“The love of a dog is a pure thing. He gives you a trust which is total. You must not betray it.” — Michel Houellebecq A week ago, Vader, a police dog in the Arnold Police Department (APD), died from heat exhaustion after his handler found him in a hot patrol vehicle. Arnold is a [...]
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” — often misattributed to Albert Einstein I don’t spend much time in court rooms. I’m not a lawyer. I tend toward law-abiding behavior, so I’ve not been a defendant. I refuse to be an expert witness. (Lawyers seem to want me to follow [...]
“Heavy metal? Like Rock of Ages?” — Isis Hainsworth in Metal Lords It’s hard to pin down a definition of heavy metal, whether you are talking about the rock-n-roll genre, or elements from the periodic table. Serious fans (of either the music or the elements) can argue at length about what is meant by the [...]
“Love is like oxygen. You get too much, you get too high; not enough and you’re gonna die.” — Andy Scott, of Sweet OSHA standards define safe lower and upper limits to the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere to which workers are exposed. The limits are a minimum of 19.5% and a maximum of [...]
“Do I mind if you smoke? I don’t mind if you burst into flames. Just don’t light that cigarette.” — Anonymous, derived from Sarah Bernhardt’s comment to Oscar Wilde Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is an idea first proposed by Paul Rolli in 1746. It seized the imagination of a gullible public. Since then, there have [...]
“In the last two decades of the twentieth century, hundreds of people have died of carbon dioxide asphyxiation near volcanoes in Cameroon and in Indonesia.” — Allison Stark Draper, in Coping With Natural Disasters Many worry about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is also a much more urgent hazard. [...]
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a gas.” — Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, of The Rolling Stones Ever notice how the popular media never refer to chemicals. No, they talk about “toxic chemicals.” It’s as though any material that is not toxic is not a chemical, or perhaps, any material called a chemical must be toxic. [...]
“Don’t cross the streams.” -Egon from Ghostbusters It doesn’t take much for two tasks to interfere with one another out in general industry. Work environments can be quite hectic as the end of a fiscal year approaches, where multiple goals and tasks are being wrapped up. Plant life is not much different, except some of [...]
“Hell freezing over? I don’t know. But the devil’s definitely wearing a sweater.” — J.R.Moehringer Nerd humor requires pointing out that Hell freezing over does NOT equate to sweater weather. Given that Hell is the place where it rains fire and brimstone (sulfur), the temperatures in Hell must be above the freezing point of sulfur. Molten [...]
“Notice. All Activities Monitored By Video Camera.” — Various Department Store Surveillance Signs The adage that a watched pot never boils is false. The boil will occur, regardless of whether someone is observing it. Watching the pot appears to increase the time it takes to boil, especially if that is the only task that the [...]
