The Secret to Driving and Rude Drivers

The reader will learn the secret to driving by following this text, or by jumping to the bottom of this text. I understand . . . .
As a young man I was fortunate enough to be trained as a Trailways bus operator, a high honor for this working class kid. I operated between Washington D.C. and New York City, as well as points in-between, like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Allentown, Quarryville, Redding, and more. It took 5 weeks of full-time school training to get the Smith System (an approach to defensive driving) firmly into my head. It took hours behind the wheel and observation to learn the practice of sound, operating principals - - one "operates" a bus, and "drives" a nail. It took constant reminders to understand the importance of the following:
1. Get the big picture.
2. Keep your head and eyes moving.
3. Watch out for the other guy.
4. Leave yourself an out.
5. Keep your distance.
6. Maintain a steady speed.
7. I forgot.

Employing these strategic elements of Smith's system probably saved my life numerous times over the years. Now with my eyes going south with the rest of my body, I've slowed way down and taken in the view, anyway. Just the same, the lessons learned while training in Washington D.C. proved more than helpful many times.

What frustrates me are the numerous rude drivers out there. Where do they think they are going, anyway? They drive worse around the silly season, the Xmas dates on the calendar. Do these people really believe that by saving a few seconds, minutes at best, the risk to others is worth the gambling they do with each risky move? Actually, I don't think that they think about it. They really don't care. I would say that their behavior is like criminal conduct, at least a perpetual assault. Are the other countries right about Americans? Is it true that we have little respect for human life?

Speeding and tailgating are two major threats that we all face today from the rude drivers as they place all of our lives at risk. They are, in my opinion, much like the terrorists that President Bush seemed to forget when he discovered and then lost the WMDs in Iraq. They must be, because they terrorize those of us dedicated to saving lives, not risking lives on the highway.

Which reminds me, the California Highway Patrol does a great job and my hat is off to them in their law enforcement efforts. They risk their lives daily trying to educate the rude drivers, but sadly fail by no fault of their own. Well, how are they to educate these rude terrorists when they are fluid, agile, and easily disappear among the innocent, highway
population? So, hats off to the highway patrol and down with terrorists of all sorts. God bless America!

I know that my words place me on the road least traveled, but I am certain that the automobile alone is inappropriate technology for this planet that we call "Home." It is not environmentally sustainable. Just look at Mother Earth today and compare her to her health and beauty before Columbus liberated the land to be freeways. But, there's more to the automobile's inappropriateness than its parasitism. It is also an inappropriate tool in the hands of a species born to be rude by some sort of genetic predisposition or environmental coaching. Whatever.

If everyone would just operate their vehicles like Trailways bus operators we would all live in a much nicer place. They would also understand that the secret to driving is to . . . .
LEAVE EARLY.

Crime Scene Cleanup Glossary

Who would want to read this?

Bioload - The quantity of biological material in an environmental setting. A crime scene will have a high bioload following the traumatic incident. The bioload will be significantly reduced by thorough cleaning of the scene.

Bloodborne Pathogens - pathogenic microorganisms that are present in human blood and can cause disease in humans. These include, but are not limited to, hepatitis B virus (HBV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Bloody Mary - A hand-tool for cutting dense fabric, including carpet. The name arises from the tool's working end, which has a sharp cutting end on both sides of its blade.

Contaminated - the presence or the reasonably anticipated presence of blood or other potentially infectious materials on an item or surface.

Contaminated Sharps - any contaminated object that is sharp or has the potential to be a sharp that can penetrate the skin including, but not limited to, needles, scalpels, broken glass, broken capillary tubes, and exposed ends of dental wires.

Decontamination - the use of physical or chemical means to remove, inactivate, or destroy bloodborne pathogens on an item or surface to the point where they are no longer capable of transmitting infectious particles and the surface or item is rendered safe for handling, use, or disposal.

Embedding - The use of sealers and other chemicals to pretreat the bioload for handling, transport, and storage. Embedding is also useful for reducing the odor and objectionable elements of a death scene.

HBV - Hepatitis B Virus.

HCV - Hepatitis C Virus.

HIV - Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

Occupational Exposure - any reasonably anticipated skin, eye, mucous membrane, or parenteral contact (i.e. piercing through the skin or mucous membrane) with blood or other potentially infectious materials (see below) that may result from the performance of an employee's duties.

OHS/SHS - IUPUI Occupational Health Services/Student Health Services

OPIM - Other Potentially Infectious Material.

Other Potentially Infectious Material (OPIM) - materials other than blood, which pose a potential health risk, including:

1) The following human body fluids: semen, vaginal secretions, cerebrospinal fluid, synovial fluid, pleural fluid, pericardial fluid, peritoneal fluid, amniotic fluid, saliva in dental procedures, any body fluid that is visibly contaminated with blood, and all body fluids in situations where it is difficult or impossible to differentiate between body fluids;

2) Any unfixed tissue or organ (other than intact skin) from a human (living or dead);

3) All human or primate cell or tissue cultures, organ cultures, and cell lines (including established, continuous cell lines). HIV or HBV containing culture medium or other solutions; and blood, organs, or other tissues from experimental animals infected with HIV or HBV should be considered potentially infectious;

4) Blood or body fluids of animals that have been intentionally or are suspected of having been exposed to pathogens in research, in production of biologicals, in the in vivo testing of pharmaceuticals, or other procedures.

PPE - Personal Protective Equipment. In concept, similar to, but different from the US Army's Mission Oriented Protective Posture, MOPP suite.

Regulated Waste - liquid or semi-liquid blood or other potentially infectious material; contaminated items that would release blood or other potentially infectious material in a liquid or semi-liquid state if compressed; items that are caked with dried blood or other potentially infectious materials and are capable of releasing these materials during handling; contaminated sharps; and pathological and microbiological wastes containing blood or other potentially infectious material.

Reduction - Refers to the removal of bio-waste.

Site Reduction - Removing by cleaning and disposal of bio-waste.

Sterilize - the use of a physical or chemical procedure to destroy all microbial life.

Surficants - A general term that includes soap. Surfactants lower water's surface tension. As they soften water's surface, the water carries away soiled matter more easily. Place oil in water gives a hint of the chemicle divide between water and oil. Placing a surfacant in a bucket containing water and oil removes the divide between the two.the surface tension of water by adsorbing at the liquid-gas interface.

Tier - A level of blood and OPIM contamination - - Used as a point of reference to communicate degree of contamination and degree of cleaning progress.

Universal Precautions - An approach to infection control, which treats all blood and other potentially infectious materials as if known to be infectious for HIV, HBV, and other bloodborne pathogens. This approach includes the use of barrier precautions by employees to prevent direct skin, parenteral, or mucus membrane contact with blood or other body fluids that are visibly contaminated with blood.

Unattended Death and Cutting the Darn Floor!

I hate cutting floors. Unattended deaths are the worst for cutting floors because the deceased stays in place for a long time. As time passes, so do the body's fluids, right out the pours and orifices, I gather. So by the time the coroner gets going, the crime scene cleaner often gets more of the remains, but they're suspended in fabrics and the floor.

I pride myself on saving floors. I wish I could save all of them, but today there was no way to save anything but ozone. Cut, cut, cut, and cut away the floor I did.

I got cut too. On the leg by a nail! At least it wasn't bloody.

What I did get out of cutting the floor was an urge to use the term "orifice" in my blogging. So I did get something done, besides cutting a darn floor.

If the reader wonders how I knew that I needed to cut this floor, how I knew it could not be saved, I can relate to the wonder of it all. It's metaphysical. Just like spelling the term "orifice." It is a wonder that I got it right the first time.

Spelling is also one of the darnedest things, at least for this writer. Thank goodness that spell checkers came along because I was wearing out my dictionary pages on a regular basis. No kidding.

I will pontificate on being a poor speller in another blog. Like an unattended death, it is something that we don't want to be, and the darnedest thing to cleanup.

Blogging

Has the reader noticed how this writer begins so many lines with the pronoun "I"?
I have.

I was told more than once to write in the "third person" because it is the business way. I was told this in school, that is.
Then I met a few very intelligent women who were discussing the use of the pronoun "I" in writing. They were from Arkansas, by the way.

Well, they recommended that everyone should write in the first person, the "I" pronoun. They claimed, and apparently correctly, that doing so brings some focus and a sense of responsibility to what the writer is writing.

I think they were actually out to poke fun at corporations and corporate employees' drive to evade responsibility for doing business in bad faith. These ladies were upset about how corporations polluted their water and failed to take responsibility.

Besides learning from these ladies how important it is to write in the first person, I also learned that "We all live downstream." They even had bumper stickers with this idea printed on them.

Cleaning up crimes related to water pollution must be a big job, I have surmised. I keep my fins and mask at the ready, just in case I get the call.

Crime Scene Cleanup

A reporter once asked me, "What makes crime scene cleanup" different from other types of cleaning?

I answered with my best informed and considered opinion: "The crime."

Eddie Evans
CrimeSceneCleanup.com

Unatttended Deaths and Vodka

I want to comment on unattended deaths, an oxymoron, for sure, and not to be cute. It is true, someone attends until the very end.

But that's not why I'm writing here. I'm writing because I have cleaned enough unattended death scenes for women with one special feature, vodka. Yes, their drug of choice seems to be vodka. Not all solo death scenes are vodka related, but enough to write a few words on the subject.

It seems that these lady cadavers dwell in place for days or even weeks accompanied by an empty vodka bottle and even more than one. Often I find an empty or more under the bed. I don't make this point to be sexist, it simply seems to be a fact that more unattended deaths by female women are special in this one sense, empty vodka bottles.

I find that the empty vodka bottle syndrome, if I may label it such, also follows the filthy house cat ladies. I need more sociological observations to make this correlation, though.

Eddie on Science, Technology, Production's Fusion

Science, technology, and production fused together as the Industrial revolution and capital began growing in a grow-or-die embrace. As a result, inappropriate technologies flourish as an insatiable appetite for growth expands. Inappropriate technologies spread like plagues World-Wide while commercial propaganda replaces vital information to extend inappropriate technologies - - "breed and consume."

This "fusion" of science, technology, and production began in ernest as the Industrial Revolution followed in hot pursuit of the Enlightenment's drive away from the middle-ages, at least in Europe and Britain. At least, in part, it helped to open the gates of critical thinking. It helped to induce scientific ideas to apply inevitable efficiencies. The reproduction of society gave each generation more, not less, means of creating ecologically, inappropriate technologies. The drive for profit, expansion and consolidation of capital, ensured the spread of inappropriate technologies.

Here's one way to understand inappropriate technologies: Firing a canon ball to ring a doorbell is an inappropriate use of technology, not so unlike using nuclear energy to produce electricity. The canon in this example also represents an inappropriate technology, many will argue. "Its destiny is implied by its design."

Be that as it may, the canon's influence ends at the doorbell. However, the technologies of genetic engineering as well as nuclear, for another example, alter life forms. Like the canon, genetic engineering has a destiny in its design; unlike the cannon, genetic engineering's destiny influences human and non-human nature well beyond the perceivable future. Ecological problems grow exponentially because one in five non-indigenous (not native born) species, when introduced into a new habitat, dislodge indigenous (native born) species-populations.

Consequently, future generations may choose to ignore the canon's destiny and deny it a place in their society. But, they cannot choose to ignore genetic engineering's destiny or deny it a place in their society, since our generation embedded altered life-forrms in non-human nature. Ecological collapse now occurs as humanity fails to change its attitude toward nature. The same reasoning applies to other inappropriate technologies that risk life's ecological security, like nuclear energy.