Jump to content

Good things about the current crisis...


Chris A

Recommended Posts

10 minutes ago, RANDYH said:

I once lived where I could look out and see military fighter planes .  do a lot of flying  acrobatics , a bit like TOP GUN , but in reality

 We can bbq and  watch air to air combat training.

 

don't know why they do it over town except we are 12 miles north of the border and it gives them a landmark to keep them in bounds...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, grasshopper said:

 We can bbq and  watch air to air combat training.

 

don't know why they do it over town except we are 12 miles north of the border and it gives them a landmark to keep them in bounds...

I would be  on the BBQ all day ------I sure miss it

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/17/2020 at 10:44 AM, Marvel said:

 

That wouldn't have lasted long at our house. My late wife and I bought wheat in 5 gallon buckets, four or five at a time, and we ground it as we needed it. The kid did the grinding (hand cranked), and she baked bread a couple days a week. We got it through the co-op that we belonged to at the time.

 

I was in CO 3 weeks ago, drove there because I didn't want to fly.  On my way home while driving through New Mexico and getting closer to the Texas, about 100 mi away, I started driving at warp speed when suddenly saw and blew past a trooper who was parked on the side of the highway. The radar detector didn't sound the warning, but I was going so fast I just knew I was going to get a ticket...... but he never did anything and just stayed parked there. That was the only time was okay with Wuhan virus pandemic.

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reason why I started this thread is not to further any ideas that my personality is overtly sanguine.  Trust me...it's not.  It's just that I've noticed that great periods of opportunity and achievements come following great loss and calamity.

 

In the case of where I live, calamity has been a dear friend, such as the one that produced the greatest natural loss of life in the US--the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas.  What ensued thereafter was a bit of a "miracle" considering the wild west image of Texas at that time: the Galveston seawall.  Houston (the city in Texas) was born after the (Galveston Bay) Houston ship channel was dredged.  Refrigerative air conditioning made living in Houston much more comfortable (a relatively recent invention from Florida that was made economically viable soon thereafter when electrification was generally deployed).

 

Similarly, in organizations and companies, great calamity creates new opportunities and motivations to truly change the status quo.  In the case of companies, one example in the mid-1950s, Geophysical Services, Inc. (GSI), were blowing through electronic amplifier tubes like there was no tomorrow (hundreds of tubes per seismic recording truck per site survey--at very great cost in terms of money and downtime), trying to record more and more channels of geophysical data during seismic exploration for oil. 

 

So GSI started a small subsidiary--Texas Instruments--to create a usable alternative to the tubes and the very temperature sensitive Germanium transistors that were originally created at Bell Labs that were basically unusable in the field operations due to temperature extremes.  So they created the silicon transistor at TI...and the rest is history.

 

Shockley's company was the beginning of "Silicon Valley" in central California, financed by the US DoD almost entirely--all because of the issues with tube amplification and the need for higher densities, lower power requirements, and much higher in-service reliabilities and longer MTBFs--for the US military.

 

Right now, it's the brick-and-mortar retail store fronts that are failing, such as Dallas area-based Neiman Marcus and J.C. Penny, and Fort Worth-based Pier One Imports, etc.  The age of brick-and-mortar storefronts hastened to its end before most people might have believed it. In case you didn't catch it, the 1970s shopping mall culture basically just came to an unceremonious end.  Amazon and other Internet-based e-business firms are doing as much business as they can handle presently--and that will obviously continue and even increase.  Supermarkets are now chronically sold out of certain brands and product lines--notably paper products, rubbing alcohol, disinfectant wipes, and also many specialty produce items and cook-at-home products that didn't sell nearly as well three months ago before the pandemic made it to US shores.  Restaurants aren't doing very well.  Municipality-financed sports arenas (like the three in the city that I live in--football, baseball, and baseball) become very poor investments, as they are now.  Live music shows in crowded venues are now but a memory. I expect to see that trend continuing.

 

While many would call the present crisis a calamity of the highest level, in reality it's the people that don't survive the deadly disease that is the real calamity.  People lose jobs and others don't get to do the things that they've grown accustomed to, when they're assumed to doing it.  These may be called calamities, but in comparison they look more like periodic economic disruptions that occur as a normal part of living.

 

Chris

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good thoughts behind your posting @Chris A.

Yes it's not good.

Change will come from it.

You're expecting some other massive change that was previously unexpected from the jist of what you mentioned above.

Hope so!

 

Somehow I am also expecting the regressive thinking of some in charge to stymie everything that is tried.

 

Hope that folks can see that closing everything has done it's job.

Hope they can tell it isn't over. 

Individuals have to take what has been learned and continue the new strange practices of masks and staying arms length from everyone.

And do that for only God knows how long!

 

Since the masses have proven in the past three months to be more intelligent than the overlords thought they were.

 

1] Allow that gym in NJ to not only reopen and throw out the idea of prosecuting them.

2] Enlist those guys to show the dumb dumbs in every facet of government how to responsibly reopen business.

3] DO IT!

 

Don't play cards with cousins that continually change the rules and the objective of the game!

It won't amount to anything anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...