a nash blog

BP v Union Carbide

paul — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:27:55 +0000

Was down the pub last night and a friend mentioned an interesting comparison between the BP oil disaster and the Union Carbide Gas disaster.
The BP oil disaster caused the death of 11 workers, which of couse is a tragedy, and an immense amount of damage to the environment in the Gulf area, and possible else where in due course, plus considerable damage to the local economies . The oil drilling operation was operated on behalf of BP by a third party, under the control of BP. US is a powerfull country and estimates for the total cost to BP range from $3.2bn to $100bn.
In 1984, Union Carbide India Ltd, owned by Union Carbide USA, caused an estimated 3787 deaths through a gas leakage. The causes for both the BP oil disaster and the Union Carbide disaster are though to result from failure to act upon known weaknesses in operating proceedures and equipment. India is a poor company with limited power on the wortld stage and the people killed were poor people. The total cost to Union Carbide, as negotiated with the Indian government, was $470M…..

Hmmm!

Some quotes

paul — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:24:18 +0000

Just thinking about some of my favourite quotes:

“And crawling on the planet’s face , some insects called the human race.
Lost in time, and lost in space And meaning.” Richard O’brien

“fates of men….we play and are played and the best we can hope for is to do it with style“ Terry Pratchet

a snail

paul — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:05:15 +0000

One of the many blogs that I have been reading, is
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
which is very much concerned with atheist v christian right issues (evolution v creationism).

My sympathies do not lie with the christian right (nor with any idiotic religious views) and I felt that it all came together the other day, when sitting in a traffic jam. I was looking at the boot of the car in front, when I observed a snail, crawling up the boot lid of the car. Clearly, the owner of the car had been to the local tip the previous day and left behind, after the garden waste had been removed from the boot, was the snail. It occurred to me, that the snail, whilst crawling up the lid of the boot, had no more idea or understanding as to the nature of its immediate surroundings, as we have to the nature of our existance, meaning of life (if there is one) and all the rest. Any attempt by anyone to impart to the snail, an understanding of the nature traffic jams etc. would be a futile as any attempt to explain the nature of our existance to us.

Tongs at the bread counter

paul — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:34:40 +0000

I have been pondering on the use of the plastic tongs in Tesco (or other supermatkets, I guess) at the bread counter.
The tongs are placed in the bread roll bins, inferring that you should use them to select your bread rolls and place the rolls into the plastic bag for the check-out. I think that it is meant to be a sort of hygene issue.
I always pick up my rolls with my hands and take them to the check-out and I am dying for someone to tell me off and insist that I use the tongs to handle the rolls.
I want to ask the manager of Tesco, what exactly is the roll of the tong ?.
If I pick up my roll and take it home, as far as I can see, any germs on the roll, assuming that it has not been rolling around on the floor behind the counter, at any time, are my germs. Also, if I use the tongs, I will transfer the germs from the previous customer to use the tongs, to my hands, and then in due course to the roll. Also, if I use the tongs, I will transfer my germs to the tongs and then in due course to the next customer to use the tongs.
It strikes me that the tongs are an excellent means of transferring germs around….but I suspect that those who placed the tongs in the bread bin, meant quite the opposite. Perhaps, as soon as anyone has used the tongs, an assistant rushes out and sanitises them before they are used by the next customer …!!! Hmm! I doubt it.
So, come on supermarket manager, ask me to use the tongs…please….then I can ask my question.

Election

paul — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:05:49 +0000

It has occurred to me that it should be mandatory that all politicians are ugly. Then, when television debates are aired, Daily Mail readers, or similar, would not exclaim “Oooh ! isn’t he lovely….. I must vote for him” or something similar.

Take them out of the gene pool

paul — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:46:49 +0000

Spent Saturday morning, with a few other villagers, collecting litter from arouynd the village…loads of it.
Have now just driven out of the village and guess what ? …more litter on the very road that I walked on Saturday. The litter is take away pizza packaging. My guess is that some ’plonkers’ on their way back into the village, having purchased a pizza in Buckingham or somewhere, finished it by the time they get to the village…and out of the window goes the packing. I cannot get my head around the mentality of such.
Just got back from the local gardens centre and having purchased a load of compost in the bags, returned the trolley to the trolley enclosure, and guess what…idiots take their trolley all the way to the enclosure and then leave them in the parking bays all around…and there was plenty of room in the trolley enclosure. I guess that I am getting old and setb in my ways, but again, I cannot get my head around the lazy mentality.

Any MP / manifesto that promises to take such plonker out of the gene pool, gets my vote

Experts

paul — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:51:22 +0000

Well, the weatherman definately said, earlier this year..”it will be a summer of BBQs”, now we learn that it will be wet and unsettled for the near future and that they didn’t really mean we would have a good summer !!
Definition of an expert…someone (often with an exagerated sense of self importance…maybe a politician) who is marginally less ignorant than the rest of us…but non-the-less, ignorant. Weather men fall into that category…and so do financial “experts”

Doubly pi##ed off !

paul — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:28:37 +0000

It is no good, I cannot ignore the MP expenses issue any longer.
Every year, we get invited to the local Tory party garden party (sort of do). It is a good do…loads of wine, good food and good company (if you ignore the obvious political messages). We are not political and only go for the food and wine, and the tickets are not that expensive.
We have just received this year’s invitation…..but…our local MP (who attends the do and makes a little speech) is one of those who has claimed to the maximum and has loads of other jobs (about 10). So, on balance, I feel that I cannot attend. I just cannot let anyone, even think that I can support such an MP (regardless of whether I do or not….in fact, I think that I am now a floating voter ).
So, this guy has doubly pi##ed me off. Not only is he up there with the rest of them, taking the pi## out of us all (and they still have not got the message…or don’t want to), but he is stopping me from enjoying a decent evening out…

Food and sell by dates and such

paul — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:29:59 +0000

Just seen a report that stated the government was going to withdraw the requirements for shops to display “sell by” and “best before” dates on food, on the basis that this encourages households to throw away their food prematurely. The thinking being, that too much food is thrown away because people are worried about food poisoning…hells bells ! That is when I buy the food because it is reduced. I also hear that sales of pork in some markets has reduced because people are worried about catching “swine flu”……durr
Then, whilst waiting in the queue at the local post office, I notice all the tobacco packets with “smoking kills” and “smoking kills everyone else around you” etc. in large letters. But that does not seem to effect the sales…most wierd
Actually, just thought about the premature throwing away of food……must be all the MPs throwing away their old food, since they can alway buy more, and claim it on expenses

An astute view on the financial situation

paul — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:48:26 +0000

I often catch up on the (somewhat USA orientated) blog view on events, on “You are Dumb” and I think that yesterday’s post on the current financial “crisis” is a lot more accurate than most (if not all) of the many more academic views on offer elsewhere.
See here http://www.youaredumb.net/archive/2009/2/24
brilliant !