“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 [...]
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” — Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride (1987) I, like many older Americans, worry about my blood pressure enough to check it regularly. And like most people who check their blood pressure regularly, I know what [...]
“I have so much paperwork. I’m afraid my paperwork has paperwork.” — Gabrielle Zevin One of the key differences between OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard and the EPA’s Risk Management Planning (RMP) rule is the RMP rule’s requirement to submit documentation to the EPA. OSHA has no similar requirement for submission. If OSHA wants [...]
“We sometimes freeze the specimen with liquid nitrogen, which is extremely cold, you know. This is another technique we use now – but the specimens are not alive.” — Lennart Nilsson I recently facilitated a HazOp where the process required both very hot heat transfer media (steam and hot oil) and very cold heat transfer [...]
“It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire.” — Horace On November 26, 2025, a fire enveloped a high-rise apartment in the Wang Fuk Court complex that was undergoing significant renovation. The fire killed at least 159 people and took the Hong Kong fire department almost two full days to extinguish. Hong [...]
“Don’t be misled by History, or any other unreliable source.” — Will Rogers I remember when I lost faith in safety data sheets – SDSs. Well, they were called Material Safety Data Sheets – MSDSs – then. I was a young engineer, and the only engineer, at a start-up. My boss, the owner, assigned me [...]
“Before the first atomic bomb test, scientists took the time to calculate whether the blast would ignite the nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere and incinerate us all. The risk was low and the test went off, but Rees wonders what the odds would have had to be to discourage the bomb makers.” — Dennis Overbye [...]
“I had thought fermentation was controlled death.” — Michelle Zauner I enjoy touring distilleries. I love seeing the process of making whiskey, but I’m usually taken aback when we get to the fermentation step. Occasionally, the fermenters are enclosed and vent to the roof. Most fermenters that I see, however, are open top vats. This [...]
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” — Calvin Coolidge I love a good play on words. “At once” can mean either “simultaneously” or it can mean “immediately”, and Calvin Coolidge managed to pack both meanings into a single sentence. “We cannot do everything simultaneously, but we can do [...]
“More often than not, to blame someone else is to play ‘hot potato’ with something that’s neither hot nor a potato.” — Craig D. Lounsbrough Imagine you work at a plant that makes a polymer. One of the raw materials is the monomer and it is toxic, reactive, and flammable. It contains an inhibitor to [...]
