m-bee-eh!
All day, I’ve been listening to Stereolab’s ‘Cobra and phases group play voltage in the milky night’ and driving myself crazy doing business analysis spreadsheets as part of my cool ‘sustainability’ MBA curriculum. In the midst of the endless banality of the number streams come some interesting insights.
Risk World reports that the obfuscations of Enron et. al are mirrored by many other publically traded corporations who, (surprise, surprise) fail to report massive environmental liabilities on their balance sheets and are in effect lying to their shareholders. Those nasty little superfund sites and other piles of liability-freighted carcinogenic ejecta are frequently reported as ‘externalities’ and not as the sleeping liabilities that they in fact are. (When I grow up, I want to work for Risk World- just because of the cool name!)
It seems that convential accounting standards in the United States, specifically Standard Financial Accounting Statement #5, SFAS 5 puts environmental liabilities in a wishy washy continuum between contingencies and hard liabilities, stating that “contingencies only have to be put on the balance sheet if they are probably and reasonably estimable.” Since it is hard to estimate the cost of wrecking the planet and making people sick, these costs just don’t show up. (And I thought corporate financial accounting was an exact science.)
Which brings me to the topic of insectivorous plants. For many ‘otaku’ these are coolness itself and it is well worth maintaining one’s own private collection. My Sarracenia purpurea are blooming at the moment with splendid inflorescences. They attract their victims (flies) and drown them in a sticky digestive nectar that fills their tubular trap structures. It’s kind of like Enron.
My Sarracenia purpurea
