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Wednesday reading, fish 'n' birds, and messages on trucks
In Aventura en el Amazonas both Mayam and Nashi are learning about the chain of life--Mayam when her mother talks to her about piranhas and other carnivorous fish, and Nashi when he sees a cayman gobble up a roseate spoonbill.
"Some fish feed on others," their mother tells Mayam, who is feeling like it would be good to get rid of some of the more marauding of the the carnivorous fish. "It's like a staircase: if you take away one step, all of it comes crashing down."
And
"Nature knows how to do its thing, even if at first we don't understand" says their father to Nashi.
I didn't see a roseate spoonbill, but I did see a harpy eagle, with its fierce, strange face. (The one I saw looked like the one on the right--photo from the Miami zoo's Harpy Eagle Project)
And I didn't fish for piranhas, but I had some kind of carnivorous fish one meal--and I saw a truly gigantic fish in the market. (It's a bit daunting--it's behind a cut)
Yesterday I took Little Springtime and her fiancée to see my father, and during the drive, I passed a truck with a message on the back of its trailer: "Don't like trucks? Buy less stuff!"
Very strange! The driver feels upset about other drivers, presumably car drivers, not "liking" trucks? But the driver is in a great huge 18-wheeler--why should they fuss about the opinions of car drivers? How can it possibly affect them? (Where are they hearing all this negativity?) I'm pretty neutral on trucks, but my impression is that people who feel negatively about them are mainly expressing nervousness about driving near them--or are complaining about bad driving on the part of the trucks--not, y'know, saying trucks are evil or that trucks should disappear, which is kind of what the driver's message seemed to imply.
"Buy less stuff" is disingenuous when all sorts of necessities travel by truck, but okay, let's say people could truly buy less stuff ... then the driver of the truck might lose their job? So on that level too the message was a head scratcher.
"Some fish feed on others," their mother tells Mayam, who is feeling like it would be good to get rid of some of the more marauding of the the carnivorous fish. "It's like a staircase: if you take away one step, all of it comes crashing down."
And
"Nature knows how to do its thing, even if at first we don't understand" says their father to Nashi.
I didn't see a roseate spoonbill, but I did see a harpy eagle, with its fierce, strange face. (The one I saw looked like the one on the right--photo from the Miami zoo's Harpy Eagle Project)
And I didn't fish for piranhas, but I had some kind of carnivorous fish one meal--and I saw a truly gigantic fish in the market. (It's a bit daunting--it's behind a cut)
Yesterday I took Little Springtime and her fiancée to see my father, and during the drive, I passed a truck with a message on the back of its trailer: "Don't like trucks? Buy less stuff!"
Very strange! The driver feels upset about other drivers, presumably car drivers, not "liking" trucks? But the driver is in a great huge 18-wheeler--why should they fuss about the opinions of car drivers? How can it possibly affect them? (Where are they hearing all this negativity?) I'm pretty neutral on trucks, but my impression is that people who feel negatively about them are mainly expressing nervousness about driving near them--or are complaining about bad driving on the part of the trucks--not, y'know, saying trucks are evil or that trucks should disappear, which is kind of what the driver's message seemed to imply.
"Buy less stuff" is disingenuous when all sorts of necessities travel by truck, but okay, let's say people could truly buy less stuff ... then the driver of the truck might lose their job? So on that level too the message was a head scratcher.
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- rail transport causes much less carbon emissions for long distance freight than trucks do
- long distance truck driving has a high level of deaths in accidents, both for truck drivers and for drivers around them.
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basically VERY VERY VERY thick slabs of concrete that won't crack under the weight of a massive fully loaded freight truck; a crane; and a side section of railway line seperate from but connected to the main railway line -
which allow sea containers to be lifted off a truck and put directly onto a train without any need for manual handling or unpacking.
This means that you can use a truck for local transport (farm to train station; iron ore mine to train station), but a train for long distance transport (train station to city; or train station to international sea port)
One of the main barriers to using trains is the need to unpack trucks and repack onto the train - intermodal terminals get around this.
They're not cheap - $1 million to $2 million Australian each - but they pay for themselves quite quickly through
- reduced freight costs
- reduced carbon emissions
- reduced road maintenance costs (heavy freight trucks are hell on the wear-and-tear on roads compared to small passenger vehicles)
- reduced truck accidents (healthcare costs, long term disability costs)
I'm no longer working for this Dept, but I'd LOVE to see more of these built worldwide. They're such a good investment into economic benefits, social benefits, and environmental benefits.
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And I'm like yeah, truckers are overworked, understaffed, and underpaid, and the unions should be more helpful on that, as soon as possible, please. But what truckers are not, in my experience at least, but also from what I know of the U.S. culture in general, though of course there may be divergent subgroups-- what truckers are not is generally vilified. Especially not to the point where that would be an even vaguely reasonable reaction.
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And I do think that drivers of cars, pickups, vans, motorcycles, et al, often think and talk of trucks on highways they're traveling as irritating obstacles to be circumnavigated when possible.
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I do think drivers of non 18-wheelers do feel daunted by 18-wheelers going at speed--as well they should. That's a lot of vehicle and a lot of speed. But I don't think it translates into hate for trucks? I think even if people find themselves thinking "Man, I hate trucks, they're so dangerous on the highway," if you asked, they'd back away from the "hate" part of it. But I could be wrong!
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(And I think that the proportion of truckers who are Trumpists is relatively high, and cockeyed sense of being persecuted seems endemic among Trumpists.)
So I agree, and should have made clear, that I think you’re right about the aggressiveness being ill-merited.
I think we’re quite a long way from Smoky and the Bandit or the peculiarly loathesome “Teddy Bear,” though.
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Kind of as if you saw a sticker saying "Don't like bluebirds? Then don't build all those bluebird houses!!!" ... Well, maybe that's overselling the innocuousness or beloved-ness of truckers, but I felt a similar ??? when first reading the sticker.
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Devourings and speculation about truckers
(When he was three, Chun Woo told us Three Terrifying Stories:
1. There was a Great Big Shark!
2. There was Nile Crocodile!
3. There was a Big Shell full of Hot Water!
It was very clear that that last story was Most Terrifying Ever.)
As for truckers: Much like you, I didn't give them much thought after the age of about five, until I was regularly driving infant Chun Woo across the breadth of Wyoming, stopping at truck stops for gas, diaper changes, and so forth. Pre Chun Woo I hadn't grasped how small US persons tend to go through a transportation stage, in which fascination with Thomas the Tank Engine and trains go along with interest in trucks. So Chun Woo loved seeing truck drivers, and eventually having few-words conversations with them. One of them gave Chun Woo some small thing I can't recall, and told me in a very heartfelt way, "Toddlers are the best friends we truckers have."
And I thought then about the long isolations of truck drivers, how contracts have over time(*) decreased remuneration while shipper speed requirements and government regulations limiting continuous drive time(**) have straitened.
So I can understand truckers feeling separate from a lot of the US human world-- and that as well as hard work for less and less pay can lead to a feeling of being held in hatred or contempt.
* Since 1980, in the years in which unions have been vilified and weakened, and the public has been brought to think of labor as a class, as a bunch of mendicants.
** This regulation is apparently actually pretty strictly enforced, and penalties are too great for the individual truckers who wind up paying them to be fast and loose with.
Also: harpy eagles
Re: Also: harpy eagles
Re: Devourings and speculation about truckers
And I do understand how being made to work more and more for less and less could make them feel undervalued, and how that could translate to feeling hated. It's a shame, though, since as far as I can tell that's not the way your average citizen does actually feel, and it's not your average citizen who's cutting the wages or increasing the work load (though you could say with Amazon it's the citizenry that's motivating the corporation to do those things). So it feels like it's coming out fighting to an audience that's not your actual enemy.
Re: Devourings and speculation about truckers
Re: Devourings and speculation about truckers