Maybe I'm just paraniod, but there have been alot of plants blowing up lately! Tried to cut and paste and it didn't work. Can someone paste the article?

link is www.cnn.com/US/9902/20/BC-EXPLOSION.reut/

Thanks, R

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-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), February 20, 1999

Answers

are these explosions due to y2k testing?

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 20, 1999.

Explosion Hits Pa. Industrial Park

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - An explosion tore through an industrial park building Friday night, injuring at least 10 people and spewing a gas cloud over the area. At least four people were unaccounted for.

People two miles from the building at the Lehigh Valley Airport Industrial Park reported seeing a large blue flash.

``I was working on my computer and I felt a big boom and the whole house shook and the windows sounded like a big gust of wind was coming in,'' said Tracy Miklus, who lives about five miles from the site.

``We looked outside and we could see a big cloud just going over the city, and on the (police) scanner they said. `Everybody stay inside' because they didn't know what it was.''

It was not immediately known what caused the explosion at the Concept Sciences Inc. building.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 20, 1999.

How or why is this Y2K related? When 4 plants blow up due to testing of y2k remediation, then I might read the story. Sorry articles like these are pointless.

-- Jim P.E. (outstrip@hotmail.com), February 20, 1999.

For what it's worth, Dave Koster posted this note to csy2k:

"Testing gone haywire.

No doubt about it. Y2K

Already called. They confirmed."

This was in reference to the Allentown explosion.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), February 20, 1999.

Flint: I know your an old timer here and I,ve only been here for a month, but who is Dave Kostner and is there a link to verify that the bang was due to y2k testing?

-- Jim P.E. (outstrip@hotmail.com), February 20, 1999.

That's right, it came from csy2k.

I think the point is that there seems to be more and more of this sort of thing lately - the Ford factory recently, the outage in San Francisco etc.

The poster said he rang the company who confirmed that it was y2k related.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), February 20, 1999.

We recently had a fertilizer plant explosion in Dixon, CA, killing one worker. And wasn't there a recent plant explosion at General Motors last month? I have a friend who works at a well known chemical plant who claims that his plant is no where near being Y2K compliant and he's worried about failures.

-- kaboom (kaboom@kaboom.com), February 20, 1999.

Also the power plant in AL (?) last week.

Andy or Flint - can you provide the link to Kostner's post at csy2k?

Thanks,

R

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), February 20, 1999.

Now, you're not gonna believe this coming from one of the certified resident paranoid wackos but,

There is also the Red Pickup Truck phenomenon. It works like this. You haven't noticed many red pickup truck around. You go out and buy one. One your way home it seems like every *third* vehicle is a Red Pickup Truck. The number of red pickup trucks hasn't changed but your perception of the frequency has because you are now noticing something you hadn't before.

The ol Bear is as "pessimistic" as anyone hereabouts. But he does try to test the data *and* the enviornment in which he makes decisions.

None of this is to agree or disagree with the subject of this thread. Just to point out what it MIGHT be.

-- Greybear, never had a red pickup truck in my whole life.

- Got Transportation?

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 20, 1999.

Greybear,

Your Red Pickup Truck metaphor is probably a more memorable way to characterize what is happening than a literal description.

But for those who prefer a literal description to a metaphor, I would say that what will be leading many people to a perception that various kinds of events, in this case explosions, are occurring more often recently than previously is simply the process that is occuring on this forum and on many others: people with similar interests are communicating more rapidly and with more other people who share those interests. This increase in speed and breadth of communication via the internet has been, and will continue to be, vastly adding to the data that each of us has available as compared to the data available on the tube "news" programs as well as print media.

Also, fora such as this enable rapid commentary about recent events, by a much wider variety of people, than do "traditional" media.

So, many events, as well as more varied interpretations of such events, will come to our attention than previously would have without the web.

So much for a literal description. I think the metaphor was more fun. :-)

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), February 20, 1999.

Jerry:

A couple more points to add to your literal explanation:

1) A forum like this has a very narrow focus, so you read here about events heavily biased toward the focus of the forum. This is far from a balanced perspective.

2) Traditional news media must be able to document their material. Here, anyone can post anything. Be careful that vague impressions don't transmogrify into (what you want to be) reality.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), February 20, 1999.

Excellent points, Flint.

While you and I have come to (pretty much) diametrically opposed views, that does not stop me from seeing and agreed with the wisdom that shoud be propounded here.

There is at the heart of all I believe the fundamental belief that each and every person HAS TO make up their OWN minds and accept responsibility for themselves. Your advice is good on this point.

I get pretty AynRandian at the drop of a hat but can't go all the way to her end conclustions.

-- Greybear

- Got Opinions?

ps, it still facinates me that those (loosely termed) DGIs here have read and studied much of the same material as the hard-core GIs and are lead to such opposite conclusions. More on this later.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), February 20, 1999.

Interesting little site, you may want to Y2K nose around. -- Diane

United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB)

http://www.chemsafety.gov/

Chemical Safety Board Reviews First Year of Operation

... Modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the CSB is a non-regulatory scientific organization responsible for finding ways to prevent or minimize the effects of chemical accidents at industrial and commercial facilities and in transport. ...

... Convened a mid-December expert meeting that focused on the risk of accidents caused by the Year 2000 (Y2K) technology problem among those who manufacture, use and transport chemicals in the United States. ...

http://www.csb.gov/ 1999/news/csb1998.htm

John Koskinen Gives Chemical Safety Experts Picture of Optimism, Concern ...

[Lots of Real Audio speech links & MS Powerpoint presentations]

... Washington, D.C. -- The Chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, John A. Koskinen, told chemical safety experts assembled in Washington, D.C. (on Friday, Dec. 18) that he expects electric power distribution grids, telecommunications systems, and banking networks in the United States will largely perform as designed in the face of the Year 2000 (Y2K) technology problem ...

http:// www.chemsafety.gov/1999/news/n9907.htm

... A unique characteristic of those attending the meeting was, unlike many other Y2K gatherings, attendees represented a diverse group of industries and organizations. Organizations attending included major corporations, labor unions, federal and state safety and regulatory agencies, environmental regulators and interest groups, academic and research bodies, the U.S. Senate, and others.  ...

Chemlinks (on the WWW)

http://chemsafety.gov/cgi-shl/cshib/chemlinks_index.cfm

INTERNATIONAL CHEMICAL SAFETY ADVISORY ON Y2K
issued by The Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety

... Unless properly addressed, the Y2K problem poses significant world-wide chemical safety problems.

... Chemical safety concerns include complete failure of safety- related systems (control and protection), malfunctions of embedded microprocessors in equipment, and potential failure to respond correctly to program instructions.

http:// www.who.int/ifcs/y2k/y2k-adv-en.htm

Some interesting links at ... OECD's Work on Chemical Accidents: Y2K Issues:

http://www.oecd.org/ ehs/y2k/index.htm

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), February 20, 1999.

GReYBEAR!!!! how is it THAT YOU KNoW ABOUT DieTERs ReD PIC KUP TrUCK???? wHo HAS SPOKEN???? Wil you infoRm DietER SO THAST DIEtER MAY SILENCE THE INFiDEL???? GooD MORNING!!!!!!

-- Dieter (questions@toask.com), February 20, 1999.

Flint, "1) A forum like this has a very narrow focus, so you read here about events heavily biased toward the focus of the forum. This is far from a balanced perspective." It may be useful to distinguish between the principal subject matter of the forum, on the one hand, and the range of opinions of the posters regarding that subject matter. The principal subject matter of this forum, potential effects of Y2K date related computer errors, may be regarded as a narrow focus, but as some have noticed, pursuit of that subject leads to a broader study of economics, technology, government policy, and international trade, than most topics that might be characterized as being of narrow focus. As for the range of opinions, i.e. the bias, of the posters here, they seem to cover the spectrum, which is not to say that all parts of the spectrum are expounded by similar numbers of proponents. In all cases, proponents of various opinions have the option of citing their sources, some of which may be web sites of traditional "news" media, or web sites of original sources. "2) Traditional news media must be able to document their material." Pardon my while I pick myself up off the floor. :-) Aside from the innumerable "leaks" from anonymous sources close to (fill in the blanks) to which we were treated for much of last year, a more common way for traditional "news" media to disort a story is simply amply to report "sources" propounding the favored view, and provide little or no coverage of alternate views. With regard to some topics, including Y2K, the distortion sometimes is performed by selecting "sources" who will appear to viewers or readers as being inherently "wacko", and then to imply that others with even partially similar views are probably also wacko. There are, of course, other techniques used in traditional "news" media to encourage preferred opinions. "Here, anyone can post anything. Be careful that vague impressions don't transmogrify into (what you want to be) reality." Absolutely! But here, unlike most of the traditional "news" media, others can promptly point out flaws in people's positions without trying either to win a letter to the editor lottery, or getting to dial the call in show at just the right moment to get through (and then risk being cut of in mid sentence). Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), February 20, 1999.

Flint,

"1) A forum like this has a very narrow focus, so you read here about events heavily biased toward the focus of the forum. This is far from a balanced perspective."

It may be useful to distinguish between the principal subject matter of the forum, on the one hand, and the range of opinions of the posters regarding that subject matter.

The principal subject matter of this forum, potential effects of Y2K date related computer errors, may be regarded as a narrow focus, but as some have noticed, pursuit of that subject leads to a broader study of economics, technology, government policy, and international trade, than most topics that might be characterized as being of narrow focus.

As for the range of opinions, i.e. the bias, of the posters here, they seem to cover the spectrum, which is not to say that all parts of the spectrum are expounded by similar numbers of proponents. In all cases, proponents of various opinions have the option of citing their sources, some of which may be web sites of traditional "news" media, or web sites of original sources.

"2) Traditional news media must be able to document their material."

Pardon my while I pick myself up off the floor. :-) Aside from the innumerable "leaks" from anonymous sources close to (fill in the blanks) to which we were treated for much of last year, a more common way for traditional "news" media to disort a story is simply amply to report "sources" propounding the favored view, and provide little or no coverage of alternate views. With regard to some topics, including Y2K, the distortion sometimes is performed by selecting "sources" who will appear to viewers or readers as being inherently "wacko", and then to imply that others with even partially similar views are probably also wacko. There are, of course, other techniques used in traditional "news" media to encourage preferred opinions.

"Here, anyone can post anything. Be careful that vague impressions don't transmogrify into (what you want to be) reality."

Absolutely! But here, unlike most of the traditional "news" media, others can promptly point out flaws in people's positions without trying either to win a letter to the editor lottery, or getting to dial the call in show at just the right moment to get through (and then risk being cut of in mid sentence).

Jerry P.S. Pardon the loss of paragraphs in the previous post.

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), February 20, 1999.

Jerry:

Sometimes I agree with what you're saying but most of the time I just can't. The self-administered survey put this group well up in the abandon-all-hope range, and most postings and discussions of them only underscore this.

We hardly "study economics, technology, government policy, and international trade". Economic discussions are limited largely to how the markets will collapse, and how everything going wrong will cause everything else to go wrong. Technological expertise is derided, since those who possess it cannot see the big picture, and besides it's them as caused this problem to begin with. Government policy is held to be strictly a matter of telling us lies in the interests of controlling our minds and bodies and confiscating our guns. If you can find any discussion of international trade beyond the unshakeable conviction that it's soon to be extinct due to everyone else's failure to take y2k seriously enough, you must read this forum more extensively than I do.

There are two flavors of dissidents in this chorus of dismay. The reasonable ones are challenged to "prove" the future, and if they can't, then we happily conclude that it's disaster after all. The unreasonable ones (who write in occasionally to urge us to "get a grip") are derided as trolls.

So what we are is a bunch of worrywarts comfortably reassuring one another that our worries are justified, non-believers need not apply, we know just what's coming, we tell each other every day so it must be true. We Get It. "They" don't.

On the internet, you can find affirmation of whatever prejudice you cherish. It's warm and fuzzy. Welcome to our reality.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), February 20, 1999.

Speaking of red pickup trucks, I followed one to town today, it was a red 1957 Chevrolet, dual exhaust, wooden tail gate and in the center of the tail gate in black letters it said "Little Red Pickup Truck." I would never had known that if it hadn't of said so.

-- toyo (toyo@varoom.com), February 20, 1999.

I love lists and stats. Anybody made up a list yet of recent explosions, and confirmed the cause. Interesting????

-- gilda jessie (jess@listbot.com), February 20, 1999.

The San Francisco outage was not NOT y2k. Workers were completing repairs, and forgot to re attach the grounding wire. This is what was reported in the very early stages of the situation, and later was confirmed that the problem was not Y2K.

However, the earlier post about Allentown that said that (somebody) had called, and it was confirmed that it was Y2K testing related....I just saw the news footage on that and would like to know how and where the man called....the place is flattened...not a wall to hang a telephone onto.

BTW...Mt Etna just had a small explosion...are they testing there, too?

-- Mary P. (CAgdma@home.com), February 20, 1999.

Tectonic plate movement is heavily date-dependent...all those big masses of rock have to be coordinated carefully, otherwise they get confused when they should move where, pressures build, BOOM!....

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), February 20, 1999.

Flint,

I have noticed several surveys of participants in this forum, but none to which responses were sufficient to serve as a basis for estimating the extent to which "this group", or any approximatly quantifiable fraction of it, may have any particular view of Y2K. From the postings here it seems clear that most posters are of the opinion that it would be prudent to prepare for economic dislocations of inderminate magnitude and duration. It also seems clear that those posters here who do share preparatory inclinations, exhibit great variety in their opinions of the probability, the severity, and the duration, of potential Y2K problems.

Rather than spending the time to attempt to disect each of the several generalizations in your post, let me simply list a few items for your consideration.

Some posters are not polite to some other posters. This is unpleasant, but it does not prevent others from learning what they might from the information posted.

Many posters exhibit much skepticism of self serving announcements from a variety of organizations. If you are not already aware that this attribute is not limited to Y2K preparers, my suggestion that it is not will be pointless.

One important part of economics is the study of some kinds of unintended consequences of actions, particulary of indirect unintended consequences of actions. Let me mention in passing that the consequences of actions are entirely independent of the intentions or motives of said actions. There are, of course, people who may imagine that people usually foresee and intend the consequnces of their actions. Such views are very often mistaken, but that will not prevent people from holding such views.

If you see only two flavors of dissidents in this forum, so be it. I see as many dissidents as I see posters. I see a great deal of mutual support among people who have different opinions about different aspects of the principal subject matter of this forum. Among those who are of the opinion that preparing is prudent, I see considerable skepticism of posts that suggest that preparation is pointless. That does not lead me to regard all preparers as concurring in all pertinent opinions.

Regarding your comments cautioning against mutual assured delusions, let me refer to a posting at another site by a little outfit that goes by the name of General Motors. It seems that the management of that company, among others, has a bit of skepticism regarding self serving announcements by some of their suppliers. I don't personally know how they came by that skepticism, but they seem to be quite serious about it. So serious, in fact, that in their 3rd quarter 1998 10Q filed with the SEC, they mentioned:

"In addition, GM has initiated its own review of suppliers considered to be critical to GM's operations, including approximately 1,650 on-site assessments to date."

Now, are the folks at General Motors a bunch of worrywarts reassuring each other that their worries are justified? Or are they, perhaps, being prudent? In either case, it seems that they get to do on-site assessments of some of their critical suppliers. I would guess that most folks who post on this forum do not get to do on-site assessments of such of their critical supplies as their local power utility. Not that they would know what or how to assess. But, it should not surprise you if they are not strongly reassured by vague press releases, or NERC's way of compiling statistics, or assurances by anonymous posters. If a power company's lawyers do not want boldy to go where no one has gone before, tough. Let them find someone who can think out of the box.

Someone recently posted that skeptics might check with the manufacturers of the equipment used by power companies. That would seem to be a nice thing to do, if (!) power companies would publish what equipment they use: make, model, software or firmware level, etc. But while that might be a nice start, it would address only one aspect of the interdependencies of power provision. There are also, for example, possible Y2K problems with railroads, coal mining, pipelines, oil refineries, natural gas production, etc. It is not merely a question of embedded systems (or more accurately, process controls, which go beyond embedded systems).

Yes, you can find affirmation for whatever prejudice you cherish, but that problem has been around for millennia, and is not indigenous either to the internet or to Y2K. So too, vague, calming assurances, as well as anonymous assurances, have been around for millennia, and are not at all peculiar to Y2K concerns. If there is any reason that such assurances should suddenly be taken at face value, I have not seen it.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), February 21, 1999.