5 thoughts on “Secrecy”

  1. When foreign nationals take commercial airliner pilot training and quit before they get to the landing training, or take a course in offloading hazmat from a rail tank car but quit before getting to the safing and safe storage of hoses and lines, maybe say something to someone?

  2. The story mentions the Indian Ocean tsunamis of 2004 (in addition to 2019-nCoV). One of the prominent heroins of that day was a young girl named Tilly Smith, vacationing with her parents in Phuket Province, Thailand. She and her parents were on Maikhao Beach with about 100 other vacationers, and she noticed some odd behavior in the ocean. The waters and wave breaks had suddenly pulled very far off shore.

    Just two weeks prior, 10 year old Tilly had learned about tsunamis – and the warning signs – in her geography class. She immediately recognized those warning signs in the sea, and frantically told her parents about what was coming. Her mother was, evidently, hard to convince. But Tilly stuck with the courage of her knowledge, and persisted until her parents went to the hotel staff, who quickly evacuated the beach. She is credited with saving at least 100 lives.

    What if she had been cowed by parental authoritarianism? What if she had just considered the effort of convincing her mother, often daunting for a young girl, to be too much effort?

    She probably would have given up, and said “Awww, Phuket.”

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