[ExI] next county

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
Keith Henson via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] next county

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

snip

>> ....The governor has some influence on how we start school in 9 days, but
ironically? the people who may have the most direct influence are members of
the county health department, who can shut us down if we don?t pass their
inspection.  But we don?t know who they are, because they? are? not?
elected.  Think about that for a minute.  Oy vey, mercy.  Unelected
bureaucrats can overrule everything we are trying to do.

>...Ah, Spike, think about this a bit.  Do you want elected people who may
not know anything about public health making public health decisions?...

>...You are an engineer.  This is an engineering problem.

>...I think finding and getting a solution tried and accepted is a lot more
useful than worrying about relatively small distortions in the death records
of counties.

>...Keith

_______________________________________________


Keith, a comment by BillK has been rattling around in my brain, and your
comments add to my thinking.

I asked BillK how Britain was handling all this, having been hit harder by
covid than the USA (note that I am not criticizing Her Majesty the Queen
with that observation (there was damn little she coulda done (because their
international travel there is intense (even after the big annual Beatles
memorabilia auction was canceled (they still have that big international
money thing going on (which is why England is so rich (so Queen Elizabeth
couldn't have done much to stop it really (still England is such an oddity
(their queens are female there (but I digress.))))))

BillK commented that their towns and school headmasters could make their own
rules, which sounded odd until I realized it makes sense.  In any
engineering site where stuff is being built where proles could be slain if
it collapses, every lower level person on that site has the authority to
raise a red flag.  For instance, you mighta seen that epic fail that
happened at Lockheed:

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1783/was-the-noaa-n-prime-satellit
e-really-dropped-on-the-floor

Yes it really happened.  I wasn't that guy standing to the left of the door
is a friend of mine.  There was universal agreement after the satellite hit
the floor: Um... I don't think that was supposed to happen.

After that unplanned event, a bunch of safety rules were changed, which
empowered every person in that cleanroom, from the crane operator (who
already had the authority) down thru guys like me, whose job it is to empty
the waste baskets and scrape the gum off the floor.  Any person who sees
anything that can raise a red flag and stop everything until that person's
concerns are met.  We haven't dropped a single multi-million dollar
satellite on the floor since then.

After I read BillK's comment, I realized they have a system that is
analogous to that in a way.  Their headmasters are (I think) analogous to
what we would call a principal (the person who makes the final call on-site
on whether something is safe (who is herself often an older, perhaps wiser
person (which means higher personal risk should she catch something.)))  

We are developing something similar here, for similar reasons: school
principals dang well should have the authority to raise a red flag.  Every
school is different.  In our town we have only one high school, and we have
skerjillions of hard-charging Indian people cramming into local homes and
apartments near the Tesla plant, eager to learn how to build electric cars,
so India doesn't repeat China's mistakes (Indians are rather fond of
breathing.)  Result: we have an example of a high school which is so packed,
we could go to double shifts and STILL not meet the social distancing
requirements, never mind the fortunate few who get to break those rules.
That is a case where a principal dang sure should be able to raise a red
flag before the satellite comes crashing down like Dorothy's house on the
Wicked Witch of the East (note: no actual feet were found sticking out from
under the prematurely de-orbited satellite in the link above.)

So England is right after all.  That female queen still blows my mind, but
hey, their country, their rules.

spike

spike