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From: William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: (ReacTor) Five SFF Books Featuring Frigid, Icy Worlds
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2024 17:22:21 -0400
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WolfFan wrote:
> On Jul 17, 2024, William Hyde wrote
> (in article <v7987i$2088o$1@dont-email.me>):
> 
>> Paul S Person wrote:
>>> On Tue, 16 Jul 2024 19:47:12 -0600, John Savard
>>> <quadibloc@servername.invalid>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:15:08 -0000 (UTC), jdnicoll@panix.com (James
>>>> Nicoll) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Five SFF Books Featuring Frigid, Icy Worlds
>>>>>
>>>>> Celebrate the coldest summer of the rest of your life with some
>>>>> frosty SF and fantasy novels!
>>>>>
>>>>> https://reactormag.com/five-sff-books-featuring-frigid-icy-worlds/
>>>>
>>>> I could comment that your posting is itself a dystopian SF story,
>>>> about a world where giant oil companies have managed to control the
>>>> political system and hypnotize the populace so as to prevent any
>>>> effective response to global warming...
>>>>
>>>> if it weren't for the fact that it seems like calling that scenario
>>>> "fiction" has already proven to be over-optimistic.
>>>
>>> One of the two theories I have seen on why the Texas electrical system
>>> died again (if that actually happened;
>>
>> According to news stories I have seen, some parts of Texas are not
>> scheduled to regain power until July 19.
>>
>> When I lived in College Station, TX, I experienced more power outages
>> per unit time than I have anywhere else (the situation here is
>> deteriorating, though) but it was never gone for more than a few hours.
>>
>> William Hyde
> 
> Here in Deepest South Florida, we have record-setting high temps every few
> days. FPL lives up to its name (Frequent Power Loss) or its nickname (Florida
> Flicker and Flash). My first job was for an electric utility in Jamaica.
> Heads would have rolled if we had even half as many power outages as FPL.
> After Hurricane Gilbert, crews from various utilities came to help restore
> power. We found that we had to follow around behind the FPL crews and, if
> necessary, fix their fixes. The guys from Puerto Rico and Georgia and the
> Carolinas were pretty good. And we had some Royal Navy and Royal Engineers
> who were superb. FPL ranged from competent to somewhat less than competent.

I don't know if your problem is like ours, which seems to be simple 
nepotism.

When the current provincial government was elected, the premier tried to 
  put an elderly family friend in as head of the Ontario Provincial 
Police.  He was a policeman of some rank, but it would be  the 
equivalent of promoting a colonel to full general. At age 72.

He then tried to hire two children of close friends and advisors to 
trade posts in NY and London at 140,000 and 160,000 k per year. They
were, of course, without any reasonable qualification for these 
lucrative posts.

And these were the cases prominent enough to make the news.  Who knows 
what is going on in less public jobs?

In the Walkerton fiasco a competent drunk hired a couple of incompetent 
drunks to work with him (presumably so his co-workers wouldn't object to 
his drinking on the job).  When he died, one of them was hired in his 
place by someone who didn't bother to examine the drunk's utter lack of 
credentials.

The media have not reported on any incompetence as a cause for the 
explosion of downtown Wheatley a couple of years ago.  I wonder, though. 
  It's not like small towns in Ontario blow up all that often.

I've always thought that "The Inspector General" is an amusing but 
unrealistic story.  People won't just forget how to maintain their 
technology, will then?


William Hyde