Safety Third

During the relatively short – lived show “Rocket City Rednecks” – Travis Taylor explained why their philosophy was “safety third”. To wit, if safety is your first concern, they you won’t do anything fun, and second, that the expression “safety first” is so overused that people simply filter it out.

In those lines, it’s worth also watching Mike Rowe at one of the few TED talks worth a damn – especially where he relates being on an Alaskan crab boat in a storm.

But what brings me here today is stumbling into one of my favorite scenes from the late Terry Pratchett’s “Hogfather” – illustrated (side note, the BBC version is worth watching). The man was observant of people, had a writing style that has been imitated but rarely equaled, and was intellectually honest enough to change his mind on things (Eric Raymond has a story about how he took Terry shooting… and Pratchett enjoyed it ), or at least admit he didn’t have all the information.

The panel speaks for itself.