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Greetings, Quotaholics:
We are a species of multitaskers. We are busy and overscheduled and have
so little time to do more than go from one appointment to the next. We
are also a world of instant communication. We are intimately connected
around the globe with friends around the world.
We are used to being in constant communication via
phones and the internet. We have social networks bringing us together
and our neighborhood is now the entire known universe. In fact, technology
is so awesome,
we don’t think much about it – unless it’s to complain.
Last week a Northwest Airlines plane was headed
for Minneapolis. The plane eventually got there and landed safely. The
144 passengers were never in any danger. But their flight took a little
longer than expected. The plane overshot its destination by 150 miles
(240 km). The average cruising speed of an Airbus A-320 (Flight 188’s
plane type) is 560 mph (900 km/h) so the distance overrun took between
15 and 20 minutes time.
During that time the plane was cruising at altitude
and obviously on autopilot. Air Traffic Control tried several times to
contact the plane. So what happened to the pilot and co-pilot?
Were they in a heated argument as they first stated?
Did they both fall asleep? What were they doing that was more important
than flying the plane?
In a follow up article in The
Chrstian Science Monitor, it was reported they were looking at their
laptops. That is, by the way, against company policy. But Richard Cole
(first officer) knew more about monthly flight-crew scheduling and was
helping Captain Timothy Chaney learn more about the new procedure which
was updated after Northwest merged with Delta.
A flight attendant finally interrupted the impromptu
educational session and advised the flyboys of their need to actually
fly the plane and return to Minneapolis and actually land the thing.
There were other things bothersome about the flight.
The pilot and first officer had lost contact with Air Traffic Control
for over an hour. Other pilots in the area also attempted to contact the
plane without result. Fighter jets were readied to take off and intercept
the plane, but fortunately, the plane resumed contact with the ground
before that.
Newer planes have cockpit voice recorders that hold
2 hours worth of data. The voice recorder on Flight 188 had a recorder
that only saved the last 30 minutes of recordings. It took longer than
that to turn the plane around, head back to Minneapolis, and land. So
there is no record of what the two men were talking about while they weren’t
flying the plane.
There may be a call for more stringent oversight of the cockpit, at least
by updating to the two hour or more voice recorders. There is talk also
of video equipment being installed, although pilots have resisted this
move.
I’m annoyed by drivers who are on the phone and
not paying attention to their driving. I’m even more annoyed by those
who are texting instead of driving. What is so important that it can’t
wait until you aren’t going to kill me while I drive defensively, dodging
out of your way as you stray into my lane?
But while you are flying? This is really more multitasking
than we need.
Do you fly? Often, rarely? Way too much? Had you
ever thought about what your crew was doing while they were supposed to
be flying the plane?
Since the plane did land safely and there were no
injuries (although there may have been a number of people who missed connecting
flights), should these people sue the airline? From what I’m reading,
it doesn’t say if the pilot and first officer were punished or fired.
Do you think they should still be flying large passenger planes? Would
you like to have either of them flying you around?
Well grounded,
Comment
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Regarding Ethel Merman – A chorus of taxi horns. – Anon.
Regarding The Monkees – The Prefab Four – Anon.
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Man of the House
[Thanks Bonnie]
A husband had just
finished reading a new book entitled, “You Can Be THE Man of Your
House.”
He stormed to his wife in the kitchen and announced, “From now on,
you need to know that I am the man of this house and my word is Law.
You will prepare me a gourmet meal tonight, and when I’m done eating
my meal, you will serve me a scrumptious dessert.. After dinner, you
are going to go upstairs with me and we will have the kind of sex
that I want!
Afterwards, you are going to draw me a bath so I can relax. You will
wash my back and towel me dry and bring me my robe. Then, you will
massage my feet and hands. Then tomorrow, guess who’s going to dress
me and comb my hair?”
The wife replied, “The fuckin’ funeral director would be my first
guess.”
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"A designer is only as good as the star who wears her clothes."
"I have yet to see one completely unspoiled star, except for the
animals - like Lassie."
"Your dresses should be tight enough to show you’re a woman and
loose enough to show you’re a lady." - All from designer Edith
Head born on this date in 1897
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Halloween
Is Almost Here!
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Speak right up!
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Heavenly
Hosts
I told you of my recent geocaching activities at some events. The events
themselves were fun and exciting, but getting there and getting home
was just as exciting. I already mentioned the fall foliage that was
breath-taking. But that wasn’t the end on my thrill.
There were two events on the same day, and the 2nd was scheduled for
late in the day, and on into evening. I don’t go out geocaching after
dark much. Only recently have I intentionally been out after sunset.
I’m not afraid of the dar, but I am cautious of uneven terrain, rocks,
tree roots, and other hazards one cannot see after the sun goes down.
I was at the 2nd event as it was winding down. We were in a small park
out in the middle of nowhere. There weren’t any street lights. No large
business facilities were nearby. Except for the one bright light inside
the shelter, there were no other lights anywhere to be seen. As it was
cold, tarps had been placed outside on the sides of the shelter, so
even that light wasn’t too intrusive.
Only a few steps away allowed one’s eyes to adjust to the pitch blackness
of a clear night sky. With the absence of "light pollution"
from nearby towns & cities, the sky was extra dark. There wasn’t
much of a moon either. But it wasn’t totally pitch blackness. There
were stars everywhere! I saw stars in places I’m sure I had never seen
a star before.
For example, I found a new "dipper" in the night sky. No,
I’m not talking about the "Big Dipper" or the "Little
Dipper". We all know those and can point them out since childhood.
But there’s another. I’m sure it has a different constellation name,
but, that night, I christened it the "Dinky Dipper" as it
was proportionally as small to the "Little Dipper" as the
"Little Dipper" is to the "Big Dipper". The next
time I’m out at night, I’m going to look for another, even smaller one
somewhere. If so, I’ll name it the "Micro Dipper".
It never ceases to amaze me how many stars there are. At home, with
nearby shopping centers, city lights, and such, there are still a lot
of stars visible on a clear night. As you move away from town, it gets
progressively darker, and with it, more stars become perceptible. Get
out into the rural areas, as little as a half hour’s drive, and the
blank spots in the heavens fill in with tiny lights you couldn’t see
before.
Here’s your quiz:
When was the last time you went out into nowhere and just stared at
the stars?
Do you try to find familiar shapes in the pinpoints of light?
How many constellations can you name? How many did you make up on the
spot?
Heavenly Hosts - Not Always With Wings Or Halos
Cliff (the High-Tech Redneck who doesn’t rate a fancy ’signature pic’)
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Kirsten was running late so here’s an article from the archive.
Email
Kirsten
"Bankruptcy
stared me in the face, but one thought kept me calm; soon I’d be too
poor to need an anti-theft alarm."
~ Gina Rothfels ~
There’s absolutely nothing interesting about the fact that I’ve experienced
being in debt way over my head. It’s quite boring information, in
fact. It doesn’t make me special or unique. I’m not stupider than
other people, and I don’t have worse luck. Being in debt is just something
that happens to many, many people. It can happen due to poor decisions,
overestimation of wealth, underestimation of expenses, or simply an
unfortunate sequence of events. I always get mildly annoyed with people
who self-righteously proclaim, "Well, debt will never happen
to me because I pay off all my balances on time each month".
The fact is that debt can happen to anyone. Even the most financially
astute, meticulous person isn’t immune.
I’m not going to tell you how I got into debt or how I went about
handling it. That’s not out of any respect for my privacy, it’s just
that it would make fairly boring reading. It’s enough to say that
while we still have a small amount of debt remaining, we’ve cleared
the vast majority of it. One small amount, one debtor, is all that
is left. We have also caught up on our taxes, and applied for all
of the child tax benefits to which we are entitled. We have been receiving
some reasonable cheques from the government for back-dated tax benefits.
My bank account is probably in shock. It hasn’t seen this much money
in one place for a long, long time.
The relief I feel is immense. When the largest portion of my debt
was cleared, I felt so light that I thought my head would float right
off my shoulders. I have always known this intellectually, but now
I can personally attest to the fact that financial-being - or lack
thereof - can have a dramatic effect on one’s health. When you have
to dig around for enough loose change to buy diapers for your kids,
you tend to be stressed and depressed, and you tend to feel completely
helpless. On the other hand, when you can go to a grocery store and
not worry about whether your debit card transaction will be approved,
your outlook on life is so much better.
I am not suggesting that money solves all problems, but I do believe
that mental well-being is largely dependant on our ability to sustain
ourselves.
Of course, suddenly having more money to which you’re accustomed is
no excuse to go on a spending-spree. Nonetheless, we all deserve our
treats now and then, so I will try not to feel too bad about the fact
that I went impulse-shopping today.
Kaleidoscopically yours,
Kirsten
Comment
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I love it when I’m right. Yes, I know it happens all the time, but
I don’t get sick of it. I also don’t get enough credit for it, but
I’m a humble being.
Allow me to explain. A while ago I told you about Cloud
AntiVirus. I highly recommended it, even though it was still a
beta. It had some problems with the initial background scan if you
started a manual scan upon installation, for example. They fixed that.
If you used Windows Explorer to right click on a file you wanted to
scan with Cloud AV, the menu item appeared in Spanish even though
the English version was installed. They fixed that. And while they
were fixing the bugs, they were “saving” machines. I lost count of
the number of machines that got a new life thanks to Cloud AV.
But some people balked at the idea of installing a beta version of
a security program. Fair enough. Even PC
World thought it was too early in development back in August.
It’s October now, and Cloud AV is more mature. It still kicks the
pants off any other AV (99.4% of a half million virus samples, compared
to the next closest at 98.9%), but now there aren’t any problems.
They fixed them. I know this because I’ve been running the beta-beta3
for about a week now.
Now you mere mortals can download the same version I’m running. Panda
has released Cloud AV Beta3 to the general public, but there is one
change you should be aware of. You actually have to enter an e-mail
address to activate the new version. You will get an activation e-mail
with a link to click, then another Welcome e-mail after that. Oh,
you have to pick a password too. Type it twice even. But then you
have a license for Cloud AV that expires sometime in 2029.
I contacted Pedro about that, and he said, and I quote, “Please be
sure to remind us a couple of days earlier so we can push it back
again “
The best things in life are free. For life. For you too, well, unless
you forget to remind them in 20 years. http://www.cloudantivirus.com
Tim a’Musing
Having a Ball with Yarns
E-mail Dear Tim
Comment
on this article
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Miscellaneous Tips
Use a gentle touch when shaping ground beef patties. Overhandling
will result in a firm, compact texture after cooking. Don’t press
or flatten with spatula during cooking.
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I guess that line wasn’t so hot either. How about this one?
Next opening line…
A woman whose limericks were witty…
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
My
best friend once quietly told me
That she was too plastic to see
I knew her as profound
Why now so tightly wound?
She blamed botched plastic surgery. - Maria in Illinois |
My
best friend once quietly told me
She’d like to date Dr. Dreamy
I told her he’s not real.
But my words were futile:
She thought it was reality TV. - Anne Onimous |
My best
friend once quietly told me
That he’s shy when he takes a pee
I said I wouldn’t look
While his pee he took. . .
That is ’til I felt a warm, wet knee. - E. Cole Aye |
My best
friend once quietly told me
I should go and climb up a tree
It was only in jest
You might say a test
To see how loyal I could be. - Bonnie |
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Re: Homosexual Marriage
I have a Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary, and under the topic
of Marriage it says: "…a compact entered into by a man and
a woman, to live together as husband and wife; wedlock." This
terminology and practice seems to come from the Bible, and if someone
wants to change the equation to "man and man" or "woman
and woman" or "man and sheep" or "man and chicken"
the dispute is with the Bible and thousands of years of history, not
the current civic model.
Why do the homosexuals want to have the designation of "married"
attributed to their "relationships"? My opinion is that
they want the validity of marriage attributed to their insecure relationship
so they might feel more comfortable with a situation that has no stability.
Homosexual behavior emanates from damage and pain caused from sexual
abuse, and the fragility that results seems to have no respite from
the victims’ personal paranoia of suspected rejection by society,
so the comfort of a label, (marriage), may allow the person to experience
a modicum of relief from their own perceived oppression.
In
a treatise on sexual abuse and dysfunction, the PHD applicant wrote
of interviewing 1000 homosexual people, and in every case they spoke
of sexual compromise by an adult authority figure in their formative
years, (there was no foray into the people who experienced sexual
abuse but overcame it to live heterosexual lives). (Accurate statistical
evaluation only requires a study of 125 instances of a situation to
establish a reliable record of how that situation will play out.)
When a child has no hormones directing the male/female dynamic, we
know that "girls have cooties" and "boys are icky".
When a child is sexually abuse during this season of life, he or she
are naturally attracted to their own sex, in a buddy kind of way.
When the hormones flow, they subconsciously re-program the hormonal
emotions to adapt to the damaged psyche and their adjusted reality,
and then transfer the soulish "buddy" attractions to the
newly acquired sexual ones. The crisis caused by forcing a child into
a sexual situation beyond their years creates an arrested development
of their emotions, and they continue to age and grow physically, but
their emotions stay at the age of the abuse. As they grow to adulthood,
they react to the world and its events like a child of the crisis
age, because they had to make the world make sense from that age so
they could cope with life. When we hear a homosexual man say, "I’ve
ALWAYS been attracted to men" it is because he never had a time
in his life that he could naturally make the transition from boys
being his buddies to women being his love interest. (I don’t live
in the Hollywood area anymore, but nowadays it is possible that there
may be some with such a undeveloped autonomy that they succumb to
homosexuality because they lack the strength to resist it when proselytized
to engage in it.)
I have never a homosexual who wasn’t a Darwinist, so it would be interesting
to hear what the "survival of the fittest" argument would
be from that vantage point.
I don’t personally give a shit if we have the arts or theater, so
what’s the loss if one generation puts enough chlorine in the gene
pool that homosexuality is eradicated? (Based on my comments above
I think it’s obvious I don’t think it’s genetic.) - Bruce in Colorado
[Bruce…
Where to start? I’m sure that if I find an old enough Funk and Wagnall’s
it probably says "white man and white woman" too. Currently
the legal definition of marriage is also a man and a woman. That’s
where the problem comes in. Societies change with the times. The laws
and dictionaries change with them. Next years dictionary might not
carry the same definition!
You
said "…they want the validity of marriage attributed to their
insecure relationship so they might feel more comfortable with a situation
that has no stability." Isn’t that why any of us get married?
Don’t we all want the stability of knowing our partner has made a
legal commitment to our relationship? I never really understood why
gays wanted to marry until I read your statement. Now I understand
that they want the exact same thing I did. Stability. Security. (You
might argue for things like love, children, home. But of course these
things aren’t dependant on marriage.)
Genetic? Not in the "color of hair" type of genetics. Obviously
gays don’t often reproduce with each other. Genetics would say any
such gene would have died out long, long ago. But just like children
are born with ambiguous sex organs, I think they can be born with
varying degrees of sexual attraction. Some like opposite, some like
the same, some like both, and some like neither.
And of course there is the Biblical idea of marriage. As far as the
religious aspect of marriage is concerned, I think we agree. I certainly
wouldn’t want any minister, priest, rabbi, etc, etc, to be forced
to perform a ceremony that they felt was against their religion. But
I believe there is a difference between the religions meaning of marriage
and the legal meaning. The state issues a legal marriage document,
your church issues the religious rites. Which is binding? The legal
document. One can be married outside the church, but a church ceremony
is meaningless without the legal document. Also one must remember
that "religion" has been wrong in its interpretation of
the Bible before and has used that interpretation to persecute various
groups throughout history.]
Some
laws are rigged to give a financial break to parents, using traditional
marriage as a rough filter. Given that some same-sex couples raise
children, and some mixed couples do not, and others, single, paired,
or collectively, raise many, it is probably better to make tax benefits
more child-specific. Especially in the U.S., a whole range of job,
insurance, and tax related benefits or charges depend upon marital
status, so there is a lot of energy for this issue.
Other laws are intended to limit access to hospital patients and others
in legal limbo, and have taken family and spousal relations as the
best indicator. Those are probably the most hurtful to those whose
true significant other is of the same sex. A lot of the pressure might
be relieved if people were just allowed to designate one spousal equivalent
for such situations. I’m straight, but almost without family, and
if I were incapacitated, the person I’d be hoping would show up, and
the one most likely to guess what I’d want, is also male.
The third leg of this debate is the whole question of legitimizing
homosexuality, which some consider sinful. That makes it a comfort
issue for many people, with reflections on their own identity. Eventually,
there may be a useful distinction for those married in church, leaving
the tax and insurance issues with the registry office.
Even on such a basic question as sexual preference, nature gets it
"wrong" in many different species and situations. Individuals
who don’t reproduce are commonly found helping their siblings who
do, encouraging the family line in that way. They may just be taking
the pressure off a limited food resource, so that the whole population
is healthier, and able to adjust quicker to disaster recovery. Given
the number of gay folks in the arts, it may be that the most creative
people have to re-direct their attention from child-rearing. Do we
wish that Leonardo had married, and taken up carpentry instead of
art? Do movie stars really make good parents?
As long as I’m on this soapbox, I’ll mention something I noticed recently.
Most people are heterosexual, but about 10% are "definitely"
gay, and as many are bi-sexual. I’m not trying to be precise - just
imagine a graph, with most people on the straight side of 50% bi.
Given all the tax advantages, social advantages, and general tendency
for conformity, there is a lot of incentive for anyone near the middle
to side with the majority. So, when I hear a rant about how gay folks
have failed to make the moral choice, I hear someone who has no idea
how incredibly easy it is for a strongly heterosexual person to "make
the choice," and how impossible for a few to follow. - Bob of
the North
Re: Fall Travel
Saturday
the same brilliant sun shone on Northern Ohio, and our drive east
on the Ohio Turnpike in mid-afternoon gave us a pair of spectacles
- first the Rocky River Gorge spread below us, and then the awesome
view of Cuyahoga Valley National Park looking like a patchwork quilt
in every autumn color possible. The National Park has a lot more RED
leafed trees in it, and the density of the forest glistening with
wet leaves from the morning rain was truly breathtaking! Thank you
for letting me share!
Nancy L in Ohio
Re: Euphorbia
Lola asked, "Can
you post a pic of the pot of gold? I’m curious. It sounds like some
kind of a euphorbia."
Sure. However,
I did a search on Euphorbia. Although this appears to be a succulent,
and may well be in the Euphorbia family, it doesn’t look anything
like any of the plants I got from my search. Soome of it is still
changing. Most of it is dying back. Here’s what it looks like though.
This is the area it is in.
This is a close-up.
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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.
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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. |
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