Costly mistakes

Correct spelling and typing are important, except perhaps if you are a President. At times it can also be expensive with NASA missing a symbol in the programming for Mariner 1 leading to an $80 million disaster. There are however times when it can be fun, depending on how well you read your bible, when London’s Baker Book House published a modified list of commandments with ‘Thou shalt commit adultery’. Sorry to say, recent copies have been updated.

A more recent, basically minor error occurred when the city of Prichard, Alabama had their Garbage bins with ‘Mobile Country’ on them rather than Mobile County, yes there is a difference. As there were about 10,000 of these typos there could have been a dilemma as to how to get rid of this many bins and how to send the garbage bins to the garbage pile but fortunately wiser heads prevailed and it was ignored, except for the numerous news items about it.

Given how much pollution there is now, the suggestion of trashing the trash bins was just silly. Perhaps all councils, counties, states and countries should take heed and make sure to cut back on their spending and even if a mistake happens just accept it and move on.

Let’s put all the political rubbish in our mislabeled bins.

Dennis Fitzgerald
Melbourne, Australia