The New Digital Age

This link should be of interest to anyone who even remotely concerned about the direction the world is heading.

If any of my readers read the Left Behind series, the mark of the beast was discussed at length. If my memory serves me right, the mark was a brand of some kind. In depiction across the ages of this mark it was some kind of physical mark on the body. But the Bible never specifically states how the mark is displayed. Are these digital IDs the mark?

Letter to President Trump

Some of you may be aware that I am a conductor on a Class 1 railroad. There are big changes happening on my railroad. Most of them are not good. But that is a post for a different day. The most impacting and troublesome will be an attempt by the large railroads to reduce crew size. Currently, on long haul freight trains there are two people in the cab of a locomotive, the engineer and the conductor. The job of the engineer is to safely operate the train from point A to point B. The role of the conductor, who is charge of the train, is to ensure operations are conducted safety and in a timely manner.

For the past several years the railroads and the unions have been at loggerheads over the crew size. The railroads feel that with recent safety features, such as Positive Train Control (PTC) and Trip Optimizer (TO) trains can be run safely with only one crew member, and possibly with none. The unions, however, don't support this, obviously. They counter that fatigue, due to our completely unpredictable duty schedule and sleep patterns, warrants the continuation of the two person crew. It is true that PTC can stop a train when necessary, but this is often the option of last resort, resulting in a very aggressive, and some violent, stop. With two people in the cab one of us always monitoring the route ahead. While sleeping in the cab is not condoned by either the railroads or the unions, fatigue can have an impact on focus. Two people in the cab negates this significantly.

Funding Highway Repairs

I’d actually consider giving some thought to supporting this idea. Former Senator Trent Lott says he would support an extension for the increase of federal taxes at the gas pump. Still need to think some about an increase in the amount.

The reasons for the increase are valid. Our roads and bridges are showing serious signs of decay. But the federal government doesn’t have the money right now to do more than it is already doing. But I do have a caveat. The gas tax money taken in would have to be earmarked for highway and bridge repairs and improvements only. No stealing from the account like is being done with Social Security. An independent commission, we’ll call it the RAB commission (RAB = Roads And Bridges Commission) would be appointed by a group of congress-critters equally divided among Republicans and democrats. The sitting President would appoint three of his/her choosing from their party and the ranking member of the Senate from the opposite party would appoint three from his/her party.