While the earth gets warmer, the politics seem to get colder. According to the BBC Canada is vigorously staking its claim to the Arctic perhaps in anticipation of a waterway opening up:
The Conservative plans include the construction and deployment of three new armed heavy ice-breaking ships and an underground network of listening posts.
Listening posts, eh? It’s not clear what the US ambassador was hoping to achieve by telling Canada that they have no claim to the territory. He’s certainly given the Canadian conservatives more ammunition that they must stake a claim. Pot, kettle, black, no?
There should be one if there isn’t already. And unless someone objects, today seems like as good a day as any to celebrate the brilliance of his words, most of which I find useful in meetings about risk:
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
“Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.”
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers”
“The more I read, the more I meditate; and the more I acquire, the more I am enabled to affirm that I know nothing”
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets” (a softer variation is that some think it’s ok to write buggy code if you write so much of it that your pride and profit keep it going in spite of inefficiency and harm)
and finally, with regard to today’s news that the FTC has fined ChoicePoint $15 million…
“Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.”
Here’s to Voltaire and to his role in the age of Enlightenment!
He was a poet’s poet:
Understand idleness better. It is either folly or wisdom; it is virtue in wealth and vice in poverty. In the winter of our life, we can enjoy in peace the fruits which in its spring our industry planted. Courtiers of glory, writers or warriors, slumber is permitted you, but only upon laurels.
Obviously spam is annoying and costly, but today I received a clever spam message that had somehow morphed itself into a simple poem:
awake need teach
from swim have
He reply change
on live want
As tell know
Or fit explain
That turnoff allow
night need think
school sit understand
Which fall finish
The give know
Deep, no? I’m almost glad it made it to my inbox. Should the spammers decide that they need to resort to including poetry in their email in order to get through the filters, the sting of their messages and hostility towards them might all but subside and people could welcome spam as literary marketing. Or that might be like saying used car salesmen would be more popular if they could sing when they lied.
General Ripper in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” said he was afraid “precious bodily fluids” could be contaminated by the Communists, so he drank only distilled water or rainwater. He might have sounded a bit nutty at the time, but the latest report on US tap water might make the movie seem less comical. The Environmental Working Group released a report last month that had some disturbing data:
In an analysis of more than 22 million tap water quality tests, most of which were required under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, EWG found that water suppliers across the U.S. detected 260 contaminants in water served to the public. One hundred forty-one (141) of these detected chemicals — more than half — are unregulated; public health officials have not set safety standards for these chemicals, even though millions drink them every day.
[…]
Our investigation reveals major gaps in our system of public health protections when it comes to tap water safety. Federal programs that allocate grants and low-cost loans to prevent water pollution and protect the rivers, streams, and groundwater that we drink are sorely underfunded.
When you consider how important clean water is to the national infrastructure, the data suggests serious shortcomings that threaten to undermine US security.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, as quoted by Salon, called clean drinking water “a key ingredient to keeping people healthy and our economy strong.”