“By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky This week at the 22nd Global Congress on Process Safety, my colleague Michael Smith presented a poster on “Getting Safer: The Future of Shipping Hazardous Materials”. His premise was that of all the modes [...]
“The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.” — Eugene McCarthy A client recently posed this question: “Why do you think the EPA is more willing to update its regulations than OSHA?” Is it? We gave a glib answer – resources – but [...]
“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” — Malcolm Gladwell Facilities in the chemical process industries were required to report accidental release events to the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) beginning back in March 2020. These included incidents [...]
“Ambivalence is like carbon monoxide – undetectable yet deadly.” — Cherie Carter-Scott World Fertilizer published an article in its March 2026 issue on “An Overlooked Process Hazard” in the production of ammonia fertilizers. It seems to me that this hazard has broader implications, beyond fertilizer production. Flammable liquids and flammable gases are all covered by [...]
“Everything that comes together falls apart.” — John Green When we think of decomposition, we usually think of it as a slow, inexorable process of breaking down useful things into malodorous glop. Think of that six-month-old head of lettuce in the bottom of the refrigerator. Or the carcass of the dead animal in the woods, [...]
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” — Samuel Johnson Last year, the administration announced its intention to shutter the Chemical Safety Board. The chemical process industries rallied around this life-saving agency, and to our relief, funding was restored, almost, in [...]
“One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.” — Alfred Nobel Yearly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes fatality data for the U.S. workplace, private and public. Usually, it is in December for the previous year. Because of the government [...]
“The faintly lit hatchway lay in the dark…like a grave yawning at judgement day in some old apocalyptic painting.” — Cormac McCarthy One of the appeals of craft distilleries and microbreweries is that they produce small batches, so a lot of care goes into each batch. Small batches, by their very nature, require small additions [...]
“Always lists to be made, as if writing items in neat vertical rows might stave off randomness and chaos.” — Dani Shapiro People love lists. Top Ten Lists. Top Twelve Lists. Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty. And for those with short attention spans, Top Three Lists. I recently received an email asking if I agreed [...]
“By becoming interested in the cause, we are less likely to dislike the effect.” — Dale Carnegie I love the English language, even though I make a hash of it on occasions. I love its complexity and irregularity. I especially love the words. There are so many words that mean almost the same thing that [...]
