Really Good Quotes

Archive for April 29th, 2009

April 29, 2009

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Really Good Quotes "A mind, once expanded by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Greetings, Quotaholics:

There are some scary things out there. Most of them are used to sell newspapers and air time. Good news doesn’t seem to have the same cachet for news outlets. There are more patents filed than murders committed, but the murders make the news.

The latest fear mongering comes in the form of the "pandemic" swine flu. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the threat is "evolving rapidly." That is how they stated the terrifying events in their third update issued on April 27.

Of the nearly 307 million people here in the US (I’m not sure if this figure includes all the illegal aliens or not since it is provided by the US Census Bureau) but of all these millions there are 40 laboratory confirmed cases in the US and a whopping zero deaths. That is about 0.0000130587% of the US population ill with the disease.

Mexico, a country without sophisticated medical care, has had 26 confirmed cases and 7 deaths. Canada, with medical care available to all, has had 6 cases and 0 deaths while Spain has reported 1 case and 0 deaths. To recap, that is 73 cases with 7 deaths, all occurring in what is basically a Third World nation. The world’s population is currently around 6.8 billion people and 73 of them had this flu bug.

Pandemic, according to the dictionary online, means widespread or general. There is a second definition of a medical pandemic meaning the disease covers a wide geographic area and a large portion of the population. (My emphasis.) Well, four countries might be considered a large geographic area, but 73 cases out of 6.8 billion people?

There has been speculation about the disease being touted as a pandemic in order to push other, more urgent issues off the front pages. There certainly has been a lot of attention given to the topic. Google News gives over 69,000 links to the search for "swine flu" and I’m sure by the time of this publication, the number will be higher.

The WHO has raised the pandemic alert to level 4 which is "sustained human to human transmission." The phases 5 and 6 are the actual pandemic level. Phases 1-3 have a disease affecting animals and with "few human infections." I’m not sure how 73 became a large number because I would class it as "few" considering the billions of humans here. The meaning here, according to the Director-General is the likelihood for a pandemic has increased, but a pandemic is not inevitable. They do NOT suggest closing any borders.

There are two types of medications available that are effective against the disease. The WHO says on their FAQ page: "Most of the previously reported swine influenza cases recovered fully from the disease without requiring medical attention and without antiviral medicines." Taking antivirals without due cause leads to strains of the virus becoming "superbugs" and being resistant. This is the same reason antibiotics should not be overprescribed. (They are anyway and it is a threat to the health of the world.)

The best protection you can give yourself against this and any disease is proper handwashing. This means you actually use soap (antibacterial is not needed or even effective – this is a virus) and lather your hands for at least 30 seconds. You should wash your entire hands, not just the palms. Lather up to your wrists and pay attention to the space between your fingers. Rinse well and dry your hands thoroughly. Another way to stay healthy is to stay away from obviously sick people. Following healthy lifestyle patterns increases overall health – eat right, sleep well, get exercise.

If you have to care for someone who is ill, do the above and don’t let them cough in your face. Keep decent ventilation in the room and keep the room free of debris. These are common sense issues that should be followed even if the sick person simply has the sniffles.

Wearing surgical masks isn’t the answer and they are both uncomfortable and ugly. If you don’t mind looking and feeling miserable, you can certainly waste your money purchasing the products and there are any number of enterprising businesses willing to sell them to you. Just make sure you also wash your hands. As a surgical nurse, let me also warn you not to ever, ever sneeze inside your mask.

Are you taking any special precautions again swine flu? Is this a media event or a real health issue? Are you planning on buying and using a surgical mask when you are out in public?

As an aside, both pig farmers and Jewish and Muslim sensitivities are supposedly being injured by the name. Is this simply stupidity or has the PC world finally gotten control of the entire globe?

Healthily,

Isn’t it worth $1 a month to you to keep RGQ going? Please click the link and direct your contribution to reallygoodquotes@gmail.com.

“Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself.” - Dave Barry

“Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.” - George MacDonald

Civics Class
[Thanks Noella]

In a Seattle, Washington, college classroom, they were discussing the qualifications to be president of the United States. It was pretty simple - the candidate must be a natural born citizen of at least 35 years of age.

However, one girl in the class immediately started in on how unfair was the requirement to be a natural born citizen. In short, her opinion was that this requirement prevented many capable individuals from becoming president. The class was taking it in and letting her rant, but everyone’s jaw hit the floor when she wrapped up her argument by stating, ‘What makes a natural born citizen any more qualified to lead this country than one born by C-section?’

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done. – all from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-born philosopher, died April 29, 1951

Pictures That Should Have Been Erased

E-Mail the Imp

Cloning has been in the news, again. For the most part the news was met with yawns by the general public. Lately, unless some nut case starts talking about cloning Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot, the public takes the news of new cloning successes with a big dose of ho-hum.

I can remember when the speculation began that cloning of complex animals might actually be possible, the subject of cloning the perfect bovine for production of milk, or meat yield, or the impossible ride at the rodeo was all the rage. Throw in the possibility of genetic manipulation and all sorts of articles were written about the possibilities and the ethics behind the science.

Then on July 5, 1996, along came Dolly, the first successfully cloned mammal. There have since been dozens of successful clonings, and a lot of unsuccessful clonings to boot, all of which leaves the general public waiting for a bizarre twist to read about.

I have noticed that the animals being cloned have tie-ins to the countries in which they were cloned. Dolly…a sheep…Scotland. Scotland…wool. Makes sense that they’d concentrate on an animal they were familiar with. Koreans have always considered dog meat a delicacy, so it makes sense that they’d clone dogs as their mammal of choice. The latest cloning announcements have come from the mid-East. Dubai claiming to have successfully cloned a camel, and Iran claiming to have successfully cloned a goat are the latest pronouncements.

Makes me wonder what animals some other countries might pick for a target animal to clone. Peru might choose a Llama. Canada might choose a Moose. Mexico might choose a burro.

I also thought about Australia, but decided that a Kangaroo or other marsupial might be a bit difficult to manage, a Dingo isn’t flashy enough to consider, and the sheep has already been done. So perhaps the folks Down Under will come up with a clone of a genetically modified critter that will be a new species.

How about a fast growing cross between an ovine and a bovine…one that produces extremely fine wool and provides veal with very little feed required and which is extremely drought tolerant. Grown to adulthood, the meat would rival Kobe beef.

Since all the big cloning announcements concern mammals, I presume that mammals pose more of a challenge to get it right. Some reptiles already have the built in capability of regeneration; cut off some lizards’ tails and they’ll grow back. With that sort of genetic background it should be a relative cinch to clone a reptile. That makes me wonder why cloning of reptiles isn’t being considered as a way of providing meat protein for the starving and undernourished in third world countries. It should be easy enough to teach the process for third world technicians with limited training to duplicate the process.

First, choose a large reptile, like an iguana for the process. Second, genetically modify it for a faster growth rate and a much larger tail. (The tails will be harvested for meat) The tailless iguanas will be allowed to regenerate tails for more meat harvesting, and the “scraps” form the tail harvest will be used to clone more iguanas. Iguana kabobs and iguana stew and ground iguana burgers and iguana sausage and iguana filets wrapped in bacon and….

The Bad Sied

Click here for guidelines on 15 Minutes submissions

Speak Up!
Speak right up!

Getting Squirrely

As I’ve mentioned, we feed birds & squirrels in our garden. We try to keep squirrel food in the squirrel feeder I built, and keep them out of the bird feeders. This isn’t as easy as one may think.

Many bird feeders claim to be "squirrel proof" or "squirrel resistant". These may be a mechanism that blocks access to the seeds triggered by the weight of the squirrel, or they may cause the feeder to spin making it difficult for the squirrel to feed. But, as entertaining as they are, the squirrel deterrent features are often overcome by these intelligent creatures.

I am not anti-squirrel. On the contrary, I have gone to a lot of effort to provide for squirrels even though they are destructive if allowed to get into the home or outbuildings. I try to keep them out where they belong and out of the food meant for the birds. I used to pop them with my B-B gun to discourage them, but it was a deterrent only while we were outside. When we went inside, they returned to the bird feeder with great haste. I say "used to" because BB’s are not all that accurate and caused the untimely demise of a couple squirrels. I really felt badly about that.

Instead of BB’s, I came up with another method that is rather unique and not approved by Underwriter Laboratories. I took what was supposed to be a squirrel proof feeder that proved not to be. It is a metal bowl on a stem, with an inverted and larger bowl on top that slides down with the squirrel’s weight and supposedly covers the food and the squirrel slides off the top. Didn’t work! So, I tool a long extension cord, insulated the shepherd’s hook it was on, cut a piece of metal conduit and put it over the insulation. I connected one wire to the conduit, and the other on the metal stem of the feeder. The only way electric can flow is if something reaches the 6 inches from the conduit sleeve to the dome of the feeder.

As I mentioned, it is not "UL Approved". But it is effective. Since the squirrels reach out for the feeder bowl as they hang from the conduit, they do not grab anything. They simply try to push the top out of the way. In doing so, they complete the circuit getting one heck of a buzz, but remain unhurt. This method cannot be used on anything they would grab because electric makes muscles contract, thus anchoring them onto what they grab and on the conduit, creating an instant dinner entree.

When outside, I’ve watched squirrels attempt raiding the feeder. On one occasion, when the hapless critter touched the dome, it was zapped and he launched himself from the shepherd’s hook to a arbor about 20 feet away, leaping over a closer arbor in the process. Most have simply dropped to the ground as they gyrate in various moves when the zap causes them to react and lose their grip.

Here’s your quiz:
Do you have squirrels around your home?
Have they damaged anything?
Do you feed them?
Do you try to keep them out of your bird feeders?
Have you found an effective "squirrel proof" feeder?

Getting Squirrely - Not Only Me, But The Critters Too
Cliff (the High-Tech Redneck who doesn’t rate a fancy ’signature pic’)

Email Kirsten

“To hell with living in interesting times. I want to be bored.”
~ Unknown ~

I had a very stressful day today. Nothing catastrophic happened, there was just a sequence of events - some related, others not so related - that culminated in me wanting to temporarily become an apple tree. They have quite an easy life, apple trees. They’re not expected to be in more than one place at a time, doing a million things at once. They don’t have to worry about whether their offspring are in the next room emptying a bottle of shampoo all over the couch. They don’t have to deal with tear-off-your-own-arm-or-eat-it work deadlines, childrens’ meltdowns over what colour Mr. Potato Head’s hat should be, or near-permanent sleep deprivation. They can just stand there where they are planted, enjoy the scenery, and grow apples. Sure, being an apple tree might get a bit boring after a while, but sometimes there’s nothing wrong with a bit of good old-fashioned boredom.

Anyway, I had a bit of a rough day and came home late with a headache. I opened up my email and saw about four unrelated threads from four separate groups of people. Each thread confused me more than the last, and in the end I just deleted the lot of them and asked the originator of the thread for a brief synopsis. Usually email is a task I can handle with aplomb. I tend to receive a lot of emails in the average day, and I don’t typically have any problem keeping up with who is saying what to whom. Today, though, was one of those days when I just couldn’t keep track of anything.

Which presented me with a slight problem. How was I supposed to write a coherent, meaningful article when I couldn’t even deal with simple emails? It would be kind of like trying to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel when you’re afraid of standing on ladders. So instead of writing the article I had planned for tonight, I am going to save said article for Friday (which means Cliff is almost guaranteed to get it on time for a change). I don’t want to just show up empty-handed, though, so I am going to list a few things - in no particular order - that are making me scratch my head today.

1. Why are they calling it swine flu when it hasn’t been linked to anything pig-related? And will this troubling outbreak be contained without too many more people are affected?

2. American Idol. I absolutely detest this show and will not watch it. I hate how the judges openly laugh at contestants who are hopelessly bad. No matter how bad someone is at something, I don’t believe it’s right to laugh at them. I think it is unkind and cruel.

3. Giraffes. Weird, weird animals. Cannot fathom them.

4. Sometimes when I working on my computer or doing some task, I will start to feel cold or I will need to go to the bathroom. And despite my increasing discomfort, I will just continue doing whatever I’m doing instead of taking maybe a minute to get a sweater or go to the bathroom. It doesn’t make any sense; it cannot even be explained away by laziness.

5. The weird logic of kids. It makes perfect sense to them, but in order for us adults to understand it, we have to think well outside the box. My younger son, for instance, told me that he had jammed the vacuum cleaner with Lego because his brother had kicked him.

6. The fact that I stay up insanely late sometimes, despite the fact that I am dead on my feet and in desperate need of some shut-eye.

OK, so maybe I can’t become an apple tree. I’ll just have to give in and go mad instead.

Kaleidoscopically yours,
Kirsten

Faithy was having some computer problems. Hopefully she’ll be back Friday

I am no longer a criminal. That ticket I told you about on Monday, I actually got on Sunday. Seeing as I figured I was at the top of the Akron Village “most wanted” list, I got my car inspected on Monday. I’m a law abiding citizen like that.

But there were extenuating circumstances. Monday was an absolutely beautiful day to call in sick. My PFY was dutifully there when I got on, and I was dutifully there when my boss got in. He stopped at the door and instead of his usual “Good Morning”, he said he was proud of us. You see, it was a beautiful sunny day with the high expected to be in the 80ºF range. He was impressed that we both showed up.

Now, I have worked with my boss for 21 years, and in that time I’ve only disappointed him once. So I volunteered to take the afternoon off, being the dutiful employee that I am.

I explained the ticket, and they both enjoyed poking fun at me for my criminal activity. They were still laughing when I left for the day before they left for lunch. Apparently they had a fine afternoon imagining me being stuck in a grungy garage, as the first question on Tuesday was, “Well, did it pass?” I told PFY that it did, and he asked, “First shot?” “Yes. Bulb out, wipers replaced, but I knew that. It passed.” He got this big grin on his face and pumped his arm in the air. My car has over 200,000 miles on it. I thought he felt good for me.

Then the Boss came in. “Did it pass?” I said yeah. And PFY blurted out, “First time!” Apparently my PFY had his money on me, so I’m going to hit him up for some reimbursement for the wipers after I recommend him for a raise. Oh, and because I had the inspection done immediately, the Akron judicial system said they would probably drop the charges and take me off the “Top 10 Most Wanted” list.

I also got to walk around Kenmore for a while. In the sun, with a nice breeze to cool me off. I stopped for a beer even. Sometimes it’s good to be “almost a criminal.”

Tim a’Musing
Having a Ball with Spring

Herbs and Spices

As a general rule, herbs and ground spices will retain their best flavors for a year. Whole spices may last for 3 to 5 years. Proper storage should result in longer freshness times.

What we lack in quantity we more than make up in quality. Good job everyone!

Next opening line…
There once was a young boy named Nick…

Hints: Here’s a great new rhyming/composition tool. http://www.writerhymes.com/
There’s also a great rhyming dictionary at http://www.rhymezone.com/
Limerick rules. http://freespace.virgin.net/merrick.sheldon/limerickrules.htm

Submit Opening Line
Submit Limerick

A man with a very large nose— liked woman who wore pantyhose— he really liked L’Eggs when they came in those eggs to those images this man would doze. - Cassandra in New York	A man with a very large nose Went out to defeat England’s foes This is perfectly true - He won Waterloo (His nose scared his foes I suppose) - Julian, England
A man with a very large nose Tried to drink from his garden But his schnozz was in the way He had no drink that day And, now, he doth lie in repose. - Bonnie

Re: Wildlife

I inadvertantly feed the squirrels when I feed my chickens. My chickens are provided with a safe space. Food and water. A place to lay their eggs, the DAMN, PESKY, MARAUDING, THIEVING, squirrels tunnel in and STEAL, the chicken feed. The sparrows squeeze through the fence for their share. I don’t mind them, so much. Oh, I also feed the DAMN, PESKY, THIEVING, MARAUDING CROWS when I feed my dog. He got so skinny, that I had to buy him special high fat dog food, and feed him in the house. Did I mention he’s as big as a pony? Or that I have a very small house? He’s a really big couch potato. I wish he had an appetite for squirrel. - L&K, herm

Re: Fat Fliers

Just wanted to add my two cents on fat fliers–especially since I just flew to and from OKC last month. I will admit to being fat–but I fit in the seats just fine. I did have to have an extender for my seat belt because I’m short and short-waisted, that means things don’t go around me like they should–especially seat belts. The worst thing was being crammed in a seat between two big guys on the way home (four hours). Neither of these guys were fat, mind you, we all fit in the seats without any problem. They were just muscular and broad shouldered. Should we have been penalized for this? I think the airlines need to quit trying to starve a profit into their business by shrinking seat sizes and trying to put as many people onto a flight as they can. Just a little more room would have been fine and we all would have been more than comfortable–which is basically what you get in the more expensive class. - Ruth in WA

Reader Submission

The quote about interrogation or "torture" was attributed to Bonnie in the reader submission. Is there another Bonnie or was this mistakenly attributed to me? Just wondering. - Bonnie >^..^<

This quote was sent in by Bonnie:
In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others. - Andre Maurois
[I’m so sorry Bonnie. The link to the quotes is associated with the images, too. Mike gets the mail for that. He doesn’t do the quotes, I (Patti) do. I have already sent in the entire month of May to Cliff - who puts each issue together. If people would like me to include some pithy quote, I would be happy to place them here in the Reader Submission space.

Mike forwarded your mail to me at my regular email address. I forwarded it to the place where the comments live because I lose them in my regular email address space. I’m not real sure how I copied the quote Mike has included in his email, rather than the quote you actually sent, but I did. I’m going to blame it on Google Mail, a program I don’t usually use. It was a mistake and I’m truly sorry. I have no idea why Mike not only didn’t correct what was obviously an error, but used it to further his platform. I’m upset by this, as I assume you were as well.

I would request that all comments be mailed to the link provided. I know many of the commenter directly email Mike. I have these all formatted and ready for publication and then he has to redo work because I don’t have the comments here. The email address for comments is: rgqcomments@gmail.com. - Patti]

[I’m confused. All I did was forward an email and reply to a comment.]

Disclaimer- All quotes printed in this publication are believed to be accurately attributed, but no guarantees are made that some incorrectly attributed, or even outright false quotes won’t get in here from time to time. I assure readers that I will do my best to weed out incorrect quotes, and will print a retraction as soon as I become aware of any errors.

Click here to see the archives of past issues, or go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reallygoodquotes/messages. If you run across something really outstanding when perusing the archives, I’d appreciate it if you’d mail me at TheBestOfRGQ@yahoo.com and point it out to me. I’m in the process of compiling an e-book called, not surprisingly, The Best of RGQ, and I’d like to hear from you which pieces impacted you the most.

Questions? Comments? Want to contribute a joke or a quote or an image? Feel free to e-mail at reallygoodquotes@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you! We’ll even publish your comments, if they make any sense!

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Archive for April 29th, 2009

April 29, 2009

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