Life on the Rails

[Admiral Yi]

If they installed one way mirrors in that hospital and charged admission, they could make a mint.

[Duque de Bragança]

Well,  Montmartre instead of banlieue like Saint-Ouen is definitively better, unless you hate bobos, hipsters and tourist traps. 
Saint-Ouen is not great, but not exactly the worst. One of Paris flea markets is there.

Interesting, as always, Sav.

[Josquius]

 

Allegedly, there is a mental hospital in Jerusalem that specializes in would-be saviours who show up as tourists - the so-called "Jerusalem Syndrome". I heard at the time that one form of treatment was group therapy (after all, if someone thinks they are Jesus, introduce them to a whole room filled with other people who think they are Jesus!) - now that would be interesting. What if the real one showed up? 

So the age old question does have some validity.
What IS the plural of jesus?

I thought this article was an interesting explanation on how California managed to achieve a projected $40 Billion in cost overruns on a $30 Billion project while it was still in the planning stage:
.....

I'll see you and raise you:  HS2 - the hundred billion pound railway vanity project to get train journey time back near to those of the Victorian era. 

Come on mongers. You're a smart guy, you shouldn't fall into that trap.
HS2 is a desperately needed project to relieve overcrowding on British railways. The speed increases are just an added bonus.

It is however being ran under the shitty British system of privatising everything and beset by nimbys and a misinformation campaign

[Eddie Teach]

So the age old question does have some validity.
What IS the plural of jesus?

It's one of those oddball ones- jedi.

[Duque de Bragança]

So the age old question does have some validity.
What IS the plural of jesus?

Easy, defective, has no plural. 
Besides, the singular latin cases are irregular, being a transcription anyways:

   Latin   Greek
nominative   Jēsūs   Iēsūs (Iēsus)   Ἰησοῦς
accusative   Jēsūm   Iēsūm (Iēsum)   Ἰησοῦν
dative   Jēsū   Iēsū   Ἰησοῦ
genitive
vocative
ablative   –

[Savonarola]

What impressed me most about the old city of Jerusalem, when I was there years ago, was the vast variety of weird religious groups I'd never heard of that were represented there - often wearing outlandish ceremonial garb.

I remember walking through a dense throng when suddenly it parted as people hastily got out of the way of a marching line of hawk-faced old bearded gentlemen, each carrying a large black staff which they brought down with a shattering crash on the flagstones in unison at each other step as they grimly marched forward.

I asked a girl who these guys were. She said "oh, those are the People of the Stick" as if I ought to know what that was. To this day, I have no idea who the "People of the Stick" were. I suppose, by the reaction of the crowd, that if you got in the way of their march, they would quickly hit you with their sticks.

That impressed me as well; though I didn't see anything as amazing as the People of the Stick.  (I see they're even too obscure for Duck Duck Go.)

Allegedly, there is a mental hospital in Jerusalem that specializes in would-be saviours who show up as tourists - the so-called "Jerusalem Syndrome". I heard at the time that one form of treatment was group therapy (after all, if someone thinks they are Jesus, introduce them to a whole room filled with other people who think they are Jesus!) - now that would be interesting. What if the real one showed up? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Shaul_Mental_Health_Center

The hospital is known in particular for its association with Jerusalem Syndrome, a condition in which the sufferer is gripped by religious delusions. The hospital sees some 50 patients a year who are diagnosed with the condition.[9] Israel psychologist Gregory Katz has said many of the patients are Pentecostals from rural parts of the United States and Scandinavia.[10] The syndrome was first diagnosed in 1993 by Yair Bar-El, a former director of the hospital.[9]

I read somewhere once that they do group therapy for people who think that they're Jesus since each one is (usually) so benevolent that they're willing to let the others suffer their delusions.  (Perhaps it says something that only a madman would let other people suffer their delusions.)

[Savonarola]

Well,  Montmartre instead of banlieue like Saint-Ouen is definitively better, unless you hate bobos, hipsters and tourist traps. 
Saint-Ouen is not great, but not exactly the worst. One of Paris flea markets is there.

Interesting, as always, Sav.

Thanks,

I certainly would much rather stay in Montmartre rather than Saint-Ouen; I was just surprised that it was so busy that we couldn't find a hotel.  Bill is going back there this week; he said it's even worse.  The cheapest approved hotel he could find was some one star one for 300 Euros a night; I'm not sure where, but he said it was even further from Saint-Ouen.

[Savonarola]

I have to go boot shopping.  The Canada Safety Association (CSA) mandates a certain standards for boots; compliant boot manufacturers put a green triangle on their boot.  My boots do meet the CSA standards, but since I bought them in the United States (and didn't specifically request a Canadian compliant boot) mine don't have a green triangle.  In the Toronto projects no one cared (probably because a lot of their own workers had gotten their boots in the United States); but for Edmonton no such luck. 

I'm going to get a pair of green triangle Doc Martens and tell everyone that I'm totally into The Tragically Hip.   

[Savonarola]

Late last year I was in Muncie, Indiana to install antennas on the roof or a locomotive.  The facility we were at (Progress Rail, a division of Caterpillar), had warning signs up for all potential hazards in the area.  This is common in all rail facilities, but even so I was surprised when I walked into the break room and saw:



The warning symbol for ionizing radiation, usually signifying a radioactive hazard.  I took me a moment to realize that a.) the facility manager had gone overboard in the signage and b.) had put up a nuclear hazard warning above all the microwave ovens.  It made it look like they were cooking their food with gamma rays and plutonium.

Non-ionizing radiation (such as what's used in your microwave oven) uses this warning when the levels are high enough to constitute a hazard:



There wasn't really a need for that symbol either, since microwaves are shielded so that they don't exceed the FCC defined limits for human exposure.

[Admiral Yi]

Facility manager has to chug a beer for false accusation.

[Savonarola]

Florida's Space Coast's primary industries are technical in nature, with both a number of defense contractors and the space industry having a large presence here.  Consequently there are a number of professional societies for engineers.  One of them, the Society of Women Engineers puts on a "Girls in engineering" type event twice a year.  A few weeks ago we got a panic call for volunteers for one of them at work.  CB and I volunteered, I'm not a woman and she's not an engineer, so I figured we had all our bases covered.

We were given the task of assistants for the Egg Bungie Drop; shown here:



(You could tell this was an engineer run event.  All the attendees had science officer blue shirts; and all the volunteers had expendable red shirts.  In fact the organizers referred to us as "Red shirts.")

That is there's an egg placed in a plastic bag and attached to the plastic frame by a chain of rubber bands.  The young ladies build the chain with a variety of rubber bands which differ in size and ability to stretch.  The challenge is to get the egg as close to the floor without breaking.

This is supposed to demonstrate potential and kinetic energy.  An object at a height has a potential energy of mgh where m is the mass of the object, g is gravitational acceleration and h is the height above ground.  An unstretched "Spring" (such as a rubber band) has a potential energy of ½ kx2 where k is the spring.  As the egg is dropped, and the spring is stretched the energy is converted from potential to kinetic acting in opposite directions. 

(This is actually much easier to solve if you look at it in terms of forces.  The egg has a downward force of mg and the spring has a force of kx as it is stretched; so when those forces are equal to one another the egg stops falling.)

The gals were between third and sixth grade (and it was our job to interest them in engineering; not send them away screaming in terror), so all but the basic physics was dispensed with.  Instead they had to design their bungees by experimentation.  Some did approach it like an engineer; they measured out the length and stretchiness and then did their drops.  Others were more interested in braiding rubber bands.  Still others were more interested in breaking eggs, repeatedly; (they might not have a future in STEM, but politics and banking look like definite career matches.)   This being an all girl event the sessions never devolved into a rubber band fight; our group leader was a bit disappointed by that.

Each one of these workshops had a leader and a number of assistants.  We knew the leader of our session by reputation.  Every year NASA holds a "Mars Mining Simulation" competition for universities.  The Florida Institute of Technology enters a team every year.  She had been on the team when they had taken second in 2013 and, more importantly, developed a revolutionary wheel design which NASA plans to use on its real mining probes on Mars.  Her graduate degree is in soils; and she helped make the artificial regolith that they're team practiced on (made from slag left over from construction sites.)  This team became notorious for reserving a conference room for the duration of spring break, moving out the furniture, and covering the floor with artificial regolith so they could practice.  The campus building supervisor was none too pleased.  We heard all about this when their adviser gave a Community Lecture talk.

In addition to the leader there were three assistants per group; CB, myself and a high school senior named Joyce.  Joyce needed a certain amount of Community Service hours to qualify for the Florida Bright Futures scholarship; and since she had participated in this program when she was young it was a good fit.  There were five sessions throughout the day; at the beginning we were all supposed to introduce ourselves.  Our group leader had worked on a zero G simulation at one time and she tried to impress the girls with that, but they were unenthusiastic.  Train engineer was similarly poorly received.  Even my wife's stint on a horse farm didn't get a rise; but they were all impressed when Joyce told them she worked at Culver's and made Frozen Custard.

The girls were instructed to give their eggs names.  Most of them had sensible everyday names like Bob or Julie.  Some went a little more fanciful, like Eggbert or Sir Eggs-a-lot.  Hermoine was still a favorite.  One girl called her egg "The Cube" and planned to start a religion around it.  Joyce told her she couldn't; "Cubism" was already taken.  At the end we had them discard the eggs.  Joyce would say a few words and sing "It's so Hard" at the egg funerals.

At the end of the day we all gossiped about the girls.  Everyone thought that grade school was too young for a cell phone, dyed hair (except the girl who dyed her hair blue with Kool-Aid) and especially for acrylic nails.  I thought it was funny that, in terms of race, the girls were a reflection of the Space Coast's middle class (about 80% white, 20% black, a quarter Hispanic between the groups and a handful of non-Hispanic Afro-Carribeans) ; except there were no Asians.  Most of the middle class professions here are technical in nature ; so there are a number of Asians here.  Apparently the Tiger Moms felt this was a waste of time for their daughters.

[Savonarola]

I was wrong yesterday, as I see from this article the California High Speed Rail project was part of the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.  I thought it was from a later voter initiative.

We got a bid for this a couple weeks ago.  It's obvious this has become a spite project intended as a middle finger to Trump.  (For one thing they couldn't have possibly consulted with a signalling firm before they sent out the bid - they requested that the train be able to go 220 MPH (350 Kmph) in areas where there are crossings; about twice the current permissible limit in the United States.) 

[Admiral Yi]

Not quite shovel ready.

[mongers]

I like your rail stories Sav, but every other night I have dreams about rail journeys, something in the current climate I'm unable to do.

So reading this thread today, means the inevitable disappointment of more railway dreams tonight. 

[Savonarola]

I had a conference call with a general telecom and supplier company this morning.  The company had been in business since the very early days of cellular and had started as a fairly small shop.  It had grown substantially by the original owner left in the 90s the remaining executives decided they needed a more sophisticated name than "Carl's Telecom", so they merged the two names together and called themselves Cartel.  Their rep said he was amazed at how many times he had been asked if the company has Colombian connections.

(The company has its headquarters in Langley; they should have called themselves "The British Columbian Cartel.")