After-Orts #36

   A Winston-Salem, North Carolina, budget proposal calls for money for “effective confinement and extinguishment of unwanted and destructive fires.” Firemen unable to achieve distinguishment between unwanted and destructive fires and the wanted and constructive kind probably are destined to suffer languishment in the lower grades.
     — Edwin Newman, A Civil Tongue, chapter 1


Police officers in Delhi used water cannons to disperse hundreds of people protesting the government’s management of a water shortage.
     https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-police-water-cannons-bjp-protest-water-crisis-7400876/


Arguing that words such as “attack” and “bite” have created a culture of fear, shark researchers are trying to introduce the terms “interactions” and “negative encounters” in Australia, where there were eight negative encounters with sharks last year.
   https://news.sky.com/story/australia-renames-shark-attacks-negative-encounters-to-dispel-man-eating-monster-perception-12356319


Fifteen years ago, the Bay of Tokyo supported a fishing fleet and contained several profitable oyster beds. First the oysters disappeared, then the fish, the fishing fleet, and finally even the sea gulls. Prosperity has destroyed all natural life in the bay.
The New York Review, June 1970
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1970/06/04/mysterious-japan-a-diary/