Archive for the ‘Safety’ Category
Quotes of the day.
Monday, February 20th, 2012Brain buckets.
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011I mentioned this in passing in this week’s TMQ thread, but for all of those who don’t read it: my sister has a new post up at the Park City Snowmamas site.
Of course, that’s just my paraphrase of what she’s actually saying. My sister never uses the word “f–k” in conversation. Except for maybe when one of her boys tries to sneak a box of Pop-Tarts or a case of Monster energy drink into the house….
Legal note.
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011The University of California and Dr. Patrick Harran, a chemistry professor at UCLA, have been charged with three felony counts of “willfully violating occupational health and safety standards”. Yes, you read that right: the University itself is being charged with felonies.
The charges stem from the death of Sheri Sangji in December of 2008. Ms. Sangji was employed in Dr. Harran’s lab:
She died 18 days after the incident.
I’m kind of hoping Derek Lowe will have some comment on this, and I’m willing to listen to arguments on the subject. My gut feeling is that the felony indictments are appropriate: Ms. Sangji should not have been working without a flame-resistant lab coat, and it isn’t clear to me that she was provided with appropriate equipment, training, or supervision. This is what trials are for, of course, and details may come out during the trial that will change my mind. But:
But the required corrective actions were not taken before the fatal fire, the records showed.
Edited to add: Many thanks to Chemjobber both for pointing us to Derek Lowe’s commentary, and for providing a link to an article from Chemical and Engineering News summarizing the incident in more detail.
Also, thanks to Lawrence for a somewhat related link, which we had missed: the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board report on the Texas Tech lab explosion in January of 2010. I swear that I covered the explosion at the time, or shortly afterwards, but I can’t find the link now. In any case, the report is pretty much what you’d expect: “the physical hazard risks inherent in the research were not effectively assessed, planned for, or mitigated; the university lacked safety management accountability and oversight; and previous incidents with preventative lessons were not documented, tracked, and formally communicated”.
(Short summary: the lab was working on a government project involving detection of explosives. Part of their work involved making something called nickel hydrazine perchlorate, which goes bang rather easily. The lab had been making small amounts (100 milligrams) but the students involved in the production of NHP that day decided, for various reasons, to scale things up and produce about 10 grams. The NHP went bang while one of the students was trying to break up “clumps” in a mortar and pestle.)
Important medical news.
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011This is why I only use single-malt scotch in my Neti pot. (Mixing it with Mountain Dew is optional.)
Important safety tip (#8 in a series).
Monday, November 7th, 2011If you dine out, in a sit-down restaurant, where someone actually brings food to your table, you should leave a reasonable tip.
I’m generally on the side of 15% as a base, though what I do in practice is double the sales tax. (Local sales tax around Austin is generally 8.25%, so that’s actually 16.5%.) I will tip 20% or 25% if I have a good reason to. I’m not as bothered by an 18% mandatory gratuity on large parties as I used to be; if the definition of a large party meets mine (five people is not large; seven+ is) and if they go above and beyond in some way (splitting the ticket six or seven ways for a party of seven, to me, justifies at least 18%).
In any case, I strongly recommend against a 200%+ tip, especially if you’re on an expense account.
Because if you’re on an expense account and turn in a receipt that shows you tipped the waitress at Hooter’s $24.52 for a mushroom cheeseburger that cost $7.48, somebody in the accounting department is going to ask questions. And eventually they’re going to find out that you tipped the waitress $24.52 to cover your bar tab, since your city expense account doesn’t cover alcohol.
(The heck of it is, I think the city policy is unreasonable. It doesn’t bother me that much for a couple of off-duty cops dining out of town to have a beer or two with their meals, and have the city pay for it. As long as they don’t get messed up and embarrass the city, say, by having the waitress pose with their patrol rifle, I don’t get hot and bothered by adults having a beer. But if they knew city policy was otherwise, and they lied about it because they were too cheap to pay their own bar tab, yeah, fire their butts.)
(If you’re not on an expense account, the above doesn’t apply to you. Feel free to tip the waitress 200%. Or 300%. Or 500%. But keep in mind; she’s not going to sleep with you, no matter how much you tip her.)
Important safety tips (#6 and #7 in a series).
Friday, October 7th, 2011Number 6: Be very careful using the “reply to all” button in your email client. Indeed, I question the wisdom of even having a self-destruct button “reply to all” button in email clients. You may laugh, but I have seen far too many cases where the “reply to all” button functions very much like a self-destruct button.
Number 7: There are certain words you should probably avoid putting in a professional email. I’m sure everyone has their own list, but I’m also pretty sure that if we merged all of our lists together, “f-cking” and “b-tch”, as well as the conjugate “f-cking b-tch” would be there.
No reason really. Just thought I’d point these out.
(Hattip: Ken over at Popehat.)
Important safety tip (#5 in a series).
Friday, August 12th, 2011If you’re going to sell “lobster salad” in your store, it is a very good idea to make sure that your “lobster salad” contains actual lobster.
No, I’m not convinced by the argument that crawfish is close enough to lobster for it to count.
Important safety tip. (#4 in a series)
Monday, February 14th, 2011It has been said before, but apparently it needs to be said again.
Don’t put anything into an email that you would not want to see on the front page of your local newspaper.
This is especially true if your local newspaper is the LAT.
You may ask, what brings this on? I’m glad you did.
Remember Randy Adams? Former police chief of Glendale, California, who took a job as police chief of the city of Bell, at a much higher salary, while at the same time negotiating his disability pay from the city of Bell?
The LAT reprints some choice quotes from emails between Chief Adams and assistant city administrator Angela Spaccia. Quotes such as:
“I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money”.
and
As the LAT notes, the “Bob” in the above quote is Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city administrator.
Speaking of Ratso, I meant to note this last week, but it got past me: Bell’s city clerk says that Ratso ordered her to give out false information about his salary, and the salaries of the city council members. Also worthy of note: the clerk testified under a grant of limited immunity. (“Use immunity”, which prevents the DA from using her testimony against her. That doesn’t mean she can’t be prosecuted if the DA finds evidence other than her testimony to use against her. I am not your lawyer, and neither is Wikipedia, but here’s a link that explains the difference between “use immunity” and “transactional immunity”.)
Edited to add: Slightly longer version of the story here.
Important safety tip. (#3 in a series)
Monday, January 31st, 2011This has been said many times, in many places, but I think it bears repeating for reasons that I’ll illustrate shortly:
GPS systems are a guide and a tool. They are not absolutely perfect. They are human designed systems that can fail.
Also, no matter how insistent that voice is, and no matter how often it says “Recalculating”, your GPS system is not the boss of you. You are the person in control of the vehicle; you have the option to ignore it, mute it, or even throw it out the window. (I even know one person who took a perverse enjoyment in tormenting their car’s GPS system by driving in circles.)
Several things bring this to mind. Some folks who were attending Saturday’s SDC found that their GPS systems were showing a location for Korean Grill that was quite a bit off from the actual location. (By the way, Korean Grill is a pretty darn spiffy place; I recommend giving it a shot.) On Sunday, we had a similar experience trying to find the Gruene Door; somehow, we ended up in a residential area several hundred feet behind the Gruene Door, and more or less stumbled on the restaurant through pure luck. (Also: the Gruene Door was fantastic. I’d like to go back sometime soon.)
And then there’s this story from the Sacramento Bee:
And then they get stuck in the middle of nowhere in 120 degree heat where there’s no cell phone service and wind up drinking their own urine to survive. Or just simply vanish until someone stumbles across their remains in the desert.
It does seem like there may be a little more to this than just GPS failures. (Why aren’t closed roads better marked? Perhaps with a big sign: “ROAD CLOSED. IF YOU GO PAST THIS POINT YOU WILL DIE.“) But the main problem still seems to be blind trust in a technology that can fail.
(Unfortunately, I can’t find a YouTube clip of the Hill Street Blues episode where Joyce Davenport lectures one of her clients on desert survival techniques. Too bad, because she’s actually got some pretty sound advice to offer.)
Important safety tip. (#2 in a series)
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011A gun is a gun. It is designed to shoot things.
A gun is not an all purpose tool. A gun is not a club. A gun is not a prybar. A gun is not a bottle opener (the Galil aside). A gun is not a tool for breaking out windows.
Bad things can happen when you use your gun for things other than shooting. For example, if you use your gun to club someone (no matter how deserving) you may mar the finish. Blood does awful things to a gun’s finish, especially the beautiful bluing on older Smith and Wesson revolvers.
Hitting things with your gun can also bend parts. Then your gun won’t go off when you need for it to go off. As the great Peter Hathaway Capstick once said, “The most terrifying sound in nature is not the roar of a charging lion, nor the whistle of a descending bomb; rather it is a click when you expect a bang.”
But the worst thing that can happen is that your gun might go off when you don’t want to go off. (I’d almost be willing to argue with Capstick that the sound of a “bang” when you expect a “click” is even more terrifying. However, I haven’t spent much of my life hunting lion and elephant in Africa, more’s the pity.) For example, when you’re breaking out a car window.
Bad move, space cadet. (Edited to add: Just to make it clear for my readers outside Texas, “Humble” in this case is a city near-ish to Houston, not a description of the police officer.)
Important safety tip.
Friday, July 23rd, 2010If you’re going to cheat, don’t be stupid about it. Try to show at least a little intelligence.
I draw my example today from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office, which has a bit of a problem. LACSO wants deputies in the jail to check on the inmates regularly, just to make sure none of them have decided to hang themselves, or are getting beaten to death by Bubba. So they have a system of bar code scanners around the jail; deputies are supposed to use those scanners to scan their assigned bar code as they make their rounds.
How did they discover this? Well, one of the inmates killed himself, and records showed that a deputy had been making his regular rounds. When the investigators dug a little deeper into the records…
…they discovered that computer records showed the deputy scanned several parts of the jail in 35 seconds — a physical impossibility.
…
As they investigated further, officials found that the deputy who was on duty during the suicide also went to the staff gym and made a “chow run” to a nearby restaurant on the day of the suicide when he should have been making his rounds, the report says.
Important safety tips.
Monday, December 14th, 2009If you are planning to go into the offices of a financial advisor armed with a gun, it is a good idea to load the gun first.
It is also a good idea to leave the wine glass and wine bottle in the car; you know, so you have both hands free to load the damn gun.
Lawrence points out that Triton Financial, the firm in question, has a somewhat interesting history. (See also.)