Sixty Million Tonnes Of Wheat

In an article about the pending trade war between the USA and everybody else, the writer mentioned the sixty million tonnes of wheat that the fields of Kansas produce.

I looked up the density of wheat seeds: It’s 0.79

So that tonnage of wheat would occupy 76 million cubic metres. (60m/0.79)

Let’s spread that out two metres deep. Two metres makes sense to me; it’s just fifteen centimetres (six inches) over my head.

Now we’ve got an area of 38 million square metres, two metres deep. That’s 6,000 metres square.

That’s six kilometres.

All that wheat would occupy a space two metres deep in a square six kilometres down each side.

Or in yards and miles, that’s two-and-a-bit yards deep and nearly four miles square.

A lot of wheat.

Amazon Work Safety

I read in the Guardian that Amazon has been accused of treating its staff like robots. There are some numbers in the article: 566,000 employees, 600 times an ambulance has been called out to warehouses in the past three years., 200 union members who say they suffered pain as a result of their workload.

Let’s assume that the number of employees was the same for each of the past three years and that the number of ambulance callouts was evenly spread over the period. That’s 200 callouts per years for 566,000 employees, or one callout per year for every 2,830 employees.

Is that a lot? Is it out of line with other similar firms? What similar firms are there, in fact? Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, the Post Office?

And what were the ambulances called out for? Were they all work-related accidents? Did some people fall ill for reasons unrelated to their jobs?

Without context the figures are meaningless other than to persuade me emotionally that there is something wrong at Amazon. I am not an apologist for Amazon, but this ‘news’ needs context.

Here’s some context from the article.

A Freedom of Information request to ambulance services from the GMB union revealed 115 call-outs to Amazon’s site in Rugeley, near Birmingham, including three relating to pregnancy or maternity problems and three for major trauma.

There were also two call-outs to the site for electric shocks and eight for people who had fallen unconscious. At least 1,800 people work year-round at the Rugeley warehouse and more than 2,000 more can work over the peak Christmas period.

That compares to only eight calls in total to a nearby Tesco warehouse of a similar physical size and where about 1,300 people work, over the same period, according to another FOI request by the union.

Amazon said it was “simply not correct to suggest that we have unsafe working conditions based on this data or on unsubstantiated anecdotes. Requests for ambulance services at our fulfilment centres are predominantly associated with personal health events and are not work related. Nevertheless, ambulance visits at our UK fulfilment centres last year was 0.00001 per worked hour, which is dramatically low.”

A spokesman said that, according to the Health and Safety Executive’s method of reporting injuries, Amazon had 43% fewer injuries on average than other companies conducting transportation and warehousing activities in the UK.

This article is trying to persuade me emotionally that there is something wrong at Amazon. I am not an apologist for Amazon, but without more context this ‘news’ looks more like a hatchet job.

Europe And The Iran Nuclear Agreement

Germany, France, and the UK have a lot invested in Iran – a lot of ongoing projects for the supply of major infrastructure.

You don’t have to wonder therefore about the opposition of Europe to the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement. First of all, it cannot have come as a great surprise bearing in mind what Trump said about Iran in his Riyadh speech.

The European deals were all done when the Iran agreement was in place – so nothing underhand there. But it does raise the question over the motives of the Europeans in wanting to preserve the Iran agreement when their financial stake is at risk.

By the same token, one can be pretty sure that Trump knew of the likely poor consequences for these Europeans if the USA withdrew from the Iran agreement and imposed sanctions that the Europeans had to follow – and that he knew that the US would benefit from the Europeans’ losses.

So a bit of financial thinking on both sides, probably.

Of course, with Iran’s declared intentions in the region, it makes one wonder why the Europeans invested so much in what was probably going to turn out badly in the end?

And it also makes one wonder why the Europeans didn’t see the writing on the wall with the Riyadh speech, and make preparations to pull back from heavy investment in Iran.

Dao Dow

The tagline I used in various places, and probably still do here and there, is

Treading a line between Dao and Dow.

I like the play on the sound of the two words (pronounced identically where I come from – maybe not where you are) and I like the balance between the physical and spiritual worlds. And I like that it is short.

Today I took a peek at The Online Photographer. I often go there for a breath of fresh air, to read something about photography and read what people who are polite and well-rounded have to say.

I saw a comment that led to a community website for photographers to put their portfolios. I recognised the site but hadn’t visited it for years. I thought I might have an account, and I have and so I was able to log in. I looked at my profile and saw this that I wrote a long time ago and forgot about:

Dow Dao Dow Dao
Have you any wool
Yes, sir, yes sire,
But I gave it away.

It is, of course, a play on the rhyme, probably several hundred years old, that goes:

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,
Three bags full;
One for the master,
And one for the dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.

There is something pointed and contrary, disobedient, and transcendent in my version, and I like that.