Swimmers and surfers in Miami are a bit put out this week after they learned that 20 million gallons of raw sewage was released along beaches without adequate notice to the public. It brings a new meaning to the surfer term “floater.”
The spill occurred during repairs to a 72-inch broken sewage pipe in Miami Gardens that sent sewage into the Intracoastal Waterway over the weekend.
The Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer people posted a small notice on their website and put pink notices around public parks. The one obvious thing they did not do was send people down the beach warning people in the water. As a result, people continued to swim in the sewage-laden water. Clearly, those people were not swimming in sewage by choice. It makes you actually long for BP oil.
However, Spokesperson Adriana Lamar stated “I’m confident we did what we needed to do.”
Source: NBC.
mespo727272
LK & Buddha:
Thanks. I was actually referring to the latter book about ecological destruction,”The Sheep Look Up,”
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You’re right of course. I just recall them as one book in two parts due to the similarity of style and format. Consequently I have always associated Milton’s poem with Stand on Zanzibar instead of the poem giving rise to the title for TSLU. I’ve read neither of them in at least 10 years and really ought to dig them out and put them on the summer reading list. Thanks for the reminder.
Professor Fenner condemns humanity and discounts free will pretty steeply. BIL, what if ‘All is One’? Humanity could still awaken to this truth, ultimately expanding our awareness to create in a balanced fashion.
I’ll take the over please! Evan with the polarized political whores, corporate fascists, authoritarian conservative clerics of every stripe and the close minded bigots with clogged hearts too.
LK & Buddha:
Thanks. I was actually referring to the latter book about ecological destruction,”The Sheep Look Up,” but as with many things on the blog your thoughts are germane as well!
lottakatz:
“One only had to know how to mine the sources and collate what was relevant and available to answer a question and project the trend into the future in order to be a valuable consultant to business and private parties.”
Only problem with that is you have to know what is good and what is BS and be able to test the information using the principles of your profession. You may have to be a more knowledgeable practitioner than before.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37902504/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Will humans go extinct within 100 years?
I must be off my game to have missed mespo’s reference, LK.
“Stand On Zanzibar” is indeed a classic. I used to have a first edition of it before some of my books “went missing” in a Satan related incident. (Luckily she missed the LeGuin and Heinlein goodies.)
mespo727272
1, June 24, 2010 at 8:32 am
Oil to the west, sewage to the east, who now says John Bunner didn’t get it in 1972.
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OOOOH, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. One of my favorite and BEST books ever! Thanks for the mention. I remember reading that book when it was published and over the next few years seeing the daily newspaper and TV news increasingly have stories about environmental ‘incidents’; when there was a seven day running series of unrelated incidents reported and that became close to the norm I knew we had crossed a line into a future that I didn’t necessarily want to be part of.
I enjoyed the throw-away concept of data overload and that a new form of specialized employment field/business had arisen wherein one didn’t have to actually know a particular field of knowledge because there was just too much of it from too many sources. One only had to know how to mine the sources and collate what was relevant and available to answer a question and project the trend into the future in order to be a valuable consultant to business and private parties
The Milton poem is choice too, both as an intro to the book and what seems to underlie the current state of generalized apathy.
Dredd,
“Deceit is a hostile act intended to result in a deceived mind,”
yes, well put. That also puts it squarely into the realm of violence.
Now can you tell me what is the official definition of ‘MOMCOM’?
This raises a very controversial question: “does a turd blossom in your mind do more damage than a floating turd blossom touching your leg which you can paddle away from”?
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-loss-of-touch-with-reality.html
AY,
Lucky you. However do you avoid it? I would love to know how. Ignorance has never worked for me…
WIAC,
Yes. I do not swim in honey pots that have fecal matter content ratings. I prefer to stay ignorant of what is actually in the drinking water as well….
AY, ‘they’ is you too if you live in the USA, and even if you don’t. We here in the Peninsula know what is coming to you…we are just the first in line. The Gulf stream carries everything from Florida to Northern waters where they are in turn deposited and/or carried and so on and so on and so on…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu_Ga0JYFNg
When solutes dissolve into a solution…the whole solution is fouled, not just 1 wee little spot.
Sadly, S. Florida is notoriously become host to the #1 most endangered National Park in the US even before the big Gulf Nasty and the poop-a-rific Miami shoreline, according to the NRDC
http://www.takepart.com/news/2010/04/20/the-five-most-endangered-parks-in-america
Oil to the west, sewage to the east, who now says John Bunner didn’t get it in 1972.
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread …
~John Milton, “Lycidas”, 1637
Sewage, Oil, what are they going to do….?
I’m picturing Bill Murray’s character, Carl, saying, “It’s no big deal,” and taking a bite out of the Baby Ruth. But that’s no baby ruth, and my friend who’s vacationing in Florida in anticipation of her wedding, hoping for no oil on the beach, may have inadvertently stepped, or at least swam, in it, so to speak.