Possible For Beer

We got the idea from looking at other life provisions that run through pipes.  Water pipes, electricity pipes, cable distribution, etc.  So why wouldn't that be possible for beer?

-- Xavier Vanneste, director of De Halve Maan, or The Half Moon, a Belgian brewery, on the world's first beer pipeline, in Bruges, New York Times, 17 September 2016

The Same Way

Optimists and pessimists die the same way.  They just live differently.  I prefer to live as an optimist.

-- Shimon Peres (2 August 1923 - 28 September 2016), Polish-born Israeli statesman, as quoted in "Serving 60 Years to Life", Newsweek Europe (12 December 2005)

Ahead Of My Time

I haven't worried about an email being hacked since I've never sent one.  I'm, like, ahead of my time.

-- Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on the queasiness in Washington as yet another victim, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, fell prey to seeing his personal musings distributed on the Internet and highlighted in news reports, New York Times, 16 September 2016

A Million Pianos

It sounded like a million pianos just dropped.

-- Unidentified young girl near the scene of a terrorist bombing in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, 19 September 2016

Arab Dictator 2.0

He's a different kind of bloodthirsty dictator, the kind who shops online on his iPad. He's sort of Arab dictator 2.0.

-- Nadim Houry, of Human Rights Watch, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, New York Times, 18 September 2016

Worn Thin

Once again the crust of civilization has worn thin, and beneath can be heard the muttering of primeval fires.  Once again many accepted principles of government have been overthrown, and the world has become a laboratory where immature and feverish minds experiment with unknown forces.  Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other.     

--John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875 - 1940), Scottish novelist, poet, and politician, Augustus (1937)

Mother Teresa

I think, perhaps, we may have some difficulty in calling her St. Teresa: Her holiness is so near to us, so tender and so fruitful, that we continue to spontaneously call her Mother Teresa.

-- Pope Francis, in off-the-cuff remarks during his homily at the canonization ceremony elevating Mother Teresa to sainthood, New York Times, 5 September 2016

To Boldly Go

Space: the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

-- Canadian actor William Shatner (1931-), in the voice-over introduction to the television series Star Trek in its debut episode, 8 September 1966

We Will Rock You

It's just a dot of light, but it's a very special dot of light.

-- Queen guitarist Brian May, describing the asteroid (official designation: Asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury) named for his late friend and bandmate, Freddie Mercury


The celestial body was discovered in the same year Mercury died at age 45.  It was dedicated to the singer in honor of what would have been his 70th birthday, in a move that May announced in a video shown at a party for Mercury's 5 September 2016 birthday, in Montreux, Switzerland.

American Women

American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived on the face of the earth. We can do anything we want to do.

-- Phyllis Schlafly (15 August 1924 - 5 September 2016), American conservative political activist and Equal Rights Amendment opponent, Cultural Conservatism and the Religious Right, C-SPAN.org (4 April 2012)

Greenland Shark

It's no fish tale: The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet, a new study says.

The largest shark in the study, at 16.5 feet (five meters) in length, was estimated to be approximately 392 years old.  Nielsen says there is some uncertainty around that estimate.  He and his colleagues determined with 95 percent certainty that the shark was between 272 and 512 years old, and it was most likely around 390.

-- National Geographic, "272-Year-Old Shark Is Longest-Lived Vertebrate on Earth", by Mary Bates, 11 August 2016