ELSEWHERE AND OVERHEARD
Overheard
“If a woman has something implanted permanently, it might as well do something useful.”
BT Laboratories’ analyst Ian Pearson on computer chips that would equip one boob with an MP3 player and the other with a person’s whole music collection. (Ananova.com)
“As one judge put it, if a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of super-sized McDonald’s products is unhealthy and could result in weight gain, it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses.”
James Sensenbrenner, chairman of Judiciary Committee, on what has been called “The Cheeseburger Bill,” which prevents people from suing restaurants for their obesity. (Guardian Unlimited, UK)
“You’ve got to admire the guy. It’s Daniel in the lion’s den. But I can’t believe he teaches a college biology class.”
Robert Slade, a retiree interested in science who is attending the landmark trial of Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, whose definition of “theory” is so broad it would also include astrology. (New Scientist)
“How do you have sex in weightlessness? And there’s a lack of privacy – often they’re monitoring pulse rate and temperature. I don’t know how that would be handled.”
Carol Rinkleib Ellison, an Oakland, Calif., psychologist specialising in sexuality and intimacy on a panel of researchers recommending studies be conducted on sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts that otherwise might derail missions to Mars. (New Scientist
Elsewhere
Angela Genusa is a writer, poet and artist whose work has been published online at McSweeneys, Yankee Pot Roast, Opium Magazine, The Black Table, and many places in print. Her father is a physicist and her mother, a chemistry major. She thinks Steve Martin solved all of the mysteries of the universe when he wrote about "Schrödinger's Cat," "Wittgenstein's Banana," "Apollo's Non-Apple Non-Strudel," and "Chef Boyardee's Bungee Cord" (which begins, "A bungee cord is hooked at one end to a neutrino, while the other end is hooked to a vibraphone...").
