Good servant but a bad master
I almost missed the yesterday's news
about the new tougher anti-smoking law in Ontario that bans smoking in
pretty much every enclosed public space. Good. It is simply not
possible to negotiate with junkies whose life consists of getting their
next fix. In a few years, few people will want smoking to come back,
since smoking will be the characteristic activity of smelly and ugly
underclass losers.
I have previously written more than enough of how nasty and smelly smokers are, but at least this topic gives me a segway to talk about something else. Namely, the prevention of fires. During the past few decades in pretty much all industrial countries, housefires have become significantly less common, and far fewer people die in them. The massive reduction of smoking is certainly a big factor in this. Few things are more idiotic than some smoker falling asleep with his beloved ciggy burning in his hand and eventually setting his bed and room ablaze. If the smoke fiend killed only himself, that would be fine by me and an instance of natural selection, but in his idiocy he also endangers other people.
With modern technology and materials, there is just no reason for housefires to occur at all. When I was younger, I remember being puzzled of the gas-burning stoves that Americans often seemed to use to cook food in movies, TV shows and books. In Finland, I never saw anybody having such a stove, but there were only electric ovens and stoves, which make a lot more sense to me than gas-burning stoves. Wouldn't gas-burning stoves be extremely dangerous when used indoors? Just make one mistake, the way everybody eventually will, and your apartment will fill with gas and then you will either suffocate or burn to death in an inferno. Now this is just my intuitive gut feeling, but the idea of having a pipe full of flammable gas coming into my apartment just doesn't seem that appealing to me. Electricity is clean, safe and easily controllable: give it to me over gas every day, for every possible purpose.
In the past, people just didn't seem to care very much about safety issues, since life was cheap anyways. I remember reading about some "modern" stove in the fifties that, when unused, could be put away inside the wall that it was attached to. Now, any sane person might assume that putting this stove away would automatically turn it off, since a simple switch needed for this is well in the realm of the technological skill of that era. But no. If you forget to turn off this stove and make the mistake of putting it away into the wall, it will eventually burn down your house. In my opinion, any engineer who designs something like this should be put down like a dog. For all the talk about frivolous consumer lawsuits and "don't eat this" stickers on some bucket of glue that they necessitated, designing inherently unsafe devices like this is simply inexcusable, no matter how "manly" it makes you feel. Humans should never be made to remember or do things that the machine can remember or do, period.
Come to think of it, I find it difficult to see what business even the smallest open flames should have at all in modern living. When there are no open flames such as cigarettes or candles, the probability of a housefire drops to be so small as to be pretty much insignificant. Insurance companies should start offering lower insurance rates for homes in which no open flames are ever set in any form. In the kitchen, the potential causes of fires are well known, so insurance companies could similarly start discriminating against these practices by offering cheaper policies that do not cover fires caused by somebody's overwhelming desire to eat something flambee or soaked in grease.
I have previously written more than enough of how nasty and smelly smokers are, but at least this topic gives me a segway to talk about something else. Namely, the prevention of fires. During the past few decades in pretty much all industrial countries, housefires have become significantly less common, and far fewer people die in them. The massive reduction of smoking is certainly a big factor in this. Few things are more idiotic than some smoker falling asleep with his beloved ciggy burning in his hand and eventually setting his bed and room ablaze. If the smoke fiend killed only himself, that would be fine by me and an instance of natural selection, but in his idiocy he also endangers other people.
With modern technology and materials, there is just no reason for housefires to occur at all. When I was younger, I remember being puzzled of the gas-burning stoves that Americans often seemed to use to cook food in movies, TV shows and books. In Finland, I never saw anybody having such a stove, but there were only electric ovens and stoves, which make a lot more sense to me than gas-burning stoves. Wouldn't gas-burning stoves be extremely dangerous when used indoors? Just make one mistake, the way everybody eventually will, and your apartment will fill with gas and then you will either suffocate or burn to death in an inferno. Now this is just my intuitive gut feeling, but the idea of having a pipe full of flammable gas coming into my apartment just doesn't seem that appealing to me. Electricity is clean, safe and easily controllable: give it to me over gas every day, for every possible purpose.
In the past, people just didn't seem to care very much about safety issues, since life was cheap anyways. I remember reading about some "modern" stove in the fifties that, when unused, could be put away inside the wall that it was attached to. Now, any sane person might assume that putting this stove away would automatically turn it off, since a simple switch needed for this is well in the realm of the technological skill of that era. But no. If you forget to turn off this stove and make the mistake of putting it away into the wall, it will eventually burn down your house. In my opinion, any engineer who designs something like this should be put down like a dog. For all the talk about frivolous consumer lawsuits and "don't eat this" stickers on some bucket of glue that they necessitated, designing inherently unsafe devices like this is simply inexcusable, no matter how "manly" it makes you feel. Humans should never be made to remember or do things that the machine can remember or do, period.
Come to think of it, I find it difficult to see what business even the smallest open flames should have at all in modern living. When there are no open flames such as cigarettes or candles, the probability of a housefire drops to be so small as to be pretty much insignificant. Insurance companies should start offering lower insurance rates for homes in which no open flames are ever set in any form. In the kitchen, the potential causes of fires are well known, so insurance companies could similarly start discriminating against these practices by offering cheaper policies that do not cover fires caused by somebody's overwhelming desire to eat something flambee or soaked in grease.
There are gas stoves in Finland, too, even though they are uncommon. Some people even prefer them for cooking, although I don't quite understand why (yes, you can get high heat faster with them, but cooking anything over slow fire on a gas stove is very annoying).
The kind of gas stoves that they use in the US and in Finland is in fact fairly safe, designed to turn the gas off if there is no flame. The kind that they have in Russia usually expects people to watch it, which is why you hear about gas explosions there fairly often in the news.
I don't understand what makes people like candles and fireplaces, but in any case a lot of them do. I also wish insurance companies offered cheaper insurance to those who don't.
Posted by Vera | 11:42 AM
Yakkety-yak..
Posted by Anonymous | 3:43 PM
Actually in Helsinki downtown gas stoves are pretty common. Older buildings (perhaps ones that are built before second world war?) have gas pipes coming in them. Fortunately they nowdays use natural gas which is lighter than air and get easily out of the apartment. In past they used heavier coal gas which is much more dangerous because it stays in bottom of the apartment.
Posted by Anonymous | 4:22 PM
http://www.ejpress.org/article/8142
http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2030206
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/?content_id=3612
Akateeminen vapaus ja sananvapaus saavuttaneet näemmä uuden huipun edistyksellisten riveissä.
Posted by H-Baari | 5:53 PM
Gas stoves are much easier to cook on than ordinary electric stoves. You can change the heat input to a pan quickly (say, 200 msec) by adjusting the flame. You can estimate and adjust relative input by observing the flame.
Ordinary electric stoves have a massive resistance (R*I^2) heating element, controlled by a rheostat (or sometimes a PWM). The lag between control input and heating element response is measured in minutes. There's no good way to estimate the output of the heating element. The terrible control hysteresis often forces cooks to modulate heat by moving the pan onto and off-of the element (which means you need a safe landing place for the hot pan).
Although there are fancier electric stoves (induction stoves, halogen-lamp stoves, etc.) which perform better, they are many times more costly than gas stoves. At the same time, gas costs less (per BTU or Joule) than electricity, so you can never recoup the much greater cost of a satisfactory electric stove compared to a gas stove.
Posted by Anonymous | 5:55 PM
I guess the correct word would be segue, not segway?
Now that you tackled the important issue of preventing house fires by abolishing open fire (e.g. cigarettes and candles), the next step would be to ban the most dangerous electric devices, starting with the most obvious one, i.e. television sets. After all, they do nowadays cause way more fires than candles and cigarettes do. I can't see any inherent reason why the right to live in a safer environment would somehow be superceded by someone's right to watch TV, any more than burning candles. Surely you must agree?
Posted by Anonymous | 6:04 PM
Ilkka: It is simply not possible to negotiate with junkies whose life consists of getting their next fix.
So because of tougher anti-smoking laws you probably have to deal more often with irritated junkies who haven't got their fix, since finding time and place for smoking has become more difficult. However, I think that the net result of banning smoking (if people obey the law) is positive already in the beginning, and it also makes the problem I mentioned smaller if you live and work with people who are less likely to be smokers.
Vera: I don't understand what makes people like candles and fireplaces, but in any case a lot of them do.
Perhaps it's in the genes. Those who liked to have fire near them didn't freeze to death or were less often eaten up by predators that were afraid of fire :).
Posted by Rebyk | 2:55 AM
television sets. After all, they do nowadays cause way more fires than candles and cigarettes do.
Interesting claim. I am not saying that it is false, but do you have a source?
I can't see any inherent reason why the right to live in a safer environment would somehow be superceded by someone's right to watch TV, any more than burning candles.
Candles have cheap and effective safe substitutes, but televisions do not.
Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen | 9:21 AM
Why not raise the smoking age to 21 like alchohol? It would make it much harder for highschoolers to get cigarettes.
We can also hope that the nicotine vaccine works and has few side effects.
I'm a smoker, and I hate smoke and smoking.
Rob
Posted by Anonymous | 11:19 AM
I live in America. When I was young, we lived in a really old house with an old gas stove. You needed a match to start it, and I'm not sure, but I don't think it's like the new ones, which are designed to shut off when the flame goes out.
When I was six years old, there was a fire in the house. It had nothing to do with the stove, however, or any open flame. It was, in fact, started by an incandescent light bulb. Incandescent light bulbs generate a lot of heat.
After googling "causes of house fires," I found the Maryland Red Cross, which states "Faulty appliances/wiring cause the greatest number of house fires." I think this means my experience was typical.
Posted by Anonymous | 1:47 AM
Why cannot those junkies just use snus and fill the desire to suck by using a pacifier?
Posted by Anonymous | 1:30 PM