A lump of coal minus a canary - December 30th - TimeGhost of Christmas Past - Day 7

General Entrapment! Pfft!
I'll never understand how he got that promotion.

I didnt die of gas poisoning in a coal mine this year. So it was a good year!

A passerine is any bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or – less accurately – as songbirds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by the arrangement of their toes (three pointing forward and one back), which facilitates perching, amongst other features specific to their evolutionary history in Australaves
*Wikipedia

I'm surprised it took so long. On ships we had been using instruments to test enclosed spaces for a long time by then.

..my Chistmas present is finding you again Indy another Great series dude!!...happy holidays to you N yours...(love your stove btw!) :D

It is flabbergasting that they still had cannaries in coal mines in 1986! People in offices where using IBM microprocessors yet the poor coal miners relied on a bird for safety. It shows how much the rich owners valued the life of the workers.

Well, I am huffing less carbon monoxide lately. Also CO, as it is written, has the insidious habit of binding with the O2 carrying receptors in your blood... And staying there. So your body remains poisoned for long after your exposure until you replace the defective Blood cells

See you after Christmas
See you aft Christmas
See you at Christmas

Which is it in the intro? I can’t figure it out.

... Cool ...

I'm from a coal mining family sad our history is rarely told thank you Indy

I learned through my wife's vet tech schooling that birds were used because they are more efficient. A bird will use around 90% of the oxygen they breath in, where as humans are around 70% efficient.

I currently work at a grocery store in Pennsylvania (the land of antiquated liquor laws where nothing makes sense), as the beer/wine guy. It's a humble job, admittedly, but you get to meet some interesting people and every day brings a new story and new people.

A few weeks ago, some pompous wealthy lady from the UK stopped in and with her insufferably posh accent that was a caricature of itself, said, "Eeeeeooooh, theeesth linesth are sooooo tiresthome! You knnnnyow, if it wasthn't for usth, yyyyew Amerrrrrricans wouldn't even hyave a Thhhhyanksgyiving! Yeeeeww aaul owe usth a dyebt of grrrrrrrateeeetude!"

I said, "Lady, my family don't owe you a thing. Your ancestors kicked my ancestors off their land in Ireland back in the 1850's, burned the estate to the ground, and they had to flee to America, where they settled in the Coal Region of Pennsylvania and were then immediately drafted into the Union Army during our Civil War. After that, they had to flee from their homes again, once the Pinkertons discovered the Molly Maguires."

Now, THAT is a topic for conversation - the Mollies!

Then again, I have a good friend whose family stretches back to the first settlers of Virginia. I call him "Johnny Reb" and he calls me "Billy Yank" (you can imagine how those epithets are incredibly hilarious when I go down to Richmond for the NASCAR race every year). Both our ancestors came from the same part of Ireland and went toe-to-toe at Gettysburg. We always joke, "It's a good thing our ancestors were chicken-shit and had really bad aim! We wouldn't be here today, otherwise!"

Interestingly I learned this from programming. We have things called canary tests and canary releases. Canary tests check to make sure testing will work properly. Canary release is releasing a new version to a small group of users to check there aren't any major issues.

I wish you a null or at least small telephone bill, Indy!

I think the use of canaries to detect gas in mines goes back much earlier than 1911. They were being used for this purpose in the 1700s and 1800s as well.

Brother, Dad, many uncles and cousins, all coal miners if the West Virginia hills.

So safety tools developed just in time to close the mines anyway. And were the tools adopted around the rest of the world? Certainly not in NZ ( check out Pike River.)

My work year ends tomorrow afternoon, because my departmental manager sees perfect logic in us working on days in which no other department is open (because they have lives and sense) and so all we can do is defer work until they get back. After that, I'm off for what seems like forever (and possibly have an interview for another, more sane department during that). Happy New Year, everyone.

About coal mnes - I remember the slag flood that took out almost all of the children in Aberfan Wales. Made me very sad to wake up to hear reports of this disaster before going to school that morning. I've always remembered that happening with great sadness. It happened just a few days after by birthday in 1966.

If anyone lives near Chicago, Illinois, USA, or goes there on vacation, make sure you visit the Museum of Science and Industry. They actually have a working coal mine you can go down into. Yeah, my first time down that elevator didn't bother me a bit. Nope. No sir. Not a bit. MOMMY!!!!! ;)

My working year was pretty successful even though I made like no money and wasn't appreciated for the hours I put in... but I got stuff for my resume. This is modern life...

The danger of carbon monoxyide is not so much asphyxiation. Unlike carbon dioxide, it is actually very poisonous. That means far less is needed to kill you. And the effects even linger after you are no longer exposed to it because it clings to the hemoglobin of your blood instead of oxygen. But unlike the oxygen, which disassociates from the hemoglobin when the blood cells arrive at the place where the oxygen is needed, the carbon monoxide doesn't let go.

My grand father was a coal miner in Alabama. I heard many stories of accidents and other issues. He was in the mines in the twenties, thirties, and forties. Starting as a mucker, the lowest job, he retired as the manager of two mines called Thermal Number one and Thermal number two. My mother, raised in coal town used to talk about the fear that went through the community when you heart the big steam horn that signaled accidents in the mines.
Explosions were not uncommon. It was soft coal mining so tunnel collapses were not uncommon.
My grandfather, who was a very law abiding sort, told me he would rather I became a bank robber than go into the mines.
Edit: I should add that working your way up from a mucker to eventually managing a mine, was not a common thing, but he had gotten two years of engineering school before going into the mines, making him highest educated miner working at that level in the mines.

Glad my December 30 birthday was in the 90s lol

Let us observe a moment of silence for all the little birds who lost their lives saving people underground.

Thanks for the year(s) Indy and the crew! Keep doing the great job!

"Canary in the coal mine" actually makes sense now

Tweet tweet 🐦 No canary emoji. 😟 But wow it took em until 1986 to faze em out?

My work year was slowish as the Canadian Oil and Gas sector(Steel pipe bender I is.) continues on despite the politics. Slow for the winter (used to twelve hour shifts Monday to Friday and a 8 hour shift Saturday not 8 hours shifts all winter) and then just as Christmas roles up, We get swamped. So Cool!! Awesome. But why the fuck now!!!!

The gas equipment was less expensive than canary's. I wish I had been in their union!

Wonderful to see this being filmed in 4K, is this going to happen in future vids?

My work year was pretty terrible, chained to my desk, many people sitting in close proximity, but very having very little face to face interaction, nevermind over the phone. I liken working in an office on a pc to many different aspects of working conditions that unions fought to improve. What is strange is that the conditions of working in an office are not obviously bad, but they are bad. Air quality and oxygen levels in LEED certified buildings are bad, sitting at a desk for long periods of time without a break is not physically demandung, but leads to atrophy of muscles and exhaustion which is just as bad if not worse than the exhaustion suffered by physically demanding jobs, and the mental demands caused by multitasking alone causes stress that outstrips anything experienced in the workplace I would say 15 + years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Especially since unions don't exist in offices.

OH! so sad! coal miners get the shaft again!

It wasn't just the canaries that were phased out in Coal Mines in Britain in the 1980's...it was the mines themselves. The Thatcher led Government pursued an aggressive policy of closure, and as mining town communities were decimated, the miners reacted with desperation to keep them open as members of the National Union of Miners under Arthur Scargill. It was a tragic and divisive era of British industrial and social history.

I'm retired, so, every day is Sunday and no day is Monday.

Gives new meaning to "The Police" song "Canary in a Coal Mine".

See ya next year in 2020.

I even had a bird related thing at work: a flying rat (aka Pigeon) left a full size imprint on the window after it flew head on into it. The animal survived.

16 hours, and what d’ya get
Another day over and deeper in debt

It was probably also pretty good for the canaries..

Culture preservation vs safety, huh? Spoken like a true

coal mining... LEGITIMATELY THE WORST MOST DANGEROUS JOB EVER.

wow... 1986??? those brits like to move slowly eh?

Indy, firedamp was and is still a major hazard for miners.

I didn’t realize the practice of taking canaries into mines only started in 1911. I thought miners had been doing it for centuries.

My father dug coal alongside his father. If WWII hadn't come along and my father hadn't been able to fulfill his dream to fly planes, I would have been digging coal alongside both of them. That's all there was in that one mule town in southwest pennsylvania.