Thursday, August 23, 2012

Oddbits

From the "How did that seem like a good idea?" file, William Everett Alemar was spotted running near a Martinsburg, WV, school at 7:30 am wearing/carrying this:

Needless to say, police were called. The guns are trainers, although folks can be excused for not noticing that immediately as the guy ran by.  He's been charged with various offenses. Turns out he was drunk out of his gourd. Unfortunately, we still don't have penalties for stupid.  Full story here

And then from the "You think we aren't too interconnected for safety?" file, there's the story of the train derailment in Ellicott City, outside Baltimore the other night. Tragically, two young women were killed when the cars dumped tons of coal on them as it derailed.


Here's the thing - that derailment on the east side of Maryland shut down our local DMV here in West Virginia.  A Verizon cable was affected, which in turn shut down those dependent on it.  Moral of the story is that we have become networked in ways we don't even think about and we need to really, really understand that we need to be able to cope in a scenario in which that network is down.

10 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Communications down = computers down = banks, stores, restaurants down = we need to figure out something better than smoke signals....

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    2. Yeah, I read a book on this years ago. We might have technolgized(made that up) ourselves into a bit of a pickle.

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  2. There are times when I wonder whether a loss of connectivity wouldn't be a good thing - it hampers the authorities as much as anyone else. Come the apocalypse, we're gonna need mobility, despite the gummint's desire to lock everything down. If they can't communicate ... well, you do the math.

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    Replies
    1. Unfortunately the gummint probably is working on communication devices that we don't have.

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  3. Strange, unless he was 'training' for combat runs... Which I doubt!

    On the other, I wouldn't be surprised to see this 'happen' in mid-late Oct where the net suddenly starts having 'problems'... Just sayin.

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    Replies
    1. He said he was training. But he was also really drunk.

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  4. If you'll send me an email address I'll forward a pdf for Unintended.

    emitt1 at comcast dot net

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  5. whoa dude. totally the butterfly effect.
    apologies PH, beerblogging again. :-)
    More to the point, an EMP event would put us back in the stone age in a heartbeat.
    Keep your powder dry.

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  6. You can't fix stupid. I'm afraid we may have a whole 'nother reality show in the future "Tweets sent by people who were drunk tweeting just before. . . "

    A tragedy indeed for the families, but this next generation is so tied to the internet and their video games, no one has a lick of common sense.

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