Greenpeace is plugging some photos by a Monsieur Daniel Beltrá.

Very pretty. But how hard can it be to take cool pictures of icebergs?

Oh, OK. I probably couldn’t have taken that particular shot. Not without recreating it in the bath with a Fox’s Glacier Mint and some coconut conditioner. But the point is that Greenpeace is calling this photography collection “Shock and awe”. As in Operation Death and Destruction down Baghdad way. Nice. I think “shock and awe” might be an old Greenpeace phrase from its crazy campaign days. But surely these days it should be a bit of a no-go area?

This reminds me of when I wanted to call the last segment of the Linux Format Q&A section “The final solution”, and it had to be pointed out to me why this wouldn’t be such a terrific idea. Sometimes when you’re trying to be clever with words, you forget about the underlying meaning.

On that subject, I think the very worst headline I ever wrote was for an advertorial in a finance magazine. I’m so ashamed of this: it was “Eyes on the prize of market share”. Because I’m sure that when civil rights activists were singing that song, they had a dream that one day, the lyrics would be used to help some Dutch investment bank gain more clients in the syndicated finance business. Horrible, horrible. I deserved to be put against a wall and booked to death* for that one.

Mind you, I was a bit out of practice, cause the usual headlines in that place were more like crossword clues. “Stormy waters as DrKW brings blow-out Fannie Mae jumbo, spreads tighten (12)”. Er, is the answer “incorrigible”?

Back to the Greenpeace photos. Here is Daniel B at work.

What a job! I bet he doesn’t play ping pong in his lunch break.

*By which I mean have dictionaries and English usage guides thrown at me.