Really Good Quotes

Groaners
[Thanks Sied]

A pirate walks into a bar wearing a paper towel on his head. He sits down at the bar and orders some dirty rum.

The bartender asks, “Why are you wearing a paper towel?”

“Arrr…” says the pirate. “I’ve got a bounty on me head!”

Bad Place Names
[Thanks Tesser]

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Kirsten’s not feeling well, here’s an article from the archives.

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"Many kids can tell you about drugs but do not know what celery or courgettes taste like."
~ Jamie Oliver ~

Today I got to thinking about one of the ironies of modern living. We as a society are obsessed with weight loss, and yet we have the most prevalent obesity epidemic in history. On one particular TV channel, about 65% of the advertising is for some weight-loss gimmick. I’ve seen advertising for diets that claim to confuse your system into losing weight, pills that allegedly make you lose 30 pounds in a month, machines that make you lose weight without you needing to do a thing. A popular refrain in these commercials is, "Lose weight today! No diet! No exercise!"

Among all of these deadbeat weight-loss methods is a "winner" that some people swear-by. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the phenomenon known as… *drum-roll*… Negative Calorie Diets! The idea behind negative-calorie diets is that you eat foods that contain fewer calories than it takes for your body to consume them. The origin of this was the noble celery stalk. Someone started a rumour that celery contains no calories, and since the effort of chewing uses up calories, you can lose weight really quickly by living on celery.

This theory is only partly true. For a start, celery is not completely calorie-free. An eight-inch stalk contains about six calories. Nor is it true that chewing burns calories. You could probably burn more calories by watching paint dry, watching the grass grow, or watching the next US President get elected. However, the body does need energy in order to digest the food. And it apparently does take more than six calories to digest a celery stalk. Therefore, you could technically lose weight on a celery diet.

But as accountants are fond of saying, "It’s all about the numbers". Let’s be generous and say that the body uses 20 calories to digest a stalk of celery. Since six calories are contained within the celery itself, that means we have a net loss of 14 calories per celery stalk. It takes 3500 calories to burn off a single pound of fat, which means that in order to lose ten pounds, you would have to eat 2500 celery stalks. If you eat 30 celery stalks a day, it would take you 84 days - almost three months - to lose the ten pounds. That’s assuming you don’t eat anything else for the whole three-month duration. It seems like a lot of pain for a long time for the sake of just ten pounds. Besides, it stands to reason that man cannot live on celery alone.

Not only is this diet completely impractical, it’s not even necessary. It’s possible - as I myself have experienced - to lose between twenty and thirty pounds in three months merely by adopting a healthy lifestyle. Regular exercise and a sensible, varied diet will do the trick very well. You’re even allowed to eat a piece of chocolate cake occasionally. It sure beats one of these negative calorie diets, which allow you no variety at all, and no doubt leave you drained of energy.

Besides, it’s a known fact that people need chocolate.

Kaleidoscopically yours,
Kirsten

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So I searched our vendor’s support site and they verified that this was a problem with IE6, however, there is a solution. My web page uses cascading style sheets, so I could just add a cascading style sheet to each and every process that my web page uses that might get printed. There about 150 for the faculty alone, so that wasn’t a pleasant option. So I continued searching by going to the vendor’s users group. There they had a thread concerning this problem with various possible solutions.

One option was to add some code to a style sheet, but someone else posted that that didn’t always work right. Another person offered his own code to add to that style sheet. Then someone corrected the first solution, adding a bit more code. Then someone else said there was a problem with the second solution, and another said in certain circumstances, the fixed first solution would fail as well. So I read each post carefully and pondered my choices. I could go through the hassle of implementing the vendor’s solution, or try to figure out which one of the user solutions would be easier to implement.

Then I read the last post. I could just enter the name of the style sheet into the "Global Style Sheet" field on the web page’s configuration form, regenerate the web page and load it on the web server. It took all of five minutes to accomplish this, and it worked like a charm.

But I’m still left with one question: Why the hell doesn’t our vendor know about this?

Tim a’Musing
Having a Ball with Yarns

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Miscellaneous Tips

Rescue stale or soggy chips and crackers: Preheat the oven to 300F. Spread the chips or crackers in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for about 5 minutes. Allow to cool, then seal in a plastic bag or container.

Re: Random Breath Tests

I hate drunk driving as much as the next guy, but I don’t trust the police. We need a lot less gov’ment and a lot more personal responsibility. I’m not in favor of the police having even more powers to abuse. The state has too much power as it is. Some guy in Canada was stopped and ticketed for smoking a cigarette in his own truck. The law? Canadians are not allowed to smoke in their work places. - Lucille



Experts will confirm that on average, my southern neighbors in the Land of the Free commit three felonies per day, and that it is safer to be a major war criminal than a pot smoker. Police routinely trample human rights and break major laws, sometimes responsibly, but often not, even covering up murders. So it is hard to get too excited about producing some ethanol-free breath along with a driver’s license. However, roadblocks in general can become fishing expeditions for many minor crimes, from bald tires to pirated music. Such prosecutions are often lucrative for tax-supported workers, but ruinous for people struggling economically. Overall, it is the lack of prosecution for large crimes that makes such petty crimes inevitable. - Bob of the North



The U.S. will never have random traffic stops for DUIs. No conservative justice would uphold such a thing. They’ve already found that a legitimate stop that goes beyond 15 minutes is too long, unless there is good reason. It has been decided, decades and maybe centuries ago, that Americans have the right to uninhibited travel, and traffic stops constitute illegal detention unless there’s reasonable suspicion that a law has been broken. So, according to law, precedent, and conservative ideals, we can’t just stop people at random. Can’t even do that to people while they’re walking. We can engage in conversation, but can’t demand that they stop. So a conservative justice would have nothing to do with random traffic stops.

A liberal justice would never allow such a thing, either. (Now, here’s my bias. Sorry…) The liberal justice would not feel that was "fair", makes it too easy to catch law breakers. Gotta give ‘em a chance. Ok, that’s bull and I know it, just feels that way sometimes. But the liberal justice feels as strongly about free association and freedom of movement as the conservative justice, and while they my take different routes to get there, they typically come to the same conclusion.

The only way the courts have allowed us to do anything similar to a random traffic stop is the "road block". To do a road block, we have to get the courts permission, then we have to publish the location of the roadblock in the local news media. Up until recently, that meant an article in the paper. But the courts recognize that not everyone reads the paper, so now it’s broadcast on radio and TV, at least in Utah. So, they give everyone a chance to avoid the roadblock. Roadblocks are so labor intensive, we don’t do them often. It’s extremely expensive, the overtime for it is more than some departments can afford. When we do our roadblocks, about once a year, it’s usually in cooperation with surrounding agencies.

And last, but not least, your point about pulling over the little old sober lady and letting the drunk zip by is more accurate than you may think. The cops that pull people over for every little infraction hoping to stumble on a DUI actually find far fewer DUIs than those who look for driving patterns. It’s kind of an art, and I’m not real good at it. But we have a few officers that specialize in DUI enforcement, and they are amazing. If you drink and drive, be very afraid. I swear that they can smell the alcohol from a driver while driving behind them. You will get caught, eventually.

So, in my opinion, the random traffic stop won’t happen until we loose our constitution. Unfortunately, these days that doesn’t look like it’s such a far-fetched idea. - Chris in Utah



Re: Cliff’s Skeletons

I occasionally found leaf-skeletons when I lived on the wet coast, and used some in place of dried flowers. I’m sure that they could be preserved. You might try Saran Wrap as a mold for epoxy or urethane to replace the leaf surface. - Bob of the North
[Thanks for the suggestion, but I was out in the boonies and no way to protect it to get it back to my place in one piece, thus my problem. But it is etched into my memory. That may last a few weeks. *grin* - Cliff, The High Tech Redneck]



Re: Tazz’s Comment

This comment is in response to the reader comment from Tazz on Friday. I understand exactly what you are saying. Back in the dark ages of the ’60s and ’70s, there was a popular book published called, "The Games People Play." In the book was an intriguing description of a game the author called, "Why Don’t You…..Yes, But." Player A starts the game by presenting a problem. Player B comes up with a solution and says, "Why Don’t You….." Player A then comes up with an objection to the solution, saying, "Yes, But….." Player B thinks of another solution. Player comes up with another objection. The game continues until Player B gives up in frustration and Player A goes away with a sense of triumph. I had a friend who used to do this to me. A lot. We became good enough friends after a few months for her to start this game with me and I tried my level best to come up with a solution she could accept. I NEVER DID! After a year of being very close to her and trying to help, I finally decided I didn’t want to play any more. The next time she presented me with a problem, I simply told her that was too bad and CHANGED THE SUBJECT. We remained friends for 36 years until she died and I never did figure out what her major misalignment was. Neither did anyone else, so I am in good company. She died almost 5 years ago, but those of us who knew her are still telling stories to each other about what she said and did and laughing over the memories. - Peg



Hey Tazz, You don’t have to offer up your sanity as a sacrifice on the altar of friendship to be a good person. Does your friend subscribe to RGQ? A copy of the last issue with your posting in it ought to work. If she gets pissed off at you she wasn’t that good of a friend to begin with. Actually though, you could try (again?) and tell her that you’ve decided to stop giving her advice because she never listens to you anyway.

I learned a long time ago to not try and advise people. They don’t listen anyway, and on the rare occasions they have listened to me things have managed to go horribly wrong and then I get blamed or I feel guilty. My emotions get in the way and it clouds my judgement. Sooo..I tell them that I can’t possibly advise them because their situation is unique to them. If they persist I advise them to get professional counseling because they need an impartial viewpoint. Maybe thats what your friend really needs after all. Counseling.

Having said all of that, I have a good friend I call all the time and whine and complain to. She does the same to me. She always offers her advice whether I like it or not. Sometimes I take it and sometimes I don’t. Her advice is usually pretty sound and the times I have followed it, things turn out okay.
I don’t think she ever listens to me. She does tend to be a crabby old bat. Then again, I have known her for 50 years and we have most certainly been through some sh*t together so we can say just about anything to each other.

Well listen to me here. All this talk about not giving advice to people and check out all the advice I have dished out here. - GrammieSammie



Tazz, I know of which you speak. I have a friend who is much as you describe. I’ve often wondered how they could go a month with all the turmoil and distress they seem to have befall them without trying to suck a slug out of the barrel of a .38 special.

I am quite shy, as you probably know by now *wink*, and I started making comments like the above. "How do you keep from aerating your skull with all that seems to be going on around you?" would garner a giggle and a retraction of the severity of the situation. Other comments I would make would get similar results. Eventually, it was expected that I would make a comment rather than address the situations described.

These people just want to be heard, by whomever may listen, but more importantly, by their own ears. They need it. Apparently they don’t get the opportunity to be heard by those closest to them. (Ever hear Archie respond to Edith on "All In The Family"?) I don’t demean their assessment of how these things impact them, but I do make comments like, "And I thought MY family was dysfunctional!"

It becomes a game for me to think up a response that relates to the topic yet diffuses the "oh poor me" theme. - Cliff, the High Tech Redneck