[OT] Coffeepot temperature

Don,

Corporations are run by people. So just like people there are all sorts of corporations. Some are run by greedy people that use bullshit and political favor. But some are run by people just as responsible as you or I.

A great example of a corporation that you should look at is Nucor. Back about 1960 it was known as Nuclear Corporation of America and was run by a president that was not responsible. It came very close to bankruptcy. The president walked away. One of the executives was persuaded to take over the company. He looked at what the company had and changed the direction of the company. They started making bar joists. The corporation gave bonuses to the employees based on production. They started making money. They expanded by starting a mini steel mill, melting scrap to make the rebar and angle for the bar joists. Made more money. They still pay a wage and a bonus based on production. Sometimes the bonus can be as big as the wages.

To make a long story short, Nucor is now the second largest steel producer in the US. In 2004 in addition to their normal pay and bonuses, they paid all employees two additional bonuses of $1000. In addition they have a plan where the workers get stock. Their corporate headquarters is in Charlotte, North Carolina on the second floor over a restaurant. The number of people in the corporate office is less than the number of plants they own.

Their web site is <

Dan

consistently appears to have more rights than me, and consistently gets

handed a slap >To get back to that concept from our little side-excursion to

digression-ville, my stance is that the only person qualified to decide

what is or isn't too dangerous/unsafe is the person doing the deciding.

NOt the government, not Ralph Nader, not anybody or anything other than the person contemplating the activity.<

So who is to determine the "responsibilities" of these corporate entities? You indicate they can't be trusted (in many cases at least) to responsibly manage themselves (I agree).

If you get into a car not knowing the manufacturer's cost-cutting has created a dangerous vehicle how can you make an informed decision? If the car explodes who's responsible? You?

You see the problem but you hesitate to voice the solution.

dennis in nca

Larry Jaques remembers:

on the road. Great going, Ralph. I'm surprised the insurance companies haven't responded to that one. VW bugs and buses burn up all the time WITHOUT an accident causing it, yet 'they' go after the Pinto.<

And you would have preferred what?

Personal note: I'm driving Lake Shore Drive in Chicago and am going around "dead man's curve" (think they've straightened it out now) in my

dennis in nca

Larry Jaques offered:

Please clarify. According to your definition people who care about others are "liberal" and those who don't are.......what? So if you care about others only a "little" then it's OK? Or does that "little" bit make you "all" liberal?

would have caught the original engineering oversight in the Pinto? An oversight (problems caused by 35+ mph rear-end collisions don't figure into the engineering drawings) is just that.<

Me, catch an engineering oversite missed by professionals, HAHAHA. But you miss the point: It was readily shown Ford was AWARE of the defect and, rather than recall or at least temporarily stop production or make changes, calculated the cost of these measures against money projected to be lost in "wrongfull death" lawsuits and chose to continue killing people. All the information is on-line if you care enough to look.

Too bad jeff skilling and kenny boy didn't follow those rules.

Jim

For a more in-depth discussion see

Many people don't realize that several of the 13 original colonies were in effect corporations, and their activities could have helped provoke the revolutionary war.

For something that has no physical existence and is strictly a legal fiction, corporations seem to have gotten out of hand

My pet cure would be a fixed 50 year charter, after which the corporation would have to be liquidated and their equity returned to the stockholders, with no more than 10% of their existing assets going to any one person or entity.

Uncle George

Not only a chemical/fire hazzard. A full tank [any compressed gas even argon/helium] that is knocked over so that valve/regulator breaks off becomes an unguided missle. Will go through cinder block and drywall/stud walls with no problem. I can see the headlines now after one of these go through a day school.

Uncle George

I'm not an exiled Brit, but I do have one of those kettles: T-Fal Vitesse Gold. The UK outlet is right next to the 220 volt air compressor. At 2750 -3000 watts it's probably not three times as fast as a 1500 watt 110-volt kettle, but it's still pretty quick. If I start it before grinding the coffee and loading the filter, it's boiling when I'm ready to pour.

I use it for making "good" afternoon coffee with a Melitta filter -- "good" as differentiated from the morning "utility" coffee that is made in a Krups coffeemaker.

Hospitals typically pipe oxygen at low pressure to the wards from a central source, and most often take delivery in the form of liquid oxygen, because it's cheaper that way.

Why would a day [care?] school have bottles of compressed gas?

Joe Gwinn

Joseph Gwinn asked:

school. Why would a day [care?] school have bottles of compressed gas?

============= The next door or across the street welding shop might.....

Uncle George

So, how do you explain the UK outlet and kettle?

I'll have to try this (but with a teakettle on the stove). The difference has to be the water temperature.

Joe Gwinn

What's to explain? It's simply the fastest way I have at hand to heat water for whatever purpose. It heats water RFN.

I think the difference is less one of water temp than the coffee and brewing process. I think boiling water is boiling water however it ges boiled. Others may disagree, They're probably right.

My first-of-day getcherassingear "utility" coffee is stuff from a can from the grocery store, brewed by Mr. Krups while I'm brushing such teeth as I can find at zero dark hundred or only slightly past noon, whatever.

Afternoon savor coffee is ground beans of "Velvet Hammer" blend from Bob's. I don't know what that blend is, but I think the name is quite descriptive and I like it. Milady does too. I present it to her, when she's here in-country , in her favorite small cup, "ruined" just as she likes it with sugar and cream. We enjoy that little ritual. She does me good too. We're a small team forged over two decades. We're each and both gentle retired folk now, the "nice old folks that live next door".

On 17 Jan 2006 11:05:19 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm, "rigger" quickly quoth:

And I took my '64 Corvair convertible off 4' jumps with my dirtbike buddies and drove it 90mph on the freeway at times. No broken axles, no spinouts, no problems. Then I let my buddy drive while my new girlfriend and I necked in the back seat. After I stopped to tell him to SLOW DOWN a fifth time, he spun it out and we hit a berm on the road and came up on two wheels right next to a telephone pole. My GF got a nasty bump on her head from the steel roof brace but we and the car were otherwise unharmed. No broken axle, no bent wheel. We were amazed. Needless to say, _I_ drove us home and my buddy never drove any of my cars again. I drove it fast but never spun it out, either. Again, the problem was that of a slight problem in the engineering which was horribly increased due to motorist inattention to both driving and air pressure in the fracking tires. When either or both were taken care of, the problem simply didn't exist. Nader should have gone after a better vehicular maintenance schedule and/or driver's ed for EVERYONE if he wanted to reduce accidents. In Germany, it costs thousands of dollars to GET a driver's license and certified training to be able to drive on the Autobahn.

Shall we license coffee for seniors? ;)

Regarding your Corvair experience, either you have -lots- of karma debt or you simply bought a lemon.

(BTW, nice redirection from the subject.)

P.S: Your age reveals a whole lot about your attitudes. As Churchill never said: "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."

-------------------------------------------- -- I'm in touch with my Inner Curmudgeon. --

On 17 Jan 2006 11:47:31 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm, "rigger" quickly quoth:

Liberals tell the rest of us to ante up to "fix" things which should be covered by personal integrity/responsibility or rung up as accidents by the less intelligent or irresponsible parties.

Google on "aol" and "me, too". And, yes, they're different. Racism is not EVEN in the same league as newbie humor. (Hate vs. grins)

And you missed my point about the legal system requiring that action. According to the speaking weasels (attorneys) the shareholders require that they maximize profits. Some of the bigwigs should have figured out that doing the right thing (voluntary recall immediately) would have cost less in the long run. I'll even bet that if they had charged Pinto owners their labor costs for the retrofit (I think we made $8-10 on the installation.) that it would have been a winning move. But that didn't happen due to the legal climate. Owning up to something brings on the ambulance chasers in mega-droves.

-------------------------------------------- -- I'm in touch with my Inner Curmudgeon. --

Because ever newspaper and TV news show in the country reported "stupid old bat burns self with coffee" and the two other people in the world who hadn't figured out for themselves that coffee is hot and hot things burn you got the message?

Hint--McDonalds still serves coffee at exactly the same tempeature--the temperature which the plaintiff claimed to have been set in the coffee machine is in the middle of the range that the ANSI coffee machine spec calls for. They did put up "warning, coffee is hot" signs all over the place, instead of just on the lid where the stupid old bat should have read it.

Who said that they had "injured literally hundreds of people"? They had had

Will cause third degree burns in 15 seconds of exposure. They didn't lower the temperature, they put up lots and lots of warning signs and their legal defense team presumably gathered some statistics and put some real experts on retainer. Eventually ANSI wrote a spec.

The cup manufacturer got sued a while back. The judge threw it out of court before it went to trial, like he _should_ have done with the Stupid Old Bat.

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 09:44:39 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Joseph Gwinn quickly quoth:

Consider the rate of accidents in the USA: 106,000 -deaths- in 2002.

-------------------------------------------- -- I'm in touch with my Inner Curmudgeon. --

This is one of the things that cracked me up about demands that universities and other large investors divest their holdings in various politically incorrect stocks. The demand _should_ have been that they _vote_ those shares to bring about change.