Things I did not learn in school

Picture by Sigfried Rhinehart

This morning, I began thinking of some information that had recently come my way. Some of it was interesting, some informative and some was funny. So I'm making a little list:

- The company Arrhythmia Research Technology pays irregular dividends.

- A popular (not with me) method of consuming alcohol is by using an enema. The booze is absorbed more quickly than it is when drunk. One caution, a man gave himself a massive vodka enema and passed out during the course of absorption. Of course, the enema continued to work, eventually killing the @ssh0le by alcohol poisoning. (source: "The Darwin Awards" by Wendy Northcutt)

- The Marines are adding a minigun in a pod (called all quadrant gun) underneath the fusilage of their V22 Osprey for use in Afghanistan. The weapon can fire 360 degrees around the ship. It is fired by a crew member using what looks like a Play Station controller. Deadly video game! (source: Aviation Week 11JAN2010)

- Average alcohol consumption for an American was about 11 gallons per year (GPY) (average for all alcoholic beverages sold divided by persons alive over the age of 15). This compares to 8 (GPY) for WWII, 4.5 during prohibition and 29 GPY at the end of the American revolutionary war. (source: American History vol.43, No.5, DEC 08)

- You make a lemon "vinagrette" by whisking two tablespoons of lemon juice with four to six tablespoons of olive oil.

- Last year, a concerted cyber attack on the offices of the Dalai Lama, some embassies and foreign ministries. Canadians discovered that the operation, called Ghost Net collected information from computers and turned on cameras, allowing the operators to see and hear what was going on in the room where the computer was. The Canadians traced Ghost Net as far as servers in the People's Republic of China. (source: The Dispatch, vol.31, no.12, December 2009)

Don't you just love random information?

Horrible memory

A friend was telling me and some others about the trip he took to New York, NY in September of 2001. Yes, he was there when the Trade Center was hit. In fact, he was near enough to go try to help.

When he arrived, people were still fleeing the buildings. The thing he remembers most graphically was women running from the danger. Most of them had been wearing high heels and lost their shoes. The shattered glass from the windows was in their path. He recalls that their feet were bleeding.

That mental picture has stayed with me ever since our conversation. I remind myself that shoes are the most important thing to wear in any disaster, whether it be earthquake, tornado, fire or explosion. And I keep imagining those torn feet. The image is so horrid that I had to share it, in the hope that if I talked about it, the horror would lessen.