Web Log Archives, February 18th through March 3rd, 2007
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007
The world’s first passenger train station was opened in Manchester, England on
September 15th, 1830 and, as it turned out, on that very day not far from that
very station, British statesman William
Huskisson became the first person in world history to be fatally injured in
a railway accident, when he was was run over by an approaching locomotive.
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
Ben Franklin most often gets credit for
saying that when a man gets half his wishes, he doubles his troubles. Nothing in
life is à la carte. Everything comes in a box and if you want the thing,
you gotta take the box. People always seem to know what
they want but they hardly ever know what'll make them happy.
John Lennon most often gets credit for saying that "life
is what happens to you while you're making (other) plans".
But there's a book by Shelley Youngren called "Life
Is What Happens While Your (sic) Making Plans or Dumped in the
Fjords" (whatever the hell
that means!).
And then there's "Why He Dumped You!", advertised on inside
a guy's mind dot com.
And then there's a book called "Catch
Him and Keep Him", by Christian Carter, a wildlife enthusiast..
Never forget that almost every time you get something you want, you lose something you had. Dunno why it works that way! :-(-)
Thursday, March 1st, 2007 Bobby Weir is Sixty-One
Not to brag but...here's a photo of my kid with guess-who last week.
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
"It has always been desirable to tell the truth, but seldom if ever necessary."
Lord Balfour
“Buy on the sound of the war-cannons; sell on the sound of the
victory trumpets.”
Lionel Walter
Rothschild
Monday, February 26th, 2007
November 2nd, 1917
Dear 
I
have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government,
the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has
been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that
nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of
existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status
enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the
Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
Sunday, February 25th, 2007
During the dot-com boom of the nineties,
it had often seemed that what went up could never come down. But, as we all
know now, when things did come down, they came down fast.
At one firm in the City, there toiled a low-key manager named Don Baker.
One gray day, his boss called to say that the company was scaling back
and that each manager needed to fire one employee from his or her department.
Furthermore, Don was told that the most legally defensible thing to do was to
use the 'last-hired, first-fired'
rule. So Don set out to review the personnel files of each of his eighteen
subordinates and was dismayed to discover that the two last-hired
had been hired on the very same day! One was an African American
gentleman named Jack Sampson and the other was an Hispanic lady by the name of
Maria Hernandez. So Don's dilemma was compounded by the need to give no
appearance of gender bias or race discrimination.
What to do?!? Rather than flip a coin, Don decided to wait by the water
cooler; and whichever of Jack or Maria first came to the cooler would be
the one he would let go. All the next morning he waited by the water cooler but
neither Jack nor Maria approached. Toward three o'clock, Maria appeared. In her
right hand, she clutched a bottle of pills...two of which she shook out into her
left palm. She then removed a paper cup from the dispenser, filled it with
water, popped the pills, washed them down and started to walk back to her
cubicle.
It was at this moment that Don cleared his throat and said, in hushed tones,
"Oh Maria! May I speak with you for a
moment? I have a problem. I either have to lay you or Jack off."
"Jack off ",
answered Maria. "I have a headache!"
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
"It's such a strange political hiatus
we're in now. Newsprint and broadcast media can barely keep up with the madness.
You can't tell yesterday's men from tomorrow's safe hands on the reins of
government. It's very weird watching the Prime Minister's crazy legacy tour
around schools and telly studios and people like Michael
Meacher popping up to tell the nation he wants to renationalise trains."
Vicki
Woods, writing in today's [London Daily] Telegraph
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
An example of how new words are formed: Flustered + Frustrating = Flustrating
"Always
go to other people's funerals. Otherwise they won't come to yours."
"People don't go there anymore. It's too crowded"
Yogi Berra
Thursday, February 22nd,
2007
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on this day
in 1892
Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain,—
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start.
People dress and go to town;
I sit in my chair.
All my thoughts are slow and brown:
Standing up or sitting down
Little matters, or what gown
Or what shoes I wear.
From Renascence
and Other Poems, 1917
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Can
you say, "spooky"?
"He's
been under my protection for the
last month;
now I'm entrusting him to you.
Give him back! Give him back to me!"
Defense Attorney Ted Wells
Tuesday, February 20th,
2007
Patty Hearst is Fifty-Three
The cat, an orange-and-white
tabby seen prowling around the apartment during the investigation, apparently
was not greatly traumatized by the
ordeal.
"The cat is fine," said Animal
Care and Control Lt. Le-Ellis Brown. "It's being
held for next of kin."
Monday, February 19th, 2007
The Minds They Are A-Changin':
"A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for
saying [the Bush] 'administration will go down in
history as one of the worst.'
'She's wrong!', I
wrote.
Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew
Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Hoover and Richard Nixon.
'It's
very unlikely Bush can crack that list', I added.
I
was wrong."
Al
Neuharth, the founder of USA TODAY, writing on 2/16/07
Sunday, February 18th, 2007
Shortly after running out of things to worry about, I learned
that there's a 1 in 45,000 chance that the
world will end on April 13th, 2036.
I have long felt that watching television is the only possible way to do less than nothing at all!