Last words of the real-life Bat Masterson, found "in his typewriter in the column he had been writing":
There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way.
J. B. S. Haldane, first line of "A mathematical theory of natural and artificial selection" (1924, Trans Camb Phil Soc 23:19-41):
A satisfactory theory of natural selection must be quantitative.
The Cowardly Lion costume in The Wizard of Oz film was made from real lions.
Gretchen, on the real estate listings for the tiny tax haven, Principality of Sealand, and Romania's Bran Castle, linked to Vlad the Impaler.
If I were Bill Gates, I could buy both and move Dracula's castle to my own island!
Pandas, of course. This article about the exceptional 2006 panda birth rate (217) is acccompanied by a photo of a half dozen flopping panda cubs in a pile. So CUUUUTE!
Bleaaah!
The fertility of captive giant pandas is even lower because they do not move much, experts said.
I mean, these animals are bent on extinction! Get this:
The animals' diet consists almost entirely of bamboo, but they will eat only about 20 of the 200 or so species that grow in Georgia. What type they like also varies by the time of year. Sometimes the pandas will eat nothing but one variety for a week, then refuse to eat it anymore. (Sound familiar, parents?)
Clearly, this is why parents with large families die younger! Their children are picky as pandas.
Ann Althouse, deep in the comments wrapping a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest metaphor:
Academia is, apparently, a mad house, and this blog is my bus ride and fishing expedition.
Tom Kirkwood, in "Ageing: Too fast by mistake", Nature 444:1015:
Contrary to general expectation, human life expectancy in developed countries has not bumped into a ceiling, but continues to increase by around two years per decade -- or five hours per day.
G. Ledyard Stebbins, on p. 241 of "The role of hybridization in evolution," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103:231-251, 1959:
We inevitably reach the conclusion, therefore, that introgressive genotypes not only persist indefinitely, but that also, like polyploids, they can migrate far beyond the areas in which they originated, and can actually survive after the non-introgressed parental species has become extinct.
(quoted in our own paper, "Dynamics of adaptive introgression from archaic to modern humans," available as free full text):
In honor of the season, I ran across Radar Magazine's list of 10 dangerous toys from years gone by.
Lawn darts were massive weighted spears. You threw them. They stuck where they landed. If they happened to land in your skull, well, then you should have moved.
Some of the best parts are the comments, where people who actually had the toys have been sounding off. The folks who actually had the "Atomic Energy Lab" as kids are the best!
Here's more:
Some kids had belt buckles. Others had cap guns. Only the lucky ones had the Bat Masterson Derringer Belt Gun, a two-in-one combo that took care of all your pants-securing needs with the option every ten-year-old dreams of: the ability to shoot caps at groin level.
The whole thing is in questionable taste, which might be just what you need on a December morning.
New York Times corrections column, on July 17, 1969 (a day after the Apollo 11 launch), referring to a 1920 column that claimed Robert Goddard's rockets could not possibly operate in space:
Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.
(from Wikipedia)
Also, from the original 1920 unsigned editorial, this nugget of wisdom:
To claim that it would be [able to operate in a vacuum] is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics, and only Dr. Einstein and his chosen dozen, so few and fit, are licensed to do that.
