Hold your nose
DO THOSE of us who care for the environment sometimes go a little overboard? What distinguishes an environmentalist from a tree hugger? A missive from Down Under provides food for thought.
At Fremantle, in Western Australia, the port authority has been dredging the harbour. This has stirred up all kinds of gunge from the bottom, including toxins that had been lying there for years, and this has in turn stirred up the greens.
A local resident called Kevin Dyer responds with a letter to the local newspaper, which is so horrid it's hilarious:
"I took a dip in the toxic plume at Port Beach last week and suffered no ill-effects.
"I put it down to immunisation against toxins at an early age, probably Cooper's Dip (arsenic) on the farm and a booster shot of Dieldrin during the Argentine Ant spraying in about 1949.
"At the same time the DDT on the home-grown cabbages further strengthened my immune system.
"As kids we made a mini-blast furnace from an old chip bath-heater and Mum's Electrolux as bellows; with this we would melt iron and vapourise lead and produce carbon monoxide.
"We made fishing sinkers by melting lead from smashed car batteries. And as the water was not fluoridated we had lots of mercury amalgam tooth fillings. The dentist rewarded our stoicism with a globule of mercury in a tube. If you swallowed the mercury it appeared out the other end within minutes, it was said; we just chased ours around the kitchen table until it fell on the floor and produced smithereens. At age 11 or so we stuffed strychnine into fox baits.
"As laboratory monitor at high school I retrieved the chemicals to make chlorine, for putting into mouse holes, and rotten egg gas (more toxic than cyanide). Carbide from the hardware shop produced acetalyne gas to make small-scale Zeppelin explosions.
"Working at Kalgoorlie during university holidays I had the opportunity to learn what cyanide smells like and to enjoy clouds of sulphuric gas, which dissolved washing on the line in the town. Lime and asbestos we used to paste over holes in the roaster flues.
"Then to Rum Jungle for uranium yellowcake and on to ICI at Botany Bay for industrial scale chlorine, carbon tetrachloride, vinyl chloride, formaldehyde, more mercury and I don't know what all for another 40 years.
"At 68 I'm fit as a fiddle apart from asthma, hypertension, irregular heartbeat, hypothyroidism, procialsia fugax, chronic rhinitis and anosima, intermetastarsal neuroma, gastric reflux, carcinomas (squamous and basal), lipoma, epididymal cysis, herpes, candidiasis, nightmares, anxiety and depression.
"Who wants to live to be 100 anyway? The only consolation for waiting to die in a wet nappy in the day room is that you'll probably think you are at the beach and are getting married tomorrow."
It makes you queasy just to read it. Dyer might as well have grown up in Durban's southern basin. He is, of course, having us on. (Well, I hope he is).
If his point is that ultra-green environmentalists sometimes get a bit precious – well, point taken.
Conflict hots up
THE GENEVA Convention surely needs to take a look at this one. The Indian army has developed a grenade made from the bhut jolokia, the world's hottest chilli.
The bhut jolokia – also known as the ghost chilli - is 125 000-times spicier than a jalapeno. It will now be issued to troops in a grenade designed to smoke out insurgents from their hidey-holes. It might also be developed for use in aerosol sprays for women to protect themselves against attackers.
The chilli-powered grenades have been declared "fit for use" by defence officials after trials by India's Defence Research and Development Organisation.
"This is definitely going to be an effective non-toxic weapon because its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hide-outs," says RB Srivastava, director in charge of the research.
Conflict in that region appears to be getting increasingly desperate. Next thing they'll be shopping at the Victoria Street market for Mother-in-law's Revenge. That really would be escalation.
Tailpiece
A BOAT carrying red paint crashed into a boat carrying blue paint. The boat crews were marooned.
Last word
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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