“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” — Rudyard Kipling A few weeks ago, a lot of folks in this area found themselves obsessively scraping the bottoms of their boots. Based on the smell that seemed to be following them around, they were sure that they had stepped in something [...]
“In the last two decades of the twentieth century, hundreds of people have died of carbon dioxide asphyxiation near volcanoes in Cameroon and in Indonesia.” — Allison Stark Draper, in Coping With Natural Disasters Many worry about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is also a much more urgent hazard. [...]
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a gas.” — Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, of The Rolling Stones Ever notice how the popular media never refer to chemicals. No, they talk about “toxic chemicals.” It’s as though any material that is not toxic is not a chemical, or perhaps, any material called a chemical must be toxic. [...]
“I love to breath. Oxygen is sexy.” — Kris Carr How long can you hold your breath? One minute? Two minutes? Pearl divers have been known to hold their breaths for over 10 minutes. When we’re breathing, though, it’s at a rate of between 8 and 20 breaths per minutes. So, many find it difficult [...]
