"..." 18

"We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us each year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build or breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-a-ate men you hear of!"

—Henry David Thoreau, "Walking"

Presidential endorsements

I was reading an article about Ted Kennedy's recent endorsement of Barack Obama and somehow found way my to a list of celebrity endorsements for the Democratic candidates.

As I read through it I was thinking, oh, Toni Morrison, great; Matt Damon and George Clooney are activists, so they're not too bad; and so on. But when I got to Senator Clinton's list, here's what I found:


At least musicians are sometimes involved in social issues (I'll give Fitty the benefit of the doubt)... but what qualifications does Jenna have to endorse a candidate? 'Oh, well I have huge fake tits and have had sex with thousands of people. I pretty much know what I'm talking about when it comes to assessing the viability of presidential candidates.'

....

1. US Elections - Times Online - WBLG Democratic Endorsements

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i. Umm...

"..." 17

"The limit of language is shown by its being impossible to describe the fact which corresponds to (is the translation of) a sentence, without simply repeating the sentence."

—LW

Peanut butta

Monty Python Latin lesson

"..." 16

"Next to 'And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness. . . . And this was the most vexing of all,' he noted, 'HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.'"

—from Into the Wild by John Krakauer
(Inside quotation from Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak)

"..." 15

"When a sufficient number of specialists are assembled on a college faculty, the subject of which each knows only a small part of is said to be covered, and the academic department to which they all belong is regarded as fully manned. In ancient Ireland, if legend is to be trusted, there was a tower so high that it took two persons to see the top of it. One would begin at the bottom and look up as far as sight could reach, the other would begin where the first left off, and see the rest of the way."

—John Erskine

Mischevious poppy seeds

I was watching an episode of MythBusters the other day where they tested an urban myth suggesting that eating baked goods with poppy seeds before a drug test would cause one to yield positive results for heroin use... and to my surprise it was true—eating a poppy seed bagel or two can actually make you yield false positives for up to three days.

I found a random article about this that I'll include here:

Opiates (morphine and codeine) can be detected in urine for at least 48 hours after one eats food containing poppy seeds. As little as a single bagel covered with poppy seeds could produce a false positive test for these drugs.

In 1990, a veteran St. Louis police officer was suspended for four months because his drug test showed positive for morphine after he'd eaten four poppy seed bagels the day before the urine sample was taken. He was reinstated with back pay after it was determined that poppy seeds and not drug use had produced those results. His case was especially puzzling to the department because the officer in question had a steady work record and demonstrated no indications of any problems before this incident was flagged during a random drug screen. The department performed an experiment by having another officer eat four poppy seed bagels and take a drug test. He, too, tested positive for morphine, confirming the poppy seed effect theory.

In 1999, a New Jersey prison guard was fired for the same reason: a poppy seed bagel he'd had produced a positive drug test. His case was subjected to further examination, and he was reinstated seven months later.

In 1997, a woman in Florida was awarded $859,000 in her lawsuit against Bankers Insurance Group because it had withdrawn a lucrative job offer to her on the basis of her poppy seed-influenced drug screen results.

In 1994, a Baltimore woman lost her chance for a job with an inner-city community health center because of her failed drug test, which was once again the result of the nefarious poppy seeds. In this case, the woman's fondness for lean corned beef and provolone on a poppy seed bagel cost her the job she wanted, because this prospective employer would not allow her a second urinalysis nor believe that her morning nosh had caused those suspicious test results.

Because of the possibility of poppy seeds' skewing drug test results, federal prison rules prohibit inmates from eating this ingestible. Moreover, inmates on furlough are enjoined from eating baked goods that incorporate poppy seeds because of the effect it has on their drug tests. (Without the poppy seed prohibition, anyone using opium derivatives recreationally could attribute his positive drug test results to a fondness for these seeds. The prohibition removes that possibility.)

1. Urban Legend Reference Pages: Poppy Seed Drug Test Results

The most important issue for voters in 2008

1. Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters