In that case, whoosh back, because I never claimed they were designed to last for 60 years. I only claimed that they were probably made saltwater resistant and therefore they MAY last 60 years, so we're vehemently agreeing on that point.
From my original post that you replied to:
I wouldn't necessarily expect it to last 60 years, but if I designed it to be even minimally saltwater-resistant it's not outside the realm of possibility that one might survive that long.
At no point did I suggest that they used expensive materials like stainless, in fact I specifically stated that stainless probably would NOT have been the material they used, specifically due to cost.
PVC, polystyrene, bakelite, teflon, and polyurethane come to mind, and all were around before WWII. Heck, even stainless steel was around, albeit probably too expensive for the Russian military at the time.
Lots of saltwater-resistant materials were readily available and cheap, and would have been logical to include in something designed to be in saltwater for even brief periods of time. I just gave a few semi-random examples of appropriate materials that were available at the time.
I have no earthly idea what the Russians actually used in their mines, and I wouldn't know how to go about getting plans. And the Department of Homeland Security might pay me a visit if I tried.;)
They weren't designed to last 60 years, agreed. But they were designed with saltwater immersion in mind. If they were built to go into saltwater it is very possible that some of them HAVE lasted 60 years. The lead-and-glass trigger mechanisms are going to be largely immune to saltwater damage, and even if the outer steel shell rusts away (which is not a given if they are in a cold, low-oxygen environment) the explosive may be waterproofed enough to still have some boom left in it.
After all, these mines aren't moving around a lot, so if there's a layer of bakelite on them, or if they are made out of a solidified explosive, there's still a good chance the actual explosive is still at least partly viable.
Mustard gas bombs dumped in the same sea during the same era occasionally kill or hurt people as the solidified contents wash up to shore, and when someone breaks apart the pretty yellow rocks that have been soaking in sea water for decades it exposes a fresh layer of mustard gas. Mines in fields on land which have been subject to decades of changing weather and rain are still operating perfectly, most are dead but are you going to go for a stroll in a minefield just because they "should" be inactive by now?
The key question is - if you had a huge construction project going on, and there was a bunch of unexploded ordinance in the area, what would you do? Assume "it can't possibly have survived" so many decades past its sell-by date, or assume that (until you know better) each bomb is fully active?
I'd assume every bomb still had the boom-boom left in it until I had actively confirmed that it does not. Maybe all 70 of the mines are fully safe. PROBABLY all 70 of the mines are fully safe. The time to find that out is now, not after running a natural gas pipeline near one.
Because it's being funded as prep work for a natural gas pipeline, and only 70 of them are deemed to be a threat to that pipeline.
As much as I'd love to see the specific company funding this pipeline be a good citizen and set off the other 149,930, it's just not their responsibility.
Maybe if this technology works out, the Russian government will decide to fund further clearing. And maybe I'll develop emergence of avionic simians out of my butt.
TNT? Any explosive put in Bakelite or any one of a number of cheap plastics commonly available in that era?
And many mines are built with motion/impact detection, usually made of glass. And if they are blowing the mines up with explosive, it won't matter whether the trigger mechanism works or not. If they were trying to retrieve the mines, that would be a valid concern, but that's why exploding them with additional explosive is the smart way to get rid of them.
Not only dangerous, but probably largely ineffective at actually preserving any environment.
These are mines. If they still have explosives, then they might still have devices designed to make those explosives go boom when the mine is moved. If 1/4 of the mines are still active, you'll have 1/4 the large explosions.
But you'll have larger, more expensive equipment that costs more and has to be abandoned due to severe damage the first time it encounters a mine that went off (as opposed to a small robot who was built to be blown up). Then you'll have bombs that make it all the way up to a ship THEN go off, leaving all the Diesel fuel and other chemicals in the water when the ship sinks
Blowing them up in place is probably the most environmentally friendly way of disposing of the bombs, short of not building them in the first place of course. But I lack a time machine AND any way to change human nature.;)
The mustard gas is still going to leach out over time, this just releases it all at once over an area that has hopefully been largely cleared of wildlife. Certainly not an ideal way of neutralizing mustard gas, but overall probably not terribly much more harmful than leaving it there - the difference being that the damage is done all at once rather than over the course of decades.
I'm no munitions expert, but if I were to design a mine that was going to go into saltwater I might also select a material that is somewhat resistant to saltwater. PVC, polystyrene, bakelite, teflon, and polyurethane come to mind, and all were around before WWII. Heck, even stainless steel was around, albeit probably too expensive for the Russian military at the time. I wouldn't necessarily expect it to last 60 years, but if I designed it to be even minimally saltwater-resistant it's not outside the realm of possibility that one might survive that long. The odds are against it, but it's not impossible.
So you go with the odds, and relative levels of damage involved. This is prepwork for a very expensive natural gas pipeline, and I doubt it really accounts for a significant portion of the overall expense.
If no bombs are viable, then the project has spent some money unnecessarily and set off a series of 5kg (~11-pound) explosives and not done any real harm to the surrounding environment except for a bunch of little areas that are about to get a LNG pipeline plumbed through anyway.
If just one of those bombs is live and goes off when natural gas is flowing through the LNG pipeline they want to build, that could be very devastating over a very large area.
The whole point of setting off a bomb next to a bigger bomb is to ensure that any viable explosives will go off.
Large boom = the original bomb was a danger and the danger is gone. Small boom = the original bomb had no viable explosive left so was never a danger in the first place.
Determining which are currently dead and which are still live is tricky. The cheapest, fastest, and safest way is to just blow them all up.
Coral reef ends at about 40 meters or so. I don't think anywhere on the Baltic Sea floor would qualify as prime coral reef territory for a large number of reasons, but depth is the first and most immediate that comes to mind.
And let's think about this for a second. They are doing the "boom-boom" thing to eliminate the bombs to make room for a natural gas pipeline. You might as well complain that the local contractor is using a weed-whacker to clear pretty flowers before he starts leveling the ground with a bulldozer. The amount of damage caused by these bombs going off is nothing compared to what's going to happen when the pipeline goes in.
And if you skip the mine-clearing step, just wait till the first mine goes off and releases a few million gallons of natural gas into the surrounding environment.
Seriously, what else are they going to do? If they try to reclaim the bombs and blow them up at another location, the project just got massively more complex, they are going to still damage the surrounding area when they dig it up and drag it away, the stuff that breaks if one goes off in-place just got a lot more expensive, you have the risk of someone getting hurt or killed during transport, and they've still got to blow it up somewhere. Some life forms are going to be extinguished when the bomb goes off, and no one in their right mind is going to design something to try and keep the bomb from going off. Unexploded ordinance is just nasty stuff that may or may not still be viable - the only effective way to make it safe is to let all the boom out of it.
They try to scare off all the critters they can, then they blow up the mine. It's as cheap, efficient, and about as minimally invasive as such a project could be. That's not to say it's not invasive, only that (short of transporter technology where we can beam it all into space) it's about as good as we're going to get.
1. You aren't running the risk of burning perfectly good chocolate to perform the experiment. 2. You are more likely to have leftovers of Palmer's, assuming you had some in the house in the first place, since no one in their right mind would actually eat it.
Remember, even Twinkies are good enough for science experiments. It's simply a matter of choosing the right experiment.
No, that's SATA N DEATH 666. It's a SerialATA specifications group who is concerned that SATA will reach 666 MB/s, and that this would indicate the coming of the Apocalypse by bringing one of the Four Horsemen, Death.
An absolutely perfect combustion of propane in an oxygen-rich environment does, in fact, result in exhaust containing only CO2 and water. It rarely burns that clean, however. Propane is also commonly sold with additives like butane and propylene and odorants in varying amounts.
More often, propane (more precisely, LPG, which is what people actually use - a blend that is mostly propane) fumes also contain varying amounts of CO (Carbon Monoxide), which is very nasty stuff, and occasionally a little soot which smells bad and can make people feel sick even if it's mostly harmless. The amount of both depends on how well the machine is maintained, how much oxygen is available to perform the burn, etc.
Also, in the case of a leak (ruptured pressure line, etc) propane itself is heavier than air and the fumes will tend to accumulate in the rink, contained by the glass walls.
A well-maintained propane engine is probably the best internal-combustion engine to use in any enclosed area, but even if it works perfectly it's lowering the oxygen content of the air, and if it doesn't work perfectly it can be dangerous. You really need decent ventilation to use propane in any quantity indoors.
I'm not trying to say that propane Zambonis are some sort of instant death machine. They've been in use for years. A lot of people use propane for their home stoves, and a lot of factories use propane to run forklifts, and it rarely causes problems. But electric has no emissions at all (*), so if you want to use something in an enclosed space it's always a good choice.
(*) Of course, generation of electricity can have a lot of pollutants involved, but I'm just talking about safety (emissions generated by the machine being used).
Exactly. All this moral outrage is over Southwest being unable to accommodate him on an EARLIER FLIGHT.
He knew he needed two seats. He bought two seats. Then he asked to fly standby and only one seat was available on the earlier flight he had asked for (but had no reservation for, hence the term "standby").
I fly with my others occasionally, and we've asked to fly standby on earlier flights. If only one seat is available on the earlier flight and we want to stay together, I expect to fly my original flight. In Kevin's case, they couldn't fit half of him on one flight and the other half on another (well, they could, but that might get messy).
This is exactly what Southwest did - they moved him back to his original ticketed flight, except they also gave him $100 because they couldn't accommodate a special request they were under no obligation to accommodate.
It's a shame a second seat wasn't open, but that's not Southwest's fault.
Southwest flies only one model aircraft (Boeing 737), and the seats are all identical except the exit/emergency row where the seats are a teeny bit narrower, but have more legroom (both adjustments to accommodate evacuation in an emergency).
Even ignoring the fact that Mr Smith would probably only fit in First Class (which Southwest does not have) or in a few cases Business Class (which Southwest also does not have) on any aircraft without encroaching into another seat and that no Coach seat on this planet will fit him between the armrests, your argument is not relevant to Southwest. Their fleet is one of completely identical planes (except for age) and identical seating front-to-back.
While it is true that the space surrounding the seat can vary (such as window seats having a wall on one side, for example), the armrest-to-armrest width of Southwest seats is not variable except for the aforementioned exit/emergency row, and of course the legroom at the front where there are face-to-face seats (top tip for tall flyers, on a crowded flight AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS unless you can find a really short person to sit across from).
Mr Smith KNEW he couldn't fit into one seat. That's why he bought two for his original flight. When he asked for an earlier flight, he was a standby passenger. It's a shame Southwest could not accommodate him to fly on the earlier flight, but according to Southwest only one seat was available and he could not fit in it. Southwest's policy is that if you cannot fit into a single seat with the armrests down and without encroaching upon people in adjacent seats, you must buy a second seat (at a discount, and refundable if the flight ends up not being full). Mr. Smith did this, but the earlier flight did not have the two seats he needed, it only had one open.
Would you expect Southwest to "bump" another ticketholding passenger to accommodate a standby, or to violate their own policy and put another passenger through "lapover hell" and effectively give up half their seat for the flight? If Mr Smith were traveling with a child and only one seat was available, he would have been asked to take his normal flight because only one of the two standby seats he asked for was available. This is no different - he needed two seats, asked to fly standby for an earlier flight, and they didn't have two available seats for him.
As a former frequent flyer who is all too familiar with the horrifying moment or realization that the very heavy person coming down the aisle is going to be sitting next to you for a six-hour flight, and the intense discomfort of losing feeling on one side of my body for hours, my back bent at an odd angle, and in more than one case actually unable to get out of my seat for several minutes until I could feel my legs again, I actually flew Southwest a good bit because of this policy.
I sympathize with someone "of size" who is truly unable to get into a single seat, and is honestly unable to lose their excess girth. I truly do. But not to the point where I'm willing to give up half the seat I can barely fit into to start with (6' 3").
They did. In fact, they sold him TWO, because he disclosed his weight when the bought the tickets. The tickets, however, were NOT for the flight he was trying to board.
The part that the summary misses is that he asked to get on an earlier flight (which means he was now flying standby). When you fly standby, you wait until all the other passengers board then someone counts the empty seats, since they have no way of knowing how many seats will be available until everyone boards and they know how many no-shows they have and how many seats are really truly open. Since he was flying standby, he did not have a guaranteed reservation. Since only one seat was available once all the regular ticketholding passengers had boarded, and he couldn't fit into the single available seat, they could not accommodate his request. It's a pity that he couldn't fit into the available seat, but not Southwest's fault - they have a clear policy that if you cannot fit into a single seat you need to buy two. A policy that Mr. Smith was clearly aware of since he had two tickets to start with.
In fact, Southwest's policy is that if someone who needs to seats goes ahead and purchases two tickets and the plane ends up not being full, they REFUND the second ticket, because you "used an empty seat" for the extra space you needed.
Since they didn't have an available seat that Mr. Smith could fit into, they couldn't accommodate him. They moved him back to his original paid-for and committed seats, and even gave him $100 because they couldn't accommodate his request to fly earlier than the time stated on his ticket. Sounds like Southwest handled things well, and even went out of their way to apologize for something that WASN'T THEIR FAULT to start with.
Ever taken a stack of plastic sheets that have been held together by a bulldog clip 200-300 times and try to feed it into a thermal transfer printer? Paperclips and bulldog clips don't make holes, but the pressure does frequently distort/warp the paper.
it would be cheaper to simply buy them each a KindleDX
Good point. At $3.30 per sheet you could afford one KindleDX for less than the cost cost of about 100 sheets of this plastic paper. Kindles can hold many thousands of pages, and can be reused for a long time. Plus, the recipients can annotate their copies without ruining the storage media, and if they ever needed a permanent copy they just print out what sheets they need on good paper, or back their documents and annotations up to their desktop with almost no effort for archival storage.
For feeding into a heat transfer printer, one stapling/de-stapling is almost always sufficient to ruin it. Thermal transfer systems usually gets messed up if the media isn't pretty darned perfect (scratched toner drum, mangling of the rubber wheels that handle the media, etc)
At $3.30 per sheet, your boss would have to hand you one page per working day for several years in order to pay for each sheet of this, and that's assuming he doesn't circle something with permanent marker, fold it, crease it, wrinkle it, spill coffee on it, or staple it to another document. If any one of those things happen it can't be fed through a printer again.
And "heat transfer" means some form of toner and a crapload of electricity. So you still have a consumable and electricity to contend with, and I'll bet you their toner is more expensive than what we buy for our laser printers at work.
I take all the printouts I absolutely need to make and (when I'm done with them) put them face-down in a stack on my desk (except the stuff that needs to go to the shredder). Then, when I need scrap paper to scribble down details or write quick flowcharts or whatever, I grab one of them and scribble away. So at least the paper gets used twice before going into the recycle bin.
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In that case, whoosh back, because I never claimed they were designed to last for 60 years. I only claimed that they were probably made saltwater resistant and therefore they MAY last 60 years, so we're vehemently agreeing on that point.
From my original post that you replied to:
I wouldn't necessarily expect it to last 60 years, but if I designed it to be even minimally saltwater-resistant it's not outside the realm of possibility that one might survive that long.
At no point did I suggest that they used expensive materials like stainless, in fact I specifically stated that stainless probably would NOT have been the material they used, specifically due to cost.
PVC, polystyrene, bakelite, teflon, and polyurethane come to mind, and all were around before WWII. Heck, even stainless steel was around, albeit probably too expensive for the Russian military at the time.
Lots of saltwater-resistant materials were readily available and cheap, and would have been logical to include in something designed to be in saltwater for even brief periods of time. I just gave a few semi-random examples of appropriate materials that were available at the time.
I have no earthly idea what the Russians actually used in their mines, and I wouldn't know how to go about getting plans. And the Department of Homeland Security might pay me a visit if I tried. ;)
They weren't designed to last 60 years, agreed. But they were designed with saltwater immersion in mind. If they were built to go into saltwater it is very possible that some of them HAVE lasted 60 years. The lead-and-glass trigger mechanisms are going to be largely immune to saltwater damage, and even if the outer steel shell rusts away (which is not a given if they are in a cold, low-oxygen environment) the explosive may be waterproofed enough to still have some boom left in it.
After all, these mines aren't moving around a lot, so if there's a layer of bakelite on them, or if they are made out of a solidified explosive, there's still a good chance the actual explosive is still at least partly viable.
Mustard gas bombs dumped in the same sea during the same era occasionally kill or hurt people as the solidified contents wash up to shore, and when someone breaks apart the pretty yellow rocks that have been soaking in sea water for decades it exposes a fresh layer of mustard gas. Mines in fields on land which have been subject to decades of changing weather and rain are still operating perfectly, most are dead but are you going to go for a stroll in a minefield just because they "should" be inactive by now?
The key question is - if you had a huge construction project going on, and there was a bunch of unexploded ordinance in the area, what would you do? Assume "it can't possibly have survived" so many decades past its sell-by date, or assume that (until you know better) each bomb is fully active?
I'd assume every bomb still had the boom-boom left in it until I had actively confirmed that it does not. Maybe all 70 of the mines are fully safe. PROBABLY all 70 of the mines are fully safe. The time to find that out is now, not after running a natural gas pipeline near one.
Did I say "disaster" as in "boom"? No.
You'll get bubbles, and the natural gas will be absorbed into ocean water, and really screw up the water in terms of ocean flora and fauna.
Because it's being funded as prep work for a natural gas pipeline, and only 70 of them are deemed to be a threat to that pipeline.
As much as I'd love to see the specific company funding this pipeline be a good citizen and set off the other 149,930, it's just not their responsibility.
Maybe if this technology works out, the Russian government will decide to fund further clearing. And maybe I'll develop emergence of avionic simians out of my butt.
.. and, sadly, not only at sea. Unfortunately, they also work really well on land, too.
TNT? Any explosive put in Bakelite or any one of a number of cheap plastics commonly available in that era?
And many mines are built with motion/impact detection, usually made of glass. And if they are blowing the mines up with explosive, it won't matter whether the trigger mechanism works or not. If they were trying to retrieve the mines, that would be a valid concern, but that's why exploding them with additional explosive is the smart way to get rid of them.
Not only dangerous, but probably largely ineffective at actually preserving any environment.
These are mines. If they still have explosives, then they might still have devices designed to make those explosives go boom when the mine is moved. If 1/4 of the mines are still active, you'll have 1/4 the large explosions.
But you'll have larger, more expensive equipment that costs more and has to be abandoned due to severe damage the first time it encounters a mine that went off (as opposed to a small robot who was built to be blown up). Then you'll have bombs that make it all the way up to a ship THEN go off, leaving all the Diesel fuel and other chemicals in the water when the ship sinks
Blowing them up in place is probably the most environmentally friendly way of disposing of the bombs, short of not building them in the first place of course. But I lack a time machine AND any way to change human nature. ;)
The mustard gas is still going to leach out over time, this just releases it all at once over an area that has hopefully been largely cleared of wildlife. Certainly not an ideal way of neutralizing mustard gas, but overall probably not terribly much more harmful than leaving it there - the difference being that the damage is done all at once rather than over the course of decades.
I'm no munitions expert, but if I were to design a mine that was going to go into saltwater I might also select a material that is somewhat resistant to saltwater. PVC, polystyrene, bakelite, teflon, and polyurethane come to mind, and all were around before WWII. Heck, even stainless steel was around, albeit probably too expensive for the Russian military at the time. I wouldn't necessarily expect it to last 60 years, but if I designed it to be even minimally saltwater-resistant it's not outside the realm of possibility that one might survive that long. The odds are against it, but it's not impossible.
So you go with the odds, and relative levels of damage involved. This is prepwork for a very expensive natural gas pipeline, and I doubt it really accounts for a significant portion of the overall expense.
If no bombs are viable, then the project has spent some money unnecessarily and set off a series of 5kg (~11-pound) explosives and not done any real harm to the surrounding environment except for a bunch of little areas that are about to get a LNG pipeline plumbed through anyway.
If just one of those bombs is live and goes off when natural gas is flowing through the LNG pipeline they want to build, that could be very devastating over a very large area.
The whole point of setting off a bomb next to a bigger bomb is to ensure that any viable explosives will go off.
Large boom = the original bomb was a danger and the danger is gone.
Small boom = the original bomb had no viable explosive left so was never a danger in the first place.
Determining which are currently dead and which are still live is tricky. The cheapest, fastest, and safest way is to just blow them all up.
"Dirty Jobs"... with Mike RoweBOT? (snare drum)
Coral reef ends at about 40 meters or so. I don't think anywhere on the Baltic Sea floor would qualify as prime coral reef territory for a large number of reasons, but depth is the first and most immediate that comes to mind.
And let's think about this for a second. They are doing the "boom-boom" thing to eliminate the bombs to make room for a natural gas pipeline. You might as well complain that the local contractor is using a weed-whacker to clear pretty flowers before he starts leveling the ground with a bulldozer. The amount of damage caused by these bombs going off is nothing compared to what's going to happen when the pipeline goes in.
And if you skip the mine-clearing step, just wait till the first mine goes off and releases a few million gallons of natural gas into the surrounding environment.
Life isn't fair.
Seriously, what else are they going to do? If they try to reclaim the bombs and blow them up at another location, the project just got massively more complex, they are going to still damage the surrounding area when they dig it up and drag it away, the stuff that breaks if one goes off in-place just got a lot more expensive, you have the risk of someone getting hurt or killed during transport, and they've still got to blow it up somewhere. Some life forms are going to be extinguished when the bomb goes off, and no one in their right mind is going to design something to try and keep the bomb from going off. Unexploded ordinance is just nasty stuff that may or may not still be viable - the only effective way to make it safe is to let all the boom out of it.
They try to scare off all the critters they can, then they blow up the mine. It's as cheap, efficient, and about as minimally invasive as such a project could be. That's not to say it's not invasive, only that (short of transporter technology where we can beam it all into space) it's about as good as we're going to get.
Very important reasons to use Palmer's:
1. You aren't running the risk of burning perfectly good chocolate to perform the experiment.
2. You are more likely to have leftovers of Palmer's, assuming you had some in the house in the first place, since no one in their right mind would actually eat it.
Remember, even Twinkies are good enough for science experiments. It's simply a matter of choosing the right experiment.
No, that's SATA N DEATH 666. It's a SerialATA specifications group who is concerned that SATA will reach 666 MB/s, and that this would indicate the coming of the Apocalypse by bringing one of the Four Horsemen, Death.
An absolutely perfect combustion of propane in an oxygen-rich environment does, in fact, result in exhaust containing only CO2 and water. It rarely burns that clean, however. Propane is also commonly sold with additives like butane and propylene and odorants in varying amounts.
More often, propane (more precisely, LPG, which is what people actually use - a blend that is mostly propane) fumes also contain varying amounts of CO (Carbon Monoxide), which is very nasty stuff, and occasionally a little soot which smells bad and can make people feel sick even if it's mostly harmless. The amount of both depends on how well the machine is maintained, how much oxygen is available to perform the burn, etc.
Also, in the case of a leak (ruptured pressure line, etc) propane itself is heavier than air and the fumes will tend to accumulate in the rink, contained by the glass walls.
A well-maintained propane engine is probably the best internal-combustion engine to use in any enclosed area, but even if it works perfectly it's lowering the oxygen content of the air, and if it doesn't work perfectly it can be dangerous. You really need decent ventilation to use propane in any quantity indoors.
I'm not trying to say that propane Zambonis are some sort of instant death machine. They've been in use for years. A lot of people use propane for their home stoves, and a lot of factories use propane to run forklifts, and it rarely causes problems. But electric has no emissions at all (*), so if you want to use something in an enclosed space it's always a good choice.
(*) Of course, generation of electricity can have a lot of pollutants involved, but I'm just talking about safety (emissions generated by the machine being used).
Exactly. All this moral outrage is over Southwest being unable to accommodate him on an EARLIER FLIGHT.
He knew he needed two seats. He bought two seats. Then he asked to fly standby and only one seat was available on the earlier flight he had asked for (but had no reservation for, hence the term "standby").
I fly with my others occasionally, and we've asked to fly standby on earlier flights. If only one seat is available on the earlier flight and we want to stay together, I expect to fly my original flight. In Kevin's case, they couldn't fit half of him on one flight and the other half on another (well, they could, but that might get messy).
This is exactly what Southwest did - they moved him back to his original ticketed flight, except they also gave him $100 because they couldn't accommodate a special request they were under no obligation to accommodate.
It's a shame a second seat wasn't open, but that's not Southwest's fault.
Southwest implements this through self-reporting. Mr Smith knew this and bought two tickets for his flight.
If only Southwest had had two open seats for the earlier flight that Mr Smith was flying STANDBY for...
Southwest flies only one model aircraft (Boeing 737), and the seats are all identical except the exit/emergency row where the seats are a teeny bit narrower, but have more legroom (both adjustments to accommodate evacuation in an emergency).
Even ignoring the fact that Mr Smith would probably only fit in First Class (which Southwest does not have) or in a few cases Business Class (which Southwest also does not have) on any aircraft without encroaching into another seat and that no Coach seat on this planet will fit him between the armrests, your argument is not relevant to Southwest. Their fleet is one of completely identical planes (except for age) and identical seating front-to-back.
While it is true that the space surrounding the seat can vary (such as window seats having a wall on one side, for example), the armrest-to-armrest width of Southwest seats is not variable except for the aforementioned exit/emergency row, and of course the legroom at the front where there are face-to-face seats (top tip for tall flyers, on a crowded flight AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS unless you can find a really short person to sit across from).
Mr Smith KNEW he couldn't fit into one seat. That's why he bought two for his original flight. When he asked for an earlier flight, he was a standby passenger. It's a shame Southwest could not accommodate him to fly on the earlier flight, but according to Southwest only one seat was available and he could not fit in it. Southwest's policy is that if you cannot fit into a single seat with the armrests down and without encroaching upon people in adjacent seats, you must buy a second seat (at a discount, and refundable if the flight ends up not being full). Mr. Smith did this, but the earlier flight did not have the two seats he needed, it only had one open.
Would you expect Southwest to "bump" another ticketholding passenger to accommodate a standby, or to violate their own policy and put another passenger through "lapover hell" and effectively give up half their seat for the flight? If Mr Smith were traveling with a child and only one seat was available, he would have been asked to take his normal flight because only one of the two standby seats he asked for was available. This is no different - he needed two seats, asked to fly standby for an earlier flight, and they didn't have two available seats for him.
As a former frequent flyer who is all too familiar with the horrifying moment or realization that the very heavy person coming down the aisle is going to be sitting next to you for a six-hour flight, and the intense discomfort of losing feeling on one side of my body for hours, my back bent at an odd angle, and in more than one case actually unable to get out of my seat for several minutes until I could feel my legs again, I actually flew Southwest a good bit because of this policy.
I sympathize with someone "of size" who is truly unable to get into a single seat, and is honestly unable to lose their excess girth. I truly do. But not to the point where I'm willing to give up half the seat I can barely fit into to start with (6' 3").
They did. In fact, they sold him TWO, because he disclosed his weight when the bought the tickets. The tickets, however, were NOT for the flight he was trying to board.
The part that the summary misses is that he asked to get on an earlier flight (which means he was now flying standby). When you fly standby, you wait until all the other passengers board then someone counts the empty seats, since they have no way of knowing how many seats will be available until everyone boards and they know how many no-shows they have and how many seats are really truly open. Since he was flying standby, he did not have a guaranteed reservation. Since only one seat was available once all the regular ticketholding passengers had boarded, and he couldn't fit into the single available seat, they could not accommodate his request. It's a pity that he couldn't fit into the available seat, but not Southwest's fault - they have a clear policy that if you cannot fit into a single seat you need to buy two. A policy that Mr. Smith was clearly aware of since he had two tickets to start with.
In fact, Southwest's policy is that if someone who needs to seats goes ahead and purchases two tickets and the plane ends up not being full, they REFUND the second ticket, because you "used an empty seat" for the extra space you needed.
Since they didn't have an available seat that Mr. Smith could fit into, they couldn't accommodate him. They moved him back to his original paid-for and committed seats, and even gave him $100 because they couldn't accommodate his request to fly earlier than the time stated on his ticket. Sounds like Southwest handled things well, and even went out of their way to apologize for something that WASN'T THEIR FAULT to start with.
OK, misread that bit, sorry - my bad.
Ever taken a stack of plastic sheets that have been held together by a bulldog clip 200-300 times and try to feed it into a thermal transfer printer? Paperclips and bulldog clips don't make holes, but the pressure does frequently distort/warp the paper.
it would be cheaper to simply buy them each a KindleDX
Good point. At $3.30 per sheet you could afford one KindleDX for less than the cost cost of about 100 sheets of this plastic paper. Kindles can hold many thousands of pages, and can be reused for a long time. Plus, the recipients can annotate their copies without ruining the storage media, and if they ever needed a permanent copy they just print out what sheets they need on good paper, or back their documents and annotations up to their desktop with almost no effort for archival storage.
For feeding into a heat transfer printer, one stapling/de-stapling is almost always sufficient to ruin it. Thermal transfer systems usually gets messed up if the media isn't pretty darned perfect (scratched toner drum, mangling of the rubber wheels that handle the media, etc)
At $3.30 per sheet, your boss would have to hand you one page per working day for several years in order to pay for each sheet of this, and that's assuming he doesn't circle something with permanent marker, fold it, crease it, wrinkle it, spill coffee on it, or staple it to another document. If any one of those things happen it can't be fed through a printer again.
And "heat transfer" means some form of toner and a crapload of electricity. So you still have a consumable and electricity to contend with, and I'll bet you their toner is more expensive than what we buy for our laser printers at work.
I take all the printouts I absolutely need to make and (when I'm done with them) put them face-down in a stack on my desk (except the stuff that needs to go to the shredder). Then, when I need scrap paper to scribble down details or write quick flowcharts or whatever, I grab one of them and scribble away. So at least the paper gets used twice before going into the recycle bin.