“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” — Mark Twain Anymore, despite knowing that they cannot believe much of what they read or hear there, most people get their news from the internet. If not there, then the evening news or cable news. When it comes to [...]
“That’s why kings send ambassadors. This way, if someone gets captured, the king is still safe. We, my friend, are something Elend can never be: expendable.” — Brandon Sanderson When OSHA was first developing the Process Safety Management (PSM) standard (29 CFR 1910.119), there was a growing practice in the chemical process industries of contracting [...]
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.” — Stephen Hawking Beginning in March 2020, the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) began requiring that all facilities report all significant chemical releases. That way, they didn’t have to rely on media reports to know what was happening. After a slow start, [...]
“I have to buy three of everything. It doesn’t make any sense, but I have to. I’m worried I might lose it, and if I lose it, then I have a backup and then I have a backup to my backup.” — Huda Kattan I was travelling this week and while at the airport, I [...]
“This hour I tell things in confidence. I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.” — Walt Whitman I once worked at a plant that produced performance chemicals. Performance chemicals are sold based on what they do rather than what they are. The key specifications are the performance specifications, not the composition specifications. [...]
“That’s what insurance is for, right?” — Liam Dai (and thousands of others) There was recently a fire at a popular business in south Saint Louis city that was widely reported on the local news. As with many fires that happen here in Saint Louis, someone set up a GoFundMe fund to help the business [...]
“If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.” — Kurt Lewin All change should be managed; in any endeavor, under any circumstances. When people ask about management of change, however, they are usually talking about the specific regulatory requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and its Process Safety Management [...]
“Bureaucracy and compliance now seem less about managing the safety of the workers we are responsible for, and more about managing the liability of the people they work for.” — Sidney Dekker One of the foundations of process safety is that we learn from experience. Because relevant experience comes from making mistakes and facing failures, [...]
“Words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.” — Felix Frankfurter One of my favorite things about summer is all the fresh fruits and vegetables. Especially strawberries in June and blackberries in July. “Well, [...]
“If you don’t live up to somebody’s standards, you get hammered.” — Anthony Rendon I drive a 2006 Toyota Corolla. When I bought it in 2008, the odometer read 11,499 miles. In 2013, when the odometer crossed the 100,000-mile threshold, I declared my hope to reach 250,000 miles. The car is now closing in on [...]
