Rose George Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“My mother watched her loving husband look at her with blankness or contempt and sometimes hatred. And yet dementia is classed as a social condition, so that the state is not required to pay for long-term residential care. Calling it what it is - brain damage - is too expensive.”

“Usually, there is no equivalent of air traffic control at sea. Some busy areas operate 'traffic separation schemes,' but mostly, ships are treated like cars on roads where there are rules and codes of behavior, and successful, accident-free outcomes depend on everyone respecting them. As on roads, this doesn't always work.”

“In practice, the ocean is the world's wildest place because of both its fearsome natural danger and how easy it is out there to slip from the boundaries of law and civilization that seem so firm ashore.”

“Perhaps we believe that everything travels by air, or magically and instantaneously like information (which is actually anchored by cables on the seabed), not by hefty ships that travel more slowly than senior citizens drive.”

“The Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS), which controls the living environment on shuttles and on the International Space Station, doesn't have the luxury of disposal: discharging trash into space has long been judged a bad idea.”

“You've probably been asked to care about things like HIV/AIDS or T.B. or measles, but diarrhea kills more children than all those three things put together. It's a very potent weapon of mass destruction.”

“As for restaurants and fast-food places who tip tons of oil down their drains, they are routinely encouraged to use fat traps, but enforcement is minimal. It costs money to cart away fat (although now that fat is being turned into energy, it can make money).”

“Rotavirus does not cause all diarrhea, but it causes a lot of it. Instead of a single vaccine dose, however, harried nurses may have to give several, as diarrhoea makes it difficult for a child to retain anything.”

“There are few industries as defiantly opaque as shipping. Even offshore bankers have not developed a system as intricately elusive as the flag of convenience, under which ships can fly the flag of a state that has nothing to do with its owner, cargo, crew, or route.”

“We know about man's impact on the ocean in terms of fishing and overfishing, but we don't really know much about what's happening underneath the water. And in fact, shipping has a role to play here, because shipping noise has contributed to damaging the acoustic habitats of ocean creatures.”