[NNagain] A good question - do you know how a toilet works?

[rjmcmahon]

I think these are good reminders that we're all involved here in 
essential infrastructure for many generations, and we will likely go to 
our graves per Thomas Grey's Elegy

THE EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
        A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
        And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
        Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
        He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
        Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
        The bosom of his Father and his God.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard

Bob
> That is a really beautiful selection. In my case highly influential on
> me were reading Ed Bernay's book on "public relations", Chomsky's
> "Manufacturing Consent", and "The medium is the massage." Buckminster
> Fullers enthusiasm for the future, and "Spaceship earth", also had a
> big influence on me.
> 
> In terms of environmental disasters, "Building Six", by Willard Randal
> had merit, as did "silent spring", and "unsafe at any speed". In
> contrast, "safe at any speed", by Larry Niven, is worth reading also,
> and shorter!  I do not know of a good book on the Superfund cleanup
> story, but I remember how the Clean Air act ultimately made it
> possible to view philadelphia from the other side of the George
> Washington Bridge.
> 
> On Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 12:40 PM rjmcmahon <rjmcmahon at rjmcmahon.com> 
> wrote:
>> 
>> Some books I found worth reading
>> 
>> https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416833
>> 
>> Eden on the Charles
>> The Making of Boston
>> Michael Rawson
>> 
>> Eden on the Charles explores how Bostonians channeled country lakes
>> through miles of pipeline to provide clean water; dredged the ocean to
>> deepen the harbor; filled tidal flats and covered the peninsula with
>> houses, shops, and factories; and created a metropolitan system of 
>> parks
>> and greenways, facilitating the conversion of fields into suburbs. The
>> book shows how, in Boston, different class and ethnic groups brought
>> rival ideas of nature and competing visions of a “city upon a hill” to
>> the process of urbanization—and were forced to conform their goals to
>> the realities of Boston’s distinctive natural setting. The outcomes of
>> their battles for control over the city’s development were ultimately
>> recorded in the very fabric of Boston itself. In Boston’s history, we
>> find the seeds of the environmental relationships that—for better or
>> worse—have defined urban America to this day.
>> 
>> https://upittpress.org/books/9780822961475/#:~:text=Jacobson's%20Ties%20That%20Bind%20is,the%20course%20of%20two%20centuries.
>> 
>> Ties That Bind
>> By Charles Jacobson
>> 
>> In the early days of utility development, municipalities sought to 
>> shape
>> the new systems in a variety of ways even as private firms struggled 
>> to
>> retain control and fend off competition. In scope and consequence, 
>> some
>> of the battles dwarfed the contemporary one between local 
>> jurisdictions
>> and cable companies over broadband access to the Internet. In this
>> comparative historical study, Jacobson draws upon economic theory to
>> shed light on relationships between technology, market forces, and
>> problems of governance that have arisen in connection with different
>> utility networks over the past two hundred years. He focuses on water,
>> electric, and cable television utility networks and on experiences in
>> four major American cities — Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, and
>> Pittsburgh, arguing that information and transactions costs have 
>> played
>> decisive roles in determining how different ownership and regulatory
>> arrangements have functioned in different situations.Using primary
>> sources and bold conceptualizations, Jacobson begins his study by
>> examining the creation of centralized water systems in the first half 
>> of
>> the nineteenth century, moves to the building of electric utilities 
>> from
>> the 1880s to the 1980s, and concludes with an analysis of cable
>> television franchising from the 1960s to the 1980s. Ties That Bind
>> addresses highly practical questions of how to make ownership,
>> regulatory, and contracting arrangements work better and also explores
>> broader concerns about private monopoly and the role of government in
>> society.
>> 
>> Bob
>> > Sometimes I liken this debate about the internet, to 1906-era
>> > partisans arguing about the right cures for syphilis. One side,
>> > intoning with great authority: "Tinctures of mercury, yes a good dose
>> > of mercury, is just what you need... " and the other side, insisting
>> > that "Leeches, leeches will help... all you need is a  good
>> > blood-letting... and everything will be fine..."
>> >
>> > While those few that had embraced germ theory and were pointing at
>> > little squiggly things in microscopes as the root causes of so much
>> > disease, were laughed at and ignored.
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