Current Events

[mangofever]

what do my fellow fencers think of all the crazyness going on outside your salles? did you have a chance to see seattle? what are your thoughts.

[saberkid]

heh, dont know about seattle, because im in sacramento, but we have a huge power crisis that causes rolling black-outs, wich kinda sucks but besides that... hell i dont know, i spend all my time ether doing school or at fencing

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Fence with the best die like the rest!

[Shadow Fencer]

Kinda scary- all the tragic happenings. Locally one of the college kids got trapped in an underwater cave and died. Lots of sadness and tragedy. That's why fencing is so therapeutic for me. It's one of the more positive things I am able to experience in my life!

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I live to fence and fence to live!!

[oiuyt]

Wait, you mean there's an outside world?!?!?!? Why didn't anyone ever tell me?

-B

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"Oh but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!"

[Fencing Angel]

you people think having to see it on the news is bad. well i live in washington and we drive through seattle almost every other day. and some times (like WTO and this last week) things just seem to get really weird. you start to wounder about humanity. and why people do what they do.

[Gav]

Currently we are slaughtering our livestock due to a foot and mouth outbreak.

Oh! and someones car crashed onto a railway line. A freight train hit it, derailed and then ploughed into an oncoming passenger train. Freaky.

[Gav]

P.S. What happened in Seattle?
Why the huge blackout in Sacramento? I read somewhere that the privatised American Grid is over charging the supply companies for electricity.

[Mengarath the Dragon]

Washinton and Seatle got a 6.8 earthquake a couple of days ago.

And California de-regulated their electicity. However, they capped what the electric companies can charge for the electricity and now they wonder what the hell is going on becuase the cost of producing the electricity has risen above the cap they can charge for it. So they went out of business and nobody else wants to sell electricity to California. At least that is how I understand it. Dumb. Plus the population is growning and nobody has built any new power plants in the last 30 years or so, in fact, they shut a few down. Double Dumb.

I'm glad I live in Nebraska. More cows than people, but at least the cows don't get to vote.

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Mengarath the Dragon

Life is too short to be ordinary.

[Lumberg]

Gav said, "I read somewhere that the privatised American Grid is over charging the supply companies for electricity."
I don't know what you mean by "American Grid"? There isn't one electric company. There a lot of private electric companies through the United States. Each with its own source of electricity and it's own costs. Electric costs differ in various parts of the US.

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Lumberg.
"...ahhh, we have sort of a problem here... yeah, you apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your TPS report"

[darius]

The only craziness going on outside my salle right now is the weather. I'm glad that I don't live further north or east.

Thankfully, practice is not cancelled.

darius

[Foil Girl]

Maybe I'm just bad luck or something... I just moved from seattle to around Sacramento... ahem... anyways, the other day I flew through seattle (day after the earthquake). They seem to be getting along fine, and all the people I know are alright. The flight tower looked a little beat up but other than that, it was pretty good.

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-Foil Girl
"If you don't have fun, you've already lost"

[flik]

One of the big problems in California (so I'm told by those in the electricity business) is that the "big" companies had to sell off generator stations when they were de-regulated. The companies they had to sell them off to closed down a bunch to drive up costs, creating a nice little shortage in the process. These companies (referred to as the greedy bast@!#s from here on out) sell the electricity back to the service provider (ie the company that sold them the generator stations in the first place) who, in turn, sells it to the consumer, taking a loss because of the caps. Same thing is happening in NY, but to a *MUCH* lesser degree.

[mangofever]

I agree, there's a lot going on out there, and fencing IS very theraputic. With the electricity - we'll fence dry and with the cow thing, we'll become vegetarians (sort of). Actually I don't eat beef anymore, takes longer to digest, and too many problems associated with it. Complete proteins can be put together with a grain and a bean (the classic red beans and rice as served in New Orleans). Someone at work told me that a girl was nearly killed on the street during seattle's 'mardi-gras'- just totally kicked and the cops just stood around. Is this a rumor, or fact?

[This message has been edited by mangofever (edited 03-06-2001).]
OKAY DON'T WORRY ABOUT THIS FOLKS, I JUST GOT A BEAD ON IT.

[This message has been edited by mangofever (edited 03-07-2001).]

[Fencing Angel]

mangofever it is true that a girl was beaten but the guy that tried to help her up was killed. and yes the cops just stood there. they where not to 'interfear' with it at all. as per the mayor..... however after that order does not have many friends in the law offices of seattle. but yes what you heard was a fact, sad but true.

[This message has been edited by Fencing Angel (edited 03-07-2001).]

[mangofever]

don't say but, the guy did the right thing. let me tell you another story about a guy in japan. he was standing on the edge of a railway and saw a kid fall in - a train was coming, he had about 10 seconds or less, without thinking of himself, he jumped down into the tracks, picked up the kid, threw him up on the platform - he was hit by the train and died - that guy was never forgotten and it happened about 40 years ago.


[This message has been edited by mangofever (edited 03-07-2001).]

[Gav]

By Americn Grid I mean the infrastructure of cables and generators that make up the electricity supply.

In Britain the power supply is reffered to as the National Grid, which is now privatised (but owned by 1 company - Natioanl Power) they sell electricity to regional supply companies who charge us for electricity. Wacky or what.

At the end of the day competition is supposed to make things cheaper but somehow I can't see it happening.

I simply assumed that a similair situation existed in America.

[mangofever]

in america, we have infrastructure, but it's never fixed. we wait for it to rust up and the con-ed lets it blow up. when that happens channel 7 news runs out to look and dan rather makes comments about it, then we all look sad and eat our spagetti. when the brooklyn bridge sways, the rockets red glare, then a few big guys from the bronx (yeah) swing from cables and paint everything, but not too much, there's more, but i'll tell you later.

Don't worry Gav, get in there and riposte!


[This message has been edited by mangofever (edited 03-09-2001).]