Thursday, January 3, 2013

Arrested

Here are some stats, facts and quotes which have arrested my attention.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? -T.S. Eliot, to which Thomas Huxley may have replied, To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen.

Russia is almost twice the size of the U.S. yet Bangladesh which is smaller than Iowa has more people (152 million) to Russia’s (142 million). Hard to believe.

The driest place on Earth is not the Sahara but Antarctica… One section hasn’t had ice, rain or snow for two million years.

It is in the moral nature of man, where the sublime is, and the resources of astonishment are. -  Emerson

The New York megalopolis which was number two in the world population 35 years ago will drop out of the top ten by 2050.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo in west-central Africa is larger than all of Western Europe.

There are more cell phones in Africa than there are people in all North America and they are made in China…..the cell phones, that is.

Of the ten most poison snakes in the world eight of them are in Australia. This is not the only reason I will probably not go there.

Lines I wish I had written to Peggy: If I were a giraffe, I would love you in silence, gazing down at you from over the wire fencing, as melancholy as a dockyard crane, I would love you with the awkward love of the very tall, and, thoughtfully chewing a leaf as if it were gum, ………, I would slowly lower my neck on the pulleys of my tendons in order, tenderly, tremulously, to nuzzle your breasts with my head. -Lobo Antunes

Over the past century Democrats have controlled the House of Representatives 70 of those years. My guess is that the GOP gerrymandered the districts for the other 30%.

Coyotes are the only animal in North America which have proliferated since Europeans came over. Leave it to those tricksters. They alone know whose woods these are.

Joy in spite of everything is yanking the bell rope despite physical affliction — it has become my Quasi Motto. - Tom Robbins 

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