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In Atlanta, an electrical problem in a "Buss Duct" has caused the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center to be closed for at least a week. 5,000 federal employees work at the center.
While many might view this as another example of The Infrastructure Crisis in the USA, it may also be another example of mismanagement at the General Service Administration (GSA), landlord for the complex.
The GSA has had many scandals and has been the subject of several Congressional Hearings, including an August 1, 2012 hearing titled "GSA: A Review of Agency Mismanagement and Wasteful Spending - Part 2". That hearing followed an $823,000 GSA employee conference in Las Vegas and a one-day-long $250,000 GSA employee conference in Crystal City, Virginia.
The closed Atlanta complex is named for Samuel Augustus "Sam" Nunn, Jr., who served for 24 years as a United States Senator from Georgia and whose daughter is the current Democratic Party nominee for a Georgia Senate seat.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @10:35PM
I think buss is actually correct because they're talking about the electrical buss, aka a large electrical conductor. I don't know why they don't just call it an electrical conduit or a wire duct, but I haven't really dealt with large facility electrical systems and that parlance before.
(Score: 2, Informative) by NoMaster on Tuesday July 29 2014, @12:45AM
A lot of people seem to think that "buss" is an incorrect spelling derived from Bussmann (now Cooper Bussmann) fuses. Or that it's simply incorrect because "buss" meant "kiss" in an archaic language and the term has lingered on in North American useage, while "bus" is correct because it so obviously derives from the word "omnibus".
Which is post-facto bullshit, since the term "buss" for a mechanical or electrical power distribution shaft or rail predates the Bussman company by a good 30 or 40 years, was in common use in several languages across the major European industrialised countries at the time, and likely comes to English from a totally different route (Germanic -> northern European -> English, probably via Scots Gaelic) than the term "bus" (based on "omnibus", which came to English as a French term based on Latin).
And yes, I did post a similar explanation on The Other Site...
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