Monthly Archives: June 2007

Poetry, Security

Darfur is a Casualty

Leave a comment

by Mr Mohammed Adam Qarad, an interpreter for the AU/UN

Worry nights about poor babies
whose life on the ground resources
Still waiting for the cloud raining
cleans starvation conflict boiling
The youth instead of standing by
They left Darfur to North Sky

Music of Darfur drums noising
not only for singing and dancing
neither for harvest nor collecting
only for chairs politicians are fighting
also for diet many people are suffering
The youth instead of standing by
They left Darfur for North Sky

Darfur is a great mother of men
she paid for now and then
but nature of life is often
loses hand of generous thieving smile
wonderful world beautiful people exile!
and the robust case which is alive
When do we build responsible life?
The youth instead of standing by
They left Darfur to North Sky

Posted on the Soldier of Africa blog.

Security

Piracy because there is no alternative?

Leave a comment

Ha ha, Dvorak is a funny guy. I’ve been reading his column on and off for as long as I can remember, but this dilemma really takes the cake for philosophical computer humor:

Wow. This is a new chicken-and-egg conundrum. Is piracy high because users have no alternative? Or is there no alternative to piracy because there is so much piracy?

I have visited many parts of the world over the years where the locals moaned about having to pirate a product because nobody would sell it to them legitimately. And I have always believed that in some particularly underserved areas around the world, such as Southeast Asia, software piracy is tolerated to keep Linux from gaining a foothold. It never ends.

Conspiracy. It just goes to show that Microsoft’s success is often made from making others look bad (in an exaggerated fashion, of course) more than achieving something admirable itself. Competition does not always work best in the absence of (an agreed set of) rules for engagement.

Sometimes when I hear people argue that competition brings out the best in people, I ask “are you a fan of sports?” If they say yes, I ask how their preferred activities would play without referees and judges to measure success fairly. If they say no…well, I ask what they mean by “the best”.

How’s that for food for discussion, John?

Poetry

The Way of It

Leave a comment

by R.S. Thomas

With her fingers she turns paint
into flowers, with her body
flowers into a remembrance
of herself. She is at work
always, mending the garment
of our marriage, foraging
like a bird for something
for us to eat. If there are thorns
in my life, it is she who
will press her breast to them and sing.

Her words, when she would scold,
are too sharp. She is busy
after for hours rubbing smiles
into the wounds. I saw her,
when young, and spread the panoply
of my feathers instinctively
to engage her. She was not deceived,
but accepted me as a girl
will under a thin moon
in love’s absence as someone
she could build a home with
for her imagined child.

I’m not a big fan of Thomas, but it is interesting to read his poetry after seeing another perspective put forth in his biography:

The brilliant artist that RS Thomas married virtually sank into obscurity in his shadow.

Mildred Elsie Eldridge became plain Elsi and a forgotten artist after she married Thomas exactly 66 years ago on July 5, 1940.

But just three years earlier, when she first met her husband-to-be, she was driving an open-top Bentley and he was an unpublished poet on a bike.

The Bentley reference falls flat, mostly because the pair subsequently lived a pauper’s life apparently at the insistence of Thomas who turned to religion and nationalism, and feared technology. Or was that the point of the reference? It’s so unclear, it seems like an awkward detail. Could the bicycle have been in fact a richer experience than the Bentley?

Anyway, the part of the story about the biography that really caught my eye was this revelation:

Rogers believes Elsi was the source of much of the muse that moved in Thomas, but the poet only ever mentioned his wife’s work in a single poem.

Rogers said, “I try to show the effect Elsi had on Ron. About 1940 he is writing gushy things about fairy lands and a few years later he is writing about grim Welsh peasants.

“Something made him grow up, and it’s something to do with Elsi.”

Is “The Way of It” that single poem that Rogers wants us to recognize? Thomas certainly seems very fond of his wife, and seems to put her in contrast to his own pained perspectives on life. Does growing up mean giving up? I wonder if there might be more pronounced references to Elsi lurking in his collection? Additional references could dispel Rogers’ argument regarding acknowledgment by the poet, yet prove a theory of connectedness at the same time.

Energy, Security

Furniture Safety and the South Carolina Disaster

Leave a comment

American furniture products should be in the spotlight again following the South Carolina fire that killed nine of Charleston’s best.

In 1993 American fire marshals were already campaigning to improve furniture fire safety. However, by 2000, little progress had been made and a law firm in South Carolina called Foster and Foster wrote an advisory called “Flammable Upholstered Furniture: Is there a deadly time bomb in your couch?”

Robert P. Foster has brought legal action against a maker of upholstered furniture causing injury and death under product liability theories of strict liability, negligence, and warranty. “Its excessive flammability makes it an unreasonably dangerous product well beyond the reasonable expectations of the ordinary consumer.”

[…]

The primary flammability culprit is polyurethane foam, the seating cushioning core that shares some of the same combustion properties as kerosene and gasoline. It is a petroleum based product sometimes called solid gasoline

Fast forward to this morning when people are discussing similar conditions under which a “fire tornado” whipped through a Carolina warehouse stuffed to the brim with furniture for a giant sale.

Bloomburg’s report shows that while presence of a sprinkler system could be significant factor, the quantity of “solid gasoline” is also important:

The one-story building had no sprinklers, said Mike Parrotta, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters-South Carolina.

“It appeared they were having a closeout sale, so it’s likely they were overstocked and the fire load was greater than normal,” Parrotta said.

Firefighters are professionals, not just ordinary consumers, but would they have acted differently if they had been looking at a warehouse of gasoline in front of them rather than furniture?

Furniture does not have to be made with solid gasoline, obviously. When I used to work on furniture repair I always saw cotton and burlap padding as easier to work with and more comfortable. I found nothing more unpleasant than working on toxic foam-based products. The furniture industry is driven by a very different set of values, however, as flammability and toxicity of furniture is not regulated in America and remains a significant source of risk:

For three decades, most upholstered furniture and mattresses sold in America have contained flexible polyurethane foam, the plastic material that was used as soundproofing around The Station nightclub stage. It’s found in couches, love seats, chairs, recliners, mattresses, mattress pads and mattress toppers, pillows, carpet cushioning and many other places.

More than 2 billion pounds of foam enters the U.S. market every year.

Foam is comfortable and comparatively cheap — and once ignited, it can be lethal. Mattress, bedding and upholstered furniture fires killed almost 30,000 Americans from 1980 to 1998, the latest year for which National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) data are available. Another 95,655 people were injured.

From 1980 to 1998, mattress and bedding fires killed 12,712 Americans, according to the NFPA — 10 times more than all those killed by tornadoes and hurricanes combined.

Almost 4,000 people killed a year, and that’s old news. By 2002 the number was up to almost 5,000 people killed a year, according to a FAQ by firemarshals.org:

If furniture manufacturers made some small, inexpensive changes to the materials they use, they could save hundreds of lives and prevent thousands of serious injuries every year.

They also point out that empirical evidence of success is easy to find:

California is the only state with fire safety regulations for upholstered furniture sold for use in homes. According to the California Bureau of Home Furnishings there was a 25% drop in deaths involving upholstered furniture after these standards were put into place in the 1970s.

The UK also has regulations for furniture. In addition “upholstery in airplanes, hotels, nursing homes, hospitals and even prisons is required to be fire resistant.” But consumer products outside California are left unregulated. The firemarshals.org FAQ does a nice job putting it in perspective:

It’s a funny thing about competition. The auto industry said airbags were unaffordable. The mattress industry said that fire safety standards would add hundreds of dollars to the price of each mattress. Consumers are still buying lots of cars and mattresses.

Perhaps the unfortunate death of the firefighters will bring the federal government to its senses. Nine brave men lost their lives trying to save others. There is no country to invade, no foreigners to blame, but here is a clear case where America’s national security (one less vulnerability in every home) could be improved by a simple stroke of the pen.