CNN: 'Last Lecture' professor dies at 47
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Randy Pausch, a Carnegie
Pausch died at his home in Virginia, university spokeswoman Anne Watzman said. Pausch and his family moved there last fall to be closer to his wife's relatives.
Pausch was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer in September 2006. His popular last lecture at Carnegie Mellon in September 2007 garnered international attention and was viewed by millions on the Internet.
In it, Pausch celebrated living the life he had always dreamed of instead of concentrating on impending death.
"The lecture was for my kids, but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful," Pausch wrote on his Web site. "But rest assured; I'm hardly unique."
The book "The Last Lecture," written with Jeffrey Zaslow, leaped to the top of the nonfiction best-seller lists after its publication in April and remains there this week. Pausch said he dictated the book to Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal writer, by cell phone. The book deal was reported to be worth more than $6 million.
At Carnegie Mellon, he was a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design, and was recognized as a pioneer of virtual reality research. On campus, he became known for his flamboyance and showmanship as a teacher and mentor.
The speech last fall was part of a series Carnegie Mellon called "The Last Lecture," where professors were asked to think about what matters to them most and give a hypothetical final talk. The name of the lecture series was changed to "Journeys" before Pausch spoke, something he joked about in his lecture.
"I thought, damn, I finally nailed the venue and they renamed it," he said.
He told the packed auditorium he fulfilled almost all his childhood dreams -- being in zero gravity, writing an article in the World Book Encyclopedia and working with the Walt Disney Co.
The one that eluded him? Playing in the National Football League.
"If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you," Pausch said.
He then joked about his quirky hobby of winning stuffed animals at amusement parks -- another of his childhood dreams -- and how his mother introduced him to people to keep him humble: "This is my son, he's a doctor, but not the kind that helps people."
Pausch said he was embarrassed and flattered by the popularity of his message. Millions viewed the complete or abridged version of the lecture, titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," online.
Pausch lobbied Congress for more federal funding for pancreatic cancer research and appeared on "Oprah" and other TV shows. In what he called "a truly magical experience," he was even invited to appear as an extra in the new "Star Trek" movie.
He had one line of dialogue, got to keep his costume and donated his $217.06 paycheck to charity.
Pausch blogged regularly about his medical treatment. On Feb. 15, exactly six months after he was told he had three to six months of healthy living left, Pausch posted a photo of himself to show he was "still alive & healthy."
"I rode my bike today; the cumulative effects of the chemotherapy are hurting my stamina some, but I bet I can still run a quarter mile faster than most Americans," he wrote.
Pausch gave one more lecture after his Carnegie Mellon appearance -- in November at the University of Virginia, where he had taught from 1988 to 1997.
Pausch often emphasized the need to have fun.
"I mean I don't know how to not have fun. I'm dying and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there's no other way to play it," he said in his Carnegie Mellon lecture. "You just have to decide if you're a Tigger or an Eeyore. I think I'm clear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate. Never lose the childlike wonder. It's just too important. It's what drives us."
Born in 1960, Pausch received his bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon.
He co-founded Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, a master's program for bringing artists and engineers together. The university named a footbridge in his honor. He also created an animation-based teaching program for high school and college students to have fun while learning computer programming.
In February, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences in California announced the creation of the Dr. Randy Pausch Scholarship Fund for university students who pursue careers in game design, development and production.
Zen Habits: Now Do This, and The Single-Tasking Philosophy
There’s a new online to-do app that’s come out called Now Do This: — I know, there are already a million of them, but I love this one for its simplicity and philosophy that’s so similar to mine.
It’s an incredibly simple program: The site has a white page with a single task written on it (you can change it to your own tasks). Below the task is a button that says “Done”. Finish the task, click the Done button, and the next task on your list appears. When you’re done with your list, a refreshing “all done!” message appears.I thought I’d take just a minute to look at the single-tasking philosophy behind Now Do This: that is also, coincidentally, behind Zen Habits, because I think it’s a useful discussion around the idea of simple productivity
The guy behind Now Do This came up with idea while eating breakfast, and his story reminds me of myself when I had a similar single-tasking revelation a few years ago. From the Now Do This blog:
This morning, I was eating breakfast at Egg and planning out my day. I made a list of what I had to do. Neither to-do lists nor calendars work for me, so usually my day is a disorganized mess, and I don’t get important stuff done.
The idea instantly popped in my head: one task at a time. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner, because this problem has been bugging me for months, if not years!
Some of the things I love about this deceptively simple tool:
1. One task at a time. I’ve talked about this concept many times before, especially in my Zen To Done ebook. Multi-tasking leads to a lot of switching and distractions and stress. Keep things simple, focused and effective by single-tasking. Focus on one task until it’s done, then move to the next.
2. Just a few tasks. While you could theoretically load the program with a huge list of tasks, it lends itself best to just a few tasks. It’s not a complete task-management and project-management system. I actually keep my longer list of tasks in another program, but each day I pick just three tasks to do that day, and right now I’m entering those three tasks in Now Do This. Just pick a few important tasks, and focus on those.
3. Uncluttered, with no distractions. I love Now Do This for its white space and simplicity. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles to play with. There’s a link to edit the list, a done button, and that’s it. You can’t fool around with the program as a distraction from the task you’re supposed to be doing. Less distractions equals more focus and productivity.
4. Do the list until you’re done. The whole goal of Now Do This is to get to the end of the list, when you get the very satisfying “all done!” message. That’s the reward — the satisfaction of knowing you’ve finished. And if you keep the list short, it’s very possible. That’s a nice goal that you can actually achieve each day.
5. Don’t carry around the paper all the time. At the end of his introductory post on Now Do This, the creator of the program (I don’t know his name) talked about a guy he’d heard about who carried his tasks on a little piece of paper in his left hand, and didn’t put it away until the list was finished. As the Now Do This creator said, it’s a great way to get things done, “because nobody wants to hold a piece of paper all day.” Amen to that.
Of course, you don’t need to have a website to accomplish this single-tasking simple productivity. You could carry around a little sheet of paper, or an index card, or a Moleskine notebook (always my favorite). The tool you use isn’t as important as how you use it.
However, the lesson to take away from this is simple:
Keep a very short to-do list, do one thing at a time, until the list is finished. That’s all the productivity advice you need!
Washingtonpost.com: Cosmic Markdown: EPA Says Life Is Worth Less
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Someplace else, people might tell you that human life is priceless. In Washington, the federal government has appraised it like a '96 Camaro with bad brakes.
Last week, it was revealed that an Environmental Protection Agency office had lowered its official estimate of life's value, from about $8.04 million to about $7.22 million. That decision has put a spotlight on the concept of the "Value of a Statistical Life," in which the Washington bureaucracy takes on a question usually left to preachers and poets.
This value is routinely calculated by several agencies, each putting its own dollar figure on the worth of life -- not any particular person's life, just that of a generic American. The figure is then used to judge whether potentially lifesaving policy measures are really worth the cost.
A human life, based on an economic analysis grounded in observations of everyday Americans, typically turns out to be worth $5 million to $8 million -- about as much as a mega-mansion or a middle infielder.
Now, for the first time, the EPA has used this little-known process to devalue life, something that environmentalists say could set a scary precedent, making it seem that lifesaving pollution reductions are not worth the cost.
"By reducing the value of human life, which is really a devious way of cooking the books, the perceived benefits of cleaning up the air seem less," said Frank O'Donnell of the District-based group Clean Air Watch. "That has the effect of weakening the case for pollution cleanup."
To grasp the mind-bending concept of a Blue Book value on life, government officials say it is important to remember that they are not thinking about anyone specifi c. That happens in lawsuits, when plaintiffs seek to be compensated for a life lost -- and there, it can involve personal factors such as the deceased's lost income.
Here, officials say, they are trying instead to come up with the value of a typical life, without any personal information attached.
They might know, for instance, that a new cut in air pollution will save 50 lives a year -- though they don't know who those people might be. Still they want to decide whether saving them is worth the cost, officials say, and it helps to assign a dollar value to each life saved.
Read the rest of the article:
Pakistan Daily Times: Scarecrow Amy alarms the birds
A Norfolk farmer who was struggling to come up with a fearsome enough scarecrow struck on a novel, and terrifying, idea.
Marlon Brooks modelled his scarecrow on singer Amy Winehouse - and says she’s scaring off the pigeons that kept attacking his sugar beets.
With her trademark beehive and tattoos, and clutching a cigarette and bottle of booze, Marlon reckons Amy should win another award - for services to the farming industry. “The pigeons are terrified, they’re sitting up on the telephone wires too scared to come into the field which is brilliant. Every farmer needs an Amy scarecrow,” he said. “She’s the best scarecrow we’ve ever had and she’s doing a brilliant job. In fact she’s doing a better job scaring the birds than she is singing at the moment.
“I’d be happy to offer her a full time job if she needs one when the singing is over”. The 36 year old farmer from Ludham, Norfolk, came up with the idea of using an Amy scarecrow after finding his old traditional scarecrow was failing to keep the wildfowl away. After discussing it with his mates in the pub, one joked that nothing was as scary as Amy so the idea was born.
Now she’s doing such a fine job Marlon is even thinking of making a Pete Doherty and Blake Fielder Civil to go with her. “They’re pretty scary looking too though I’m not sure they’d do as good a job as Amy,” he added. ananova
Live Science: Human Speech Traced to Talking Fish
From Don Knotts' portrayle of "Mr. Limpet" to the children's favorite "Nemo" and the tuna-pitching character in the "Sorry, Charlie" commercials, we all have seen fish that can talk. But that's just fiction, right?
Well ...
Researchers say real fish can communicate with sound, too. And they say (the researchers, that is) that your speech skills and, in fact, all sound production in vertebrates can be traced back to this ability in fish. (You got your ears from fish, too.)
The new study was led by Andrew Bass (we did not make this up) of Cornell University.
The scientists mapped developing brain cells in newly hatched midshipman fish larvae and compared them to those of other species. They found that the chirp of a bird, the bark of a dog and all the other sounds that come out of animals' mouths are the products of the neural circuitry likely laid down hundreds of millions of years ago with the hums and grunts of fish.
"Fish have all the same parts of the brain that you do," Bass explained.
His team traced the development of the connection from the midshipman fish's vocal muscles to a cluster of neurons located in a compartment between the back of its brain and the front of its spinal cord. The same part of the brain in more complex vertebrates, such as humans, has a similar function, indicating that it was highly selected for during the course of evolution.
The finding is published in the July 18 issue of the journal Science.
The fish that Bass studied are interesting in their own right.
After building a nest for his potential partner, the male midshipman fish calls to nearby females by contracting his swim bladder, the air-filled sac fish use to maintain buoyancy. The sound is a hum, something like a long-winded foghorn. Female midshipman dig it, and they only approach a male's nest if he makes this call.
During midsipman mating season, houseboat owners in San Francisco Bay have complained that their homes vibrate from the humming, which sound like a high-speed motor running underwater.
By better understanding how these fish hear, the study offers new avenues to explore the causes of human deafness, the researchers say.
Want to see a video of talking fish? Click here ...
NPR: Geriatric Care for Animals
All Things Considered, July 19, 2008 · As veterinary medicine improves, zoo animals are living far beyond their normal lifespans. Andrea Seabrook visits the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., to see how keepers there care for an elderly elephant.
Click here to listen to the story ...
AP: Judge says Girl's name, Talula Does The Hula, won't do
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A family court judge in New Zealand has had enough with parents giving their children bizarre names here, and did something about it.
Just ask Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. He had her renamed.
Judge Rob Murfitt made the 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name could be changed, he said in a ruling made public Thursday. The girl was involved in a custody battle, he said.
The new name was not made public to protect the girl's privacy.
"The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child's parents have shown in choosing this name," he wrote. "It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily."
The girl had been so embarrassed at the name that she had never told her closest friends what it was. She told people to call her "K" instead, the girl's lawyer, Colleen MacLeod, told the court.
In his ruling, Murfitt cited a list of the unfortunate names.
Registration officials blocked some names, including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit, he said. But others were allowed, including Number 16 Bus Shelter "and tragically, Violence," he said.
New Zealand law does not allow names that would cause offense to a reasonable person, among other conditions, said Brian Clarke, the registrar general of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
Clarke said officials usually talked to parents who proposed unusual names to convince them about the potential for embarrassment.
Pakistan Daily Times: Poodle Driven Car
The dog’s rear legs were resting on the woman driver who was controlling the foot pedals. “We immediately signalled the car to pull over,” said one of the patrolling officers. The woman says she and her boyfriend came up with the idea of teaching their pet dog, Niu Niu, to drive after noticing the expressway was nearly empty and the weather was good.
Police gave them a warning ticket and asked them to take a more responsible attitude when driving on the expressway.
Enlightened Living: Empathy Deficit Disorder? Seriously?
By Michael J. Formica, MA, Ed.M, NCC, LPC in Enlightened Living For years, the DSM has been criticized as a codification of human behavior that has been given too much credence as a measure of dysfunction. Like Freud-speak, Shakespeare and the Bible, its vernacular has weedled its way so deeply into our language, consciousness and culture that its labels and categories have become almost ubiquitous. So ubiquitous in this case, in fact, that there has come to be an increasing imperative on the part of some professionals to justify the veracity of what could easily be construed as nominal observations with official sounding language. Frankly, my dismay and disappointment at finding this article on the front page of CNN.com, via Oprah.com, has left me quite uncharacteristically speechless. Although Douglas LaBier's position on empathy deficit as a social condition is not untenable, labeling a failure of relationship and communication skills driven by a lack of emotional maturity and/or failure of social intelligence -- see, now I'm doing it -- an actual disorder seems, to me at least, a questionable misapplication of language and, for that reason, somewhat beyond the pale. As I have no real comment -- read on, and draw your own conclusions. Empathy deficit disorder -- do you suffer from it? An Addendum: Upon reflection, I'd like to add (see my reply to the comment below) that the difficulty I am having with the position of empathy deficit as a disorder is that calling something that is a sweeping rend in the fabric of culture -- namely our lack of compassion and empathy (not to mention just plain old fashioned good manners) -- a disorder seems to trivialize it. Slapping a label on something so huge, to my mind, makes it less than what it is.
Chigago Tribune: Not all cute and cuddly in land of 'designer dogs,' humane society says
'Designer' offspring of purebreds are at risk of being exploited as are their owners, Humane Society says The puggles, maltepoos and labradoodles scampering along Chicago streets are bred to be cute and customizable, pet industry experts say.
But these high-priced "designer dogs" are also increasingly exploited by abusive breeders at puppy mills and unscrupulous sellers, leading to more sick puppies and unhappy owners, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
Made fashionable by celebrities like Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Simpson, hybrid puppies—the offspring of two purebreds—often go for more money than purebreds, which can range from $200 to $2,000 per dog.
Hybrid puppy breeding operations are cropping up in rural areas from Pennsylvania to Kansas, animal advocates say. But a hot spot for hybrid owners, said pet industry insider Laura Bennett, is much closer to home.
"Urban areas—the Chicagos and the New Yorks and the L.A.s and the San Franciscos"—are where wealthier clientele prefer custom-made puppies, which are often bred for non-shedding coats, compact size and friendly disposition, said Bennett, pet blogger and CEO of Embrace Pet Insurance.
But owning a designer dog can come at a price beyond the original cost.
Tracy Mattes of Woodridge fell in love with her cockapoo Jake through a cage at a Downers Grove pet shop in 2005. But by 2006, Mattes discovered her puppy had a myriad of serious and costly health problems, including severe allergies, a juvenile cataract, a digit on his paw that needed to be removed and a kneecap that popped out of place.
"His veterinarian bills are through the roof," she said.
On top of Jake's almost $700 price tag, Mattes estimates she's spent more than $6,000 in surgeries and other vet care. Three-year-old Jake takes two medications per day and requires at least once-a-month vet checkups.
Puppies bought from pet stores or Internet breeders are much more likely to have been born in a puppy mill and therefore develop health problems, said Kathleen Summers, deputy director of the society's Stop Puppy Mills campaign.
The Humane Society estimates there are about 10,000 puppy mills nationwide.
But Erika Burklow, manager at Happiness is Pets in Orland Park, disputed the assertion that pet-store puppies have been abused. Her store's owners hand-pick their puppies from private owners, keep records of genealogy and licensing, and offer warranties against certain health issues, she said.
"In general, you'll hear the vet . . . say go the pound and get yourself a mutt 'cause you're probably going to be better off with it," veterinarian Derrick Landini said.
mlpatterson@tribune.com
Telegraph.co.uk: Don't set dogs on criminals with allergies
Police dog handlers will have to consider whether criminals have allergies or a fear of dogs before conducting searches in what has been described as the latest example of "namby pamby" policing.
By Gordon RaynerGuidelines being drawn up by senior officers will tell dog handlers they should "avoid offending" people with phobias of animals when dogs are used in drug raids and other investigations.
The rules have been produced amid fears that suspects with medical conditions triggered by the presence of dogs, such as asthma, may file costly compensation claims against the police if they suffer an allergy or panic attack during a police raid.
Dog handlers have also been told to take "cultural sensitivities" into account, though reports that dogs would be required to wear specially-designed boots on their paws during searches of mosques and Muslim homes have been flatly denied.
The plans have been ridiculed in the respected force magazine Police Review, with one columnist citing it as the latest diktat from "the polite police".
The anonymous sergeant writes: "The traditional shout of 'stand still or I'll set the dog on you' will presumably have to become 'excuse me, my police dog is quite hairy and might cause alarm as he sinks his fangs into his right thigh. Is that all right with you?'
"The whole point of police dogs is to frighten people rigid, at least those who have just committed a crime and would otherwise make a clean getaway. They should have considered the mental trauma and possible allergic reaction caused by 60lbs of foaming Alsatian clamping its teeth to their extremities before embarking on their criminal escapade."
A serving dog handler, who asked not to be named, said: "I have never heard anything so ridiculous. What's next? Sparing people custody because they have a fear of enclosed spaces?
"This is just another example of namby pamby policing laid down by people who haven't been on the beat in years."
PC Mike Dermody, a former dog handler with Greater Manchester Police, was among those dismissing the need for guidelines, saying: "I have never encountered an incident where we have offended someone. If there is a person with an allergy, we will put them in one room while we search the rest of the house."
And PC David Heaps, a dog handling trainer at Derbyshire Constabulary, said dog handlers were already "mindful not to cause offence".
The controversy arose after Peter Vaughan, the Association of Chief Police Officers' adviser on dogs, said: "The draft guidelines outline a general principle that forces should consider what steps can be taken to avoid offending people during operations.
"This might include different categories of people such as those with a fear of dogs, for example or asthma sufferers who may be sensitive to dog hair."
Mr Vaughan, deputy chief constable of South Wales Police, insisted, however, that "in all operations effective policing will take primacy", meaning dog handlers would not have to take possible allergies into account when tackling violent criminals, for example.
MyFox Twin Cities: Minnesota Web Developer Puts Favre in Vikings Jersey on SI Cover
Spoof Sports Illustrated cover puts Favre in Vikings purple
by Mike Durkin
ST. CLOUD,
Cory Hollenhorst, a
“I did this as a little inter-office joke and then emailed to just a half-dozen friends and it sort of exploded all over the internet,” Hollenhorst said.
The spoof cover carries the headline “Going Out On His Own Terms,” with a pullout quote from Favre, saying, “In Minnesota, I finally feel like I’m home.”
Bloomberg.com:Porno, Beer, Bible Share MIT Economist’s Toolbox
March 13 (Bloomberg) — Behavioral economists are a fun- loving bunch, to judge from the intriguing new book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.”
One moment author Dan Ariely is observing how sexually aroused male college students answer questions; the next he’s observing how the Ten Commandments affect the propensity to cheat or watching unsuspecting taste testers happily guzzle vinegar-spiked beer.
Unconventional research methods are all in a day’s work for Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
This quirky stuff brings to mind the 2005 megahit “Freakonomics” (by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner), which mined the economic logic underlying the actions of such societal archetypes as drug dealers, real estate brokers and sumo wrestlers.
“In some sense, this is the evil twin of “Freakonomics,” Ariely, 40, told me during an interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. “Freakonomics’ showed us where there is rationality in places we don’t expect rationality. In my book, I describe many cases in which we expect people to be rational and they’re not.”
Take Ariely’s unusual experiment on sexual arousal. A group of 20-something male college students were asked to predict how they would answer a set of questions about sexual attitudes and behavior when sexually aroused. They were asked the same questions twice — first in a “cold, rational” state, and again while they were viewing pornography Web sites.
No Difference?
“If we know ourselves, then there should be no difference between those two conditions, but as the results show, we don’t really know ourselves. In a cold state, people thought they would always respect women, always use condoms and their sexual preferences were rather conservative,” Ariely said. Once they were aroused, their answers changed dramatically — a willingness to engage in risky activities replaced normal caution.
So what does this have to do with economics?
“Imagine a stockbroker, who is at a particular moment making a lot of money or losing a lot of money,” Ariely said. “He’s gripped by emotion. Is he going to make the same decision as he would in a cold, rational state?”
In another experiment, Ariely had subjects solve a set of problems and then report how many they had completed successfully. Then they received money for each correctly answered problem. When given the opportunity to cheat, people lied — just a little.
Virtuous Thoughts
Later, when subjects were asked to recall as many of the Ten Commandments as they could before reporting on their correct answers — or, alternatively, to sign a code of honor — Ariely found they stopped cheating completely.
When the subjects were given tokens that were later exchanged for money — instead of getting cash outright — they were twice as likely to cheat.
“In a sense, nothing has changed, but the domain in which they cheated is a step removed from money,” Ariely said. “It completely released people from their morality shackles and allowed them to cheat much more.”
“I am disturbed by this result because I think it’s related to why we see so much corporate cheating,” Ariely said, “why it’s easy to backdate their stock options and why business expenses are easier to cheat on than cash.”
And what about that beer? Ariely wanted to measure how people are affected by their expectations of quality.
“In one study, we gave people beer — one, called the MIT brew, had balsamic vinegar in it. It turns out, when people didn’t know there was vinegar in it, people liked it better,” Ariely said. “But if we told them up front that this beer has balsamic vinegar in it, they hated it. Their preconceptions were so powerful that they overwhelmed their experience and they experienced it as much worse.”
The Onion: 'No Values Voters' Looking To Support Most Evil Candidate
Both candidates are stepping up their efforts to attract crucial "no values" voters by abusing animals and murdering the elderly.
'No Values Voters' Looking To Support Most Evil Candidate
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wis. Humane Society to buy so-called puppy mill
and close one of the largest dog breeding facilities in the nation.
The society said Friday it will find new homes for the more than
1,100 dogs at the kennel.
Cory Smith of the Humane Society of the United States says this
may be a first-of-its-kind effort by a local humane society to deal
with so-called puppy mills.
The Wisconsin society says Wallace Havens agreed to sell the
Puppy Haven Kennel in Markesan because he plans to retire. The
society did not give a sale price.
Havens did not immediately return a message left by The
Associated Press.
American Kennel Club spokeswoman Daisy Okas says the club
suspended and fined Havens in 2006 over conditions at his kennel.
------
Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
http://www.jsonline.com
Educator Humor: Aphorisms for the 21st Century, by Noah
A long-lost ships log from Noah's Ark has been found. Some of the
ideas from the Log:
Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when I had to build the
ark.Stay fit. When you're 600 years old, someone might ask
you to do something REALLY big.Don't listen to critics -- do what has to be done.
Build on high ground.
For safety's sake, travel in pairs.
Two heads are better than one.
Speed isn't always an advantage. The cheetahs were on
board, but so were the snails.If you can't fight or flee -- float!
Take care of your animals as if they were the last ones
on earth.Don't forget that we're all in the same boat.
When the doo-doo gets really deep, don't sit there and
complain -- shovel!!!Stay below deck during the storm.
Remember that the ark was built by amateurs and the
Titanic was built by professionals.If you have to start over, have a friend by your side.
Remember that the woodpeckers INSIDE are often a bigger
threat than the storm outside.Don't miss the boat.
No matter how bleak it looks, there's always a rainbow
on the other side.
Educator Humor: Ruminations
Although I can accept talking scarecrows, lions and great wizards of
emerald cities, I find it hard to believe there is no paperwork
involved when your house lands on a witch. --Dave James
Let face facts, shall we? There is a very real possibility that this
could also be the *last* day of the rest of your life. --Dave Henry
Sometimes I think astronauts are the luckiest people on earth, but
only when they're in space. --Alan Smithee
I think it says a lot about our nation's skewed priorities that we
give the President the unbridled authority to preempt any television
program, even during prime-time. --Matt Diamond
If at first, you don't succeed, does it depress you that no one is
surprised? --Jim Lockwood
I'm glad the electric chair is the only method of capital punishment
that involves powered furniture. Just imagine being executed by an
adjustable bed. --Paul Paternoster
Whenever someone asks me what two plus two equals, I just shake my
head and laugh at them for asking such a dumb question, even though I
really don't know the answer. What gullible fools. --Will Gillespie
I think gods don't smite people anymore because people of many
different religions now live in the same town. No god wants to
accidentally smite the wrong person and get sued by another god.
--David James
Sometimes when I'm sitting in my car at a stop light, I imagine
myself as Luke Skywalker, and I close my eyes and concentrate on
using The Force. Sometimes I have to concentrate longer than others,
but I know it works, 'cause the light always turns green. --Troy
Peterson
If I had a dollar for every casino in the world, I'd probably lose it
all gambling. --Paul Bartunek
I've heard people say the electric chair is "cruel and unusual", but
I think it's a lot quicker and more humane than its predecessor, the
steam chair. --Claire Voltaire, inspired by Paul Paternoster
One day, I'm gonna finally get up enough courage to actually go
skydiving, rather than just being thrown out of the plane like last
time. --LeMel Hebert-Williams
I think a secure profession for young people is history teacher,
because in the future, there will be so much more of it to teach.
--Bill Muse
They say potato chips can be fattening. But then again, so is eating
fat, and you don't see me eating fat. So get off my back about the
potato chips, man. --Brian Auten