Tunguska

One hundred years ago today, the so-called Tunguska Event, apparently a mid-air explosion of a meteor, levelled the trees across an area of more than a half million acres (~830 square miles).

500 Year Flood

I'm not sure how much wisdom there is in staying because these are floods that are supposed to come every 500 years and they're coming every 15 years.

-- Joe Behounek, whose house in Chelsea, Iowa, was flooded this week and in 1993

Fryer Grease

Fryer grease has become gold. And just over a year ago, I had to pay someone to take it away.

-- Nick Damianidis, an owner of the Olympia Pizza and Pasta Restaurant in Arlington, Wash., on grease thefts, New York Times, 30 May 2008

Code For The Maintainer

Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

-- From theC2 Wiki Page, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CodeForTheMaintainer

Only God Who Appointed Me

Only God who appointed me will remove me -- not the [opposition party] MDC, not the British. ... We will never allow an event like an election reverse our independence, our sovereignty, our sweat, and all that we fought for, all that our comrades died fighting for.

-- Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, in power since 1980, regarding his presidential run-off vs. MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai

RIP George Carlin

I love and treasure individuals as I meet them; I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

-- George Carlin (12 May 1937 - 22 June 2008), Grammy-winning American stand-up comedian, actor, and author, "Ready or Not, Here Comes Another Book", Georgecarlin.com, 2007-01-19

Windshield Vs. Bug

Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug.

-- Captain Phillip Ash, commander, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, Ramadi, Iraq, New York Times, 23 October 2005

Eight To Twelve Minutes? No Way

The Unhealthiest Drink in America
Baskin Robbins Large Heath Bar Shake (32 oz)
2,310 calories
266 g sugar
108 g fat (64 g saturated)

Let's look at America's Worst Drink in numbers:

73: The number of ingredients that go into this milkshake.
66: The number of teaspoons of sugar this drink contains.
11: The number of Heath Bars you would have to eat to equal the number of calories found in one Baskin Robbins Large Heath Bar Shake.
8-12: The average number of minutes it takes to consume this drink.
240: The number of minutes you'd need to spend on a treadmill burning it off, running at a moderate pace.

-- Mens' Health Magazine, via health.yahoo.com,
19 May 2008

Earlids

The best thing about radio is that people were born without earlids. You can't close your ears to it.

-- Anthony Schwartz (19 August 1923 - 15 June 2008), American sound archivist and advertising creator, best known for the controversial Daisy TV ad for the 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign

Habeas

The test for determining the scope of this provision must not be subject to manipulation by those whose power it is designed to restrain.

-- From the Supreme Court's decision restoring the writ of habeas corpus to prisoners at Gitmo

Worst?

The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.

-- John McCain, NBC 13 June 2008, regarding the recent "Habeas" ruling by SCOTUS

Oh No!

I've been doing everything I can to kill him off for 30 years, but he seems to be coming back.

-- Walter Williams, on Mr. Bill, the character he created for "Saturday Night Live" who will appear in a MasterCard ad campaign, New York Times, 3 June 2008

Cheaper Oil

The greatest thing to come out of [the Iraq War] for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in the any country.

-- Rupert Murdoch, Guardian newspaper, 11 February 2003, when oil sold for $34.53 per barrel (it's $134.31 today)

Burden Of Proof

Any curtailment of freedom has a burden of proof.

-- Noam Chomsky, Media Matters, 6 June 2008

Ridiculous

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.

-- Sam Harris, author (1967- )

HRC Bows Out

The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion and our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States.

-- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, bowing out of the presidential race, NY Times 8 June 2008

Violence

Victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. ... [W]hen you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who are different from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens, but as enemies. Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great. But we can perhaps remember, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness. Surely this bond of common fate, this bond of common roles can begin to teach us something, that we can begin to work a little harder, to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

-- Robert Francis Kennedy (20 November 1925 - 6 June 1968), American politician, "On the Mindless Menace of Violence", speech, City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, 5 April 1968, the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated

Tetris In Real Life

I got a job at Fed Ex and it is like playing tetris in real life.

-- Kim Compton, Champaign, IL, 22 May 2008

269m

Eddy Merckx: 49.431km in 1 hour.

In 1972 Eddy Merckx flew to Mexico City to attempt one of the most challenging monuments in sport: the hour record.

Before the advent of advanced carbon materials, disc wheels and lightweight components, the hour record stood as the ultimate measure of man-powered machine.

The day's effort has only been topped twice by traditional bicycles as recognized by the UCI. In 36 years the distance traveled in one hour has grown only 269 meters.

-- Spoke 'N' Word blog

Extent To Which You Resist

The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. Freedom is something you're born with, and then one day someone tries to deny it. The extent to which you resist is the extent to which you are free.

-- Bruce "Utah" Phillips (1935 - 2008), labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet; "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest"