper mining in Montana, and I think I miss the sort of cohesion in society that I felt when younger ie. local industry-centric communities. Naturally that's the sort of whimsical codswallop emitted by older codgers like myself, but I still think that accounts for serious levels of nostalgia with trains. :-)
( edit ) You're quite right David, having less intelligent ( or less privileged ) parents will enhance the survival of the offspring. The clever ones may yet be educated by the death of their children, as to date no immunisation-contrary argument has explained the death of children by the illness ( because immunisation-contrarians never discuss death ). No doubt the paediatric medicos are killing the children in hospital as part of a conspiracy against the parents, with the microbiology being the cover story. One suspects more than a tad of marijuana in the relevant burbs here, THC is an outstanding cognitive fragmenter, virtually any proposition seems great after two decent sucks on the bong, and the paranoia comes for free.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Just winning!!!
Just winning!!!