Archive for October, 2005

Classroom Quotes

Tuesday, October 4th, 2005

–During a discussion on a bill proposing mandatory evacuations of people and animals during hurricanes:

“What about livestock? Will they be evacuated too?”
“WHAT?!”
“Like, cows.”
“OHH! I thought you meant, like, corn.”

–During a discussion on a bill proposing mandatory minimum sentences for drunk drivers who kill someone:

“If you’re driving drunk at night and hit a pedestrian, nobody would know.”
“If you hit a fat guy while driving a little car, somebody would probably notice.”

–During a discussion of Middle Eastern hygiene with a guest speaker (who was there to talk about proper respect for the flag, actually. Don’t ask.):

“Anybody know what a bidet is?”
“Yeah! It shoots water up your butt!”

–During a brief simulation of the order of Presidential succession:

“The Speaker of the House should be killed by a rampaging horde of babies!”

–During a discussion of the roles and duties of the President:

“So the President is basically just the head poncho!”

Overheard In Class

Tuesday, October 4th, 2005

“Who’s Johnny Cash?”
“Oh, he’s like the Tupac of country music.”

DC Protest And Rabbit Fever

Sunday, October 2nd, 2005

I find it interesting reading the report on increased levels of Francisella tularensis bacteria (which causes ‘rabbit fever’ in Washington DC the day of a major protest rally. It doesn’t sound very interesting (maybe all anti-war protesters like rabbits?) until you take a closer look at the disease that the bacteria cause: tularemia. The American Medical Association has some interesting information about tularemia as a biological weapon. If this increase in the presence of this bacteria were to have caused illness, we would already have seen the first signs of it, so it seems that we may have dodged a natural or artificial bullet on this one. The report from the the Indianapolis Star refers to the bacteria as being picked up by air sensors, so at least some aresolization has occurred. I find the speculation that this aresolization was due to dust being kicked up by the protest to be plausible (it has been VERY dry in this region lately), but I would have expected the air sensors to have picked up on this sort of thing before with protests and marches and such in Washington. Will we ever know for sure what this was all about? Probably not.

More Weird Happenings at Ship

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

Yet another odd event has happened in Shippensburg. I missed this by only about 25 minutes — I had left for Greencastle from downtown Shippensburg at about 6.50 Friday morning. I’m thinking that the theory about the collapsing limestone structure under the town is possible, particularly as the water level is low and there would be less water under such structures to support them. Any number of other possibilities exist, however, including a minor earthquake (Shippensburg lies on a mostly dormant fault-line). You would think anything with enough power to shake most of the town would show up on seismographs though.
In other news, after doing a search on the hostage situation in K-Mart in Shippensburg a number of years back, I have discovered there doesn’t seem to be anything about it on the internet. Given the time to mess around with it, I may try to rip and encode what news coverage we have on tape of it. Keep a look out.