“Oxygen is the vital ingredient for the survival of every cell in our bodies. Too little—or too much—can spell disaster.” — Venki Ramakrishnan A reader recently complained about OSHA’s insistence on defining the safe limits of oxygen in terms of volume percent: 19.5% by volume to 23.5% by volume. “The fact that OSHA does not [...]
“Pressure comes from within and so must be mastered from within.” — Ed Jacoby Ten years ago, on Friday morning, April 24, 2015, a catastrophic still failure at the Silver Trail Distillery in Hardin, Kentucky seriously injured two workers, one who died 17 days later from his injuries. They were about four gallons into a [...]
“Science explorers are like an ideal gas. They can expand to fill any volume, but they can only do work under pressure…and the pressure’s on.” — Robert Ballard Every time that someone at a process facility tells me that they use compressed gas to transfer liquids from one tank to another, I wince. It’s not [...]
“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” — Harry S. Truman For decades, I’ve told people that OSHA requires thermal protection on surfaces over 140°F (60 C) up to a height of 7 feet. People just accepted that because a) I was the expert and b) it made sense. Recently, though, [...]
“Devils drinking devils and the flames are getting higher. All of Bardstown’s crying tonight, Heaven Hill’s on fire.” — Shannon Lawson, The Galoots Chris Schmidt and I recently returned from a week-long trip to Kentucky to enjoy the countryside and to sample bourbons from some of the 46 distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. As [...]
“You can’t trust water. Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.” — W. C. Fields ChrisSchmidt and I recently visited several distilleries on Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail. After tasting one particularly strong whiskey, she reached for a tall glass of clear liquid to chase it down. “Yeah, that’s probably water,” said our tasting guide, hinting [...]
“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” — Voltaire Early in my career, our boss assigned a colleague and me to investigate an incident that was still having a significant impact on the plant. Being an arrogant know-it-all, I mean, an engineer, I was confident that I already knew what [...]
“No Watson, this was not done by accident, but by design.” — Sherlock Holmes On Monday, February 17, 2025, after being cleared for landing at the Toronto Pearson International Airport, Delta Flight 4819, a Bombardier CRJ-900, crashed. Buffeted by wind gusts up to 37 mph, the plane hit the runway hard, lost its right wing, [...]
“How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.” ‑ Herbert Spencer I once worked for an organization where senior managers freely expressed their differences of opinion. Often, they would dismiss a colleague’s position, saying, “That’s just semantics.” It became easy for me to conclude that semantics, the meaning of words and statements, were trivial. I know better [...]
“Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue.” — Francis Spufford Places that rarely experience snow and are ill-prepared to deal with it have seen debilitating snow storms this year. In response, broadcast meteorologists and local news anchors offered advice on choosing ice melt that was [...]
