101 years ago, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire horrified a nation; the initial shock of seeing young women leap to their deaths from the inferno was quickly eclipsed by the exposure of the deadly conditions under which they worked; blocked and locked exits, lack of fire escapes, buildup of flammable material, and dangerous machinery all pointed [...]
It would be nice to be an oil company; every time you utterly fail to do whatever it is you’re supposed to do when not busy buying politicians, your epic fuckup simply boosts your profits. At the moment, gas prices are approaching $5 in California, due largely to the fact that the oil companies [...]
I remember being startled to read in a science fiction novel that, in its imagined future, oil long since had been abandoned as an energy source because of the unacceptable risks involved with its extraction, transport, and burning. Just like that. Too bad such irrefutable logic escapes us still (the book was written in the [...]
Amid the happy talk about that boring old oil spill that is, according to the media, practically gone anyway, a few plutocratic asses let out some pretty ripe one-cheek sneaks over the past day or so, and the room has gotten awfully humid and stinky. Remember Moody’s? The bond rating service that thought CDO’s were [...]
I was pretty young when first I heard about Murphy’s Law, but a lifetime of experience has shown me that it is as inescapable as, say, gravity, and the only way one can ever manage complex tasks is to always plan for the worst case scenario; it’s one’s only hope that it might not occur. [...]
Now, if I were a Democrat, I would be looking at 2010 like a fat person at a just-opened buffet, but what do I know? In the last couple dozen hours or so, “Drill, Baby Drill,” has been turned into an earth-shattering disaster, the Wall Street boys have been forced to open their lying mouths [...]