Dihydrogen monoxide–threat or menace? The city council of Aliso Viejo, California, almost voted to ban dihydrogen monoxide–H2O, aka water–after being informed that it was an odorless, tasteless compound that could kill you if you breathed it in. A March 14 Associated Press story quoted the city manager, who blamed the fiasco on “a paralegal who did bad research.” No word on whether anyone in the local government ever passed high school chemistry.
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“Unspeakably bad” is Andrew Greeley’s description of the media advice most Catholic bishops are receiving. “Bishops may not want competent media advisers,” he writes in his new book, Priests: A Calling in Crisis, “but it’s high time they begin to understand that they must have them. Everyone in the business of communicating with the public–and bishops are certainly in that business–needs to pay someone to tell them when they have made a fool of themselves and that they should never again say something as dumb as they’ve just said. A man who is unwilling to take the risk of hearing that every day should resign and go to a monastery to spend his life in prayer and pious works.”
Railroad dreamin’. Dave Randall, president of the Illinois Association of Railroad Passengers, compares Amtrak to the airlines in the group’s February newsletter, “Railgram”: “If [Amtrak] had been giving consistently courteous, on-time service with equipment that works, they, too, would be seeing the double-digit ridership increases needed to catch the attention of Congress.”
