A whistleblower incident in 2004 or 2005 seems to have forced the contractor to clean up their act and take soldier health more seriously:

Halliburton Co. failed to protect the water supply it is paid to purify for U.S. soldiers throughout Iraq, in one instance missing contamination that could have caused “mass sickness or death,� an internal company report concluded.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the company failed to assemble and use its own water purification equipment, allowing contaminated water directly from the Euphrates River to be used for washing and laundry at Camp Ar Ramadi in Ramadi, Iraq.

Sounds like they need the bluegill system. Speaking of soldiers and environmental risks, I wonder if the SEALs ever developed a combat filtering system after their operations in the Somali waters left whole teams ill from pollution? Can’t seem to find a reference right now.

Here is a fine example of how allow-list strategies are far superior to block-list:

Since Sept. 11, the government has taken very seriously the threat of attacks on the U.S. water supply. Federal law requires nearly all community water systems to assess their vulnerability to terrorism.

Big cities employ a range of safeguards against chemical and biological agents, constantly monitoring, testing and treating the water. But electronic protection systems can trace only the toxins they are programmed to detect, Lawler said.

Bluegills — a hardy species about the size of a human hand — are considered more versatile. They are highly attuned to chemical disturbances in their environment, and when exposed to toxins, they experience the fish version of coughing, flexing their gills to expel unwanted particles.

Nice. The fish monitor the quality of water by living in “known good” conditions. It’s usually an impossible race to try and keep up with detection of all the latest attacks, or known bad conditions, which is why an allow-list such as this is the preferable approach when possible.

I am reminded of fish I caught on a line when I was growing up. When I was older I returned to some of my favorite spots only to find warnings posted by the government about toxic levels of poison that had resulted from pesticide and herbicide runoff. I was told the infamous Agent Orange of Vietnam was still legal if you sprayed it on the backs of cattle to keep insects away. The rain would then wash the poison into the ground and rivers which fed our ponds and lakes. The areas had become toxic to fish and thus humans due to weak regulation of agricultural industries.

More information about the bluegill system can be found here:

The iABS monitors fish behavior using a pair of non-contact electrodes mounted above and below each of eight bluegills. As the fish move in the chamber and ventilate their gills, muscle contractions generate electrical signals in the water that are monitored by a computer. When abnormal fish behavior is identified, the iABS provides immediate alarm notification and can start an automated water sampler to permit follow-up chemical analysis.

So if local fish die as a result of weak environmental regulations, and the water quality has already been ruined by an environmentally hostile department of agriculture, the worry about terrorists putting toxins in the water and killing bluegills seems well-intentioned yet a little less pressing than the already present problems.

Should community water systems assess their vulnerability to all toxins, as I mentioned back in February, or just the ones from “terrorists”? Will homebuyers start to demand air and water quality records and tests prior to home purchase, to ensure a functioning security system that will protect their health?

Here is an awesome cross-cultural cross-topic analysis of food and digital rights by Jennifer Granick:

What if the original ramen chefs tried to stop others from developing their own ramen recipes and making differently flavored ramen broth?

They’d form an association — say, the Ramen Industrial Alliance of Asia — and announce a clampdown on the proliferation of infringing noodle shops. Their arguments would echo the music industry’s. “The chefs who created ramen deserve to get paid for their creation,” they’d say. “These noodle shops are taking profits away from the creators, while peddling an often-inferior product to an unsuspecting public that believes they are getting real ramen.”

I have just one word in response: Tampopo

The status of Internet coupons and their validity (integrity) just keeps getting more interesting by the minute. Since my last comment, the latest news reveals someone decided to file a lawsuit against Starbucks after being turned down at the counter for a free drink:

On Aug. 23, Starbucks e-mailed the coupon for the free grande drink to selected employees with instructions for them to forward the coupon to friends and family. The offer was valid through Sept. 30.

But, Sullivan said, Starbucks got jittery and refused to honor the coupon after the company saw how widely it had been distributed. “I believe they were surprised by how successful the promotion was,” the lawyer said.

“The excuse proffered by Starbucks, that they did not believe that an offer released over the Internet would be so widely distributed, is ridiculous,” Sullivan said. “Clearly, Starbucks chose to initiate a viral marketing campaign to counteract their slumping sales.”

Coupon fraud is a real problem:

Just a few years ago coupons for grocery products could easily be found online, but because of all the fakes that began cropping up, many grocery stores began refusing Internet coupons.

This type of theft may be viewed by some as harmless, but there is little difference in using a bogus coupon and reaching into a grocery store’s register and stealing the money.

A Virgina TV news story (strangely lacking a date) suggests that retailers are upset about the ease of counterfeiting coupons and a law is about to be (or has already been) passed:

The House of Delegates has now passed a bill that could make it a crime to use fake coupons. One local grocery store manager says technology may be to blame for all of this. “The fact that the Internet is so available and there are so many legitamate coupons out there that the consumer can print off the internet, it is just as easy to print the counterfit coupons,” says Jay Hite, Co-Manager of the Staunton Kroger. The bill, which criminalizes the use of fake coupons, now goes to the Senate.

More information is available from the Virginia Petroleum, Convenience and Grocery Association (PDF), which suggests the House passed the bill in 2004:

House Bill 170, sponsored by Delegate and VPCGA member Tommy Wright will make it illegal to knowingly present a counterfeit manufacturers coupon. This legislation was filed as the result of numerous complaints we received over the past few months from members regarding the increasing number of counterfeit coupons they were receiving. House bill 170 will make it a class 4 felony to knowingly present a false manufacturers coupon.

The difference is that the grocers are redeeming the coupons themselves and so they can end up holding worthless/false paper when they are informed that the coupons are counterfeit. But in the case of Starbucks, they created the tender themselves and they are the only ones who can honor it. So what happens when a retailer makes a coupon exceptionally easy to duplicate, actually encourages employees to send it via email to “family and friends”, but then cancells it ahead of time with an “oops, sorry” as an official explanation? This will be a good one to watch.