licentious radio

Tuesday, January 14, 2003
[7:24:25 PM]

Ryan cleared Illinois' death row. This is a victory for justice. Idiots calling themselves "Christian" will no doubt disagree. Whom would Jesus execute?

Compassion, people. Fix the problem *before* people commit crimes. We know how to do that. It's called prosperity.

But the interesting thing about the article in San Francisco's Hearst paper is that they couldn't bring themselves to mention Ryan is a Republican. They mentioned the corruption without explaining it. They just left out the politician's party. Of course it's practically redundant: corrupt politicians, like racists, hate mongers (and the rest of the axis of evil), are just about all Republicans, like the owners of the Hearst chain.

[9:43:36 AM]
I can always tell when CalTrain (the local commuter rail) is killing people: they start using their "whistles" like blasters.

A train driver is an engineer, and the train horn is a whistle.

I'm sympathetic -- in principle -- to the engineers. It's got to be horrible to run over someone with a diesel locomotive. Engineers have the equivalent of three buttons: go, stop, and loud noise. Only the stop button doesn't work -- in time to keep from creaming someone.

A couple of years ago, it was really awful. They killed 17 people in one year. The engineers were using their blasters like first strike weapons, and the organization was too incompetent to prevent it.

See, here's why I'm only sympathetic in principle: while I understand the impulse to blast, anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that louder/longer/more-frequent blasting kills.

1) If blasters are always on max, there's no way to tell when there's actual danger.

2) Blasters on max is dangerous for the neighborhood. It drives people crazy. In their distraction, they are less safety conscious. It also, literally, stuns people. I was once crossing a street about twenty yards from the right-of-way when the blaster was so loud I was completely stunned and disoriented. If an SUV had been coming, I wouldn't have noticed until I was sliding across the pavement.

3) Blasters on max provokes suicides. The suicides are not evenly distributed over time. They clump. I propose that a large part of the explanation is that incessant, dangerous, over-use of CalTrain blasters makes people want to retaliate, and anyone who is looking for a quick exit will step in front of a train to punish the engineers.

4) Blasters on max increases the likelihood of killing children. Engineers are often even more aggressive with their blasters when children are present. Again, it's easy to understand the motivation. Some children have played "chicken" with trains, and some of those have been killed. But the max-blast tactic increases the death toll. Children can tell when they are being disrespected. Excessive blasting provokes them. You get more children playing chicken. Then the extreme use of the blaster when children are playing chicken stuns them physically, and makes it more likely they will be killed. Engineers must be trained to follow rules that prevent engineers from falling into games with children.

A couple of years ago, CalTrain killed so many people that the organization apparently brought some sanity to the use of blasters. Last year, they hardly killed anyone. This year, after a suicide, many engineers have returned to their max-blasting ways, and now Caltrain has killed four people in two weeks.

Engineers should lay off the blasters, and the organization should establish rules and an ongoing education program to make sure engineers do the right thing.