One day (in the late 90's), a suit from headquarters came to see us and asked the same kind of question. The N4 nuclear plant series were the first that were designed using 3D software instead of a drafting board. How could we garantee that plans and isometrics would be available for the lifetime of the plant (~80 years), as was mandated by law and also common sense?
I was tasked with answering that question (in a formal ISO9000 compliant way), and after a bit of research came to the conclusion that there were two ways of achieving that:
1- print everything on paper and store it at the site
2- create and maintain a team dedicated to updating the database software and data and other various programs.
Of course, solution 1 was chosen as being by far the cheapest and easiest to implement, but I had a feeling that the suits were disappointed I didn't come up with some magical solution.
I traveled to Kerala in 2018. Kerala (governed by the communist party) has a free good-quality state-run school system but no industry to speak of. I mostly stayed at private homes thru Airbnb. Most of my hosts were older people who rented what was their son's or daughter's room. Their children were all working in Bangaluru or in the USA.
]]>The BJP program is a package: Hindutva + ultra-liberalism.
New towns are being built with high rises, air conditioning, safe streets, shopping malls, good (pricey) schools, army check-points at the entrance while elsewhere farmers are commiting suicide in record numbers.
The Modi regime tried last year to abolish fixed prices for grain and other foodstuffs. That led to massive protests by farmers and they had to back down.
Meanwhile, some areas have had 50°C+ temperatures for weeks, and air/water/waste pollution is out of control.
I've met several young professionals who are working hard and saving all their money in the hope of relocating their family in the new enclaves.
The Bordeaux wineries have exported 250 millions of bottles last year, that means there is a lot of "nobodies".
If you go to a French supermarket, you will find an aisle dedicated to Merlot, Sauvignon, Chardonnay (..etc) wines. They usually cost 2 to 4 euros a bottle. They are also available in convenient plastic and cardboard 5l packs. Obviously, there is a market for cheap, pleasant, everyday wines.
]]>When French cheese makers realized that the name of their products and of the area they live in had been appropriated, it was too late to reclaim them. They did not have the means of launching an international law suit, unlike the Champagne wine makers.
The brie AOCs were created to prevent further encroaching. BTW, AOC brie cheese was and is made with unpasteurized milk which is not the case for most? all? foreign brie. Why didn't they call their products Maleny or Kenilworth?
One even does some buffalo cheeses, a brie and a feta
Feta is a protected appelation. Should only be made in Greece with ewes milk. Danes had to stop calling their local (cow milk) cheese feta.
]]>You kind of missed the point. Brie is an old province of France. brie was not a style of cheese, it meant cheese made in Brie. It's old name, in the middle ages was casei brienses (first referenced in 999 in the annals of Robert II).
BTW, protected appelations are not meant to be restraint of trade, but restraint of trade in counterfeit products.
]]>These are protected appelations that come with stringent rules for production and aging. Nobody outside of the area is allowed to call their cheese by these names.
That foreign companies have had the nerve -and the right- to call their products "brie" baffles French cheese makers. Is it only plain commercial malpractice, and if not don't these foreign cheese makers have so little pride in their work that they cannot call their products by their own name?
The pollster probably didn't care and (if unsupervised) filled his form anyway.
While at uni, I got hired part-time by an advertising/polling agency to do man-in-the- street customer satisfaction surveys. I made it a personal policy to only ask pretty girls/women (when available) and to add quite a few questions of my own. I, of course, didn't fill the forms accordingly.
I also skewed the results more positive than in reality, reasoning that the clients were less likely to object to shoddy work if the results showed strong customer support.
Surprisingly, some people wanted to be polled. Some of these I indulged, others I told to piss off as they were sure to have uncalled-for, unpleasant opinions they would insist I write down.
]]>In my experience, only another Brit can parse UK regional accents. Some years ago, I met some working-class guys (punks) from Manchester. All I could tell was: "I don't understand one word they're saying". There is a standard English accent though, that many educated Englishmen from outside London learn to master.
]]>Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976) by Samuel Delany. One of my favorite SF novels.
]]>So, when they read Bug Jack Barron, they thought "Cool, I want to be immortal too!" and they mistook 'Triton" for a blueprint for space colonization?
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