Part 4 (1/2)
Once the project was under way, the supervising engineer decided to pop along one afternoon and see how work was commencing. The tent covering the sewer was shaking and bulging oddly. He threw open the flaps and was presented with the unsavory sight of three men wrestling over the open manhole, covered in waste matter! Two were shouting at a third, who was unconscious, drenched in waste, and not breathing.
What was going on?
The civil engineer, trained in resuscitation techniques, began the unappealing process of clearing the unconscious man's airway. Fortunately at that point the man started breathing again and immediately vomited a stream of waste. The ambulance was summoned-and then it was time for 'splaining.
Remember the training course? Remember the expensive new gear? Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest decided that that was all too much effort. The sewer was so close to the surface, they figured that it would be easier to simply hang one of them head first with a torch to see the lay of the line. They held an arm-wrestling contest, and the loser was flipped upside down and lowered into the narrow manhole.
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Immediately he was overcome by the fumes and pa.s.sed out. With no shout to stop, Dumb and Dumber continued to lower Dumbest until he was immersed up to his shoulders in the pooling waste. After a minute or so with no response, they pulled him up and realized what had happened. They were both fighting to administer CPR when their supervisor arrived.
All four men received injections to ward off infection. Dumbest was kept in the hospital for further treatment. He developed a nasty mouth infection that caused him to lose teeth, but he survived. Denied Darwin Awards, the three men subsequently decided to try for a Stella Award3: Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest filed an insurance claim against their company for injury and trauma, as their shortcut was not specifically forbidden in the method statement! The company settled out of court.
Reference: Disillusioned engineer [image]
Reader Comments
”s.h.i.+tty job.”
”Even the best-trained people do stupid things.”
”Pa.s.s this along to your crews, this is not not the correct way to inspect a sewage leakage!” the correct way to inspect a sewage leakage!”
”See what happens when you have an employee manual?”
”An unsavory example of sue-age.”
DARWIN AWARD WINNER: MAN MEETS MANUREAt least the Dunkin' Donut man survived his disgusting dip. In a case of man-meets-manure, twenty-three-year-old Benjamin lost his life in 1999 in one of the most unappetizing manners possible when he careened into a 400,000-gallon tank of raw sewage. He was apparently driving too fast to make the sharp turn in front of the wastewater treatment plant, as his momentum carried him through a chain link fence, across an eas.e.m.e.nt, and past a low post-and-rail fence surrounding the tank of decomposing sewage. Divers located his body beside his Mazda pickup, at the bottom of the sixteen-foot-deep tank.Reference: Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action (Plume, 2001) (Plume, 2001) [image]
At-Risk Survivor: Duct Don't Confirmed by Reliable Eyewitness Featuring work and gravity!
DECEMBER 2009, CANADA
Lester4, a career fire-safety inspector, entered a building in downtown Alberta for its annual fire inspection. Although new to the building, Lester is not new to his job. With several degrees in Fire and Health Safety, and fluent in three languages, this all-around nice guy has expertly inspected buildings around the world for many years.
The structure he entered has a mechanical room in the bowels of the building, a ”boiler room” with a vast air duct that feeds into the air filters. The duct itself is more than strong enough to support the weight of a man. Indeed, inspectors are required to climb onto the duct from a cat-walk on the floor above, in order to inspect one of the fire extinguishers.
Oh, the Darwin Awards that have resulted from time-saving shortcuts.
Lester had just inspected that very safety device and was standing on top of the air duct when he decided to save himself a few minutes of time. Oh, the Darwin Awards that have resulted from time-saving shortcuts. The nearby fire device was almost in range if he stretched!
A highly trained Fire and Safety Inspector-well, it's his or her job to know how to inspect a building safely. But sometimes the safe route is inconvenient inconvenient. Instead of traveling all the way back down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and climbing a ladder, Lester decided to A. climb down the side of the air duct, climb down the side of the air duct,B. in nearly complete darkness, in nearly complete darkness,C. despite being warned by his senior partner an hour earlier that he definitely should not climb on the ductwork. despite being warned by his senior partner an hour earlier that he definitely should not climb on the ductwork.
Halfway down, he misjudged his footing . . . and gravity performed its civic duty. Lester plummeted ten feet to the cement ground, landing in the carpentry shop adjacent to the boiler room and punching a hole through a tile ceiling in the process.
Sometimes the safe route is inconvenient.
Lester survived with two broken ankles, but easily could have impaled himself had he landed to either side-on the table saw or the tool bench.
Reference: D. Gustafson, First Aid Responder [image]
Reader Comment
”An Inconvenient Truth Route.”
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SCIENCE INTERLUDE RNAI: INTERFERENCE BY MOTHER NATURE.
By Alison Davis
When was the last time you were happy about a flub-up?
In the unvarnished world of science, a wrong result can be the best thing that ever happened, but that success isn't always immediately obvious. Thus is the case for the discovery of the game-changing, paradigm-busting, gene-silencing process called RNA interference, or RNAi.
To be fair, RNAi isn't exactly new, and it wasn't just discovered. Like so many stories in science, the epic tale of RNAi is one of hard work, some blind luck, and a careful eye for the unexpected.
RNA Rules Thanks to the Human Genome Project and subsequent discoveries, DNA is a household name. Less famous, but also part of our genetic material, is RNA. You can't see either of these stringy molecules, even with a very powerful scope, but both consist of long chains of four molecular ”letters” (GATC or GAUC) hooked together by sugar molecules.
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The notion that RNA is as important as DNA contradicts the traditional paradigm we are taught in school. But it's true! But it's true! RNA is headed for Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame. RNA is headed for Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame.New types of RNA seem to appear monthly: snRNA, piRNA, and many more; microRNAs are the powerful ”transcription factors” of eighties' fame. Noncoding RNAs are about to turn the definition of a gene gene on its head! on its head!