Quotes of the day

A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming.--Patrick Lynch

I thought of bringing something in that actually was pornographic. I could say to you, then, `This is porno, this [body scanner image] is not.' I'll recognize it when I see it. ... We're not in the risk elimination business. The only way you can eliminate car accidents from happening is by not driving. OK, that's not acceptable. The only way you can eliminate the risk of planes blowing up is nobody flies. ... I want to use the latest intelligence to inform our judgments and actions, and use the best technology when we don't have intelligence. So there's a huge gap there. So here are the threats, here are capabilities, here are gaps. So how do we fill those gaps? And right now we do it with a somewhat blunt approach.--John Pistole, TSA chief

It is my personal belief that they pulled me aside because they thought I was attractive... My boyfriend sailed through with no problems, which is rather ironic in that he fits the stereotypical 'look' of a terrorist when his beard has grown a bit. After the search, I noticed that the male agent who had pulled me out of line was smiling and whispering with two other agents and glancing at me. I was outraged. This could, and I'm sure does, happen to other women. It isn't right to hide behind the veil of security and safety in order to take advantage of women, or even men for that matter, so that you can see them naked. It's a misuse of power and authority, and as much a personal violation as a Peeping Tom. The difference is that Peeping Toms can have charges pressed against them. ... One of my best friends was flying to New York for business, and at some point during the flight, she stood up to retrieve something from her bag in the overhead compartment. When she reached into her bag, something cut her hand. She looked into her bag and discovered a pair of 6-inch gardening shears which she had forgotten to remove prior to packing her bag. The bag, and my friend, had passed through security with no issues. How is this full-body scan supposed to be making us safer if 6-inch gardening shears can still make it aboard domestic flights undetected?--Donna D'Errico, model and TV actress

Because you caught my eye, and they didn’t.--TSA Agent, according to D'Errico

It's not clear why men's behaviors might improve after marriage, he noted. Married men may spend more time with their spouses than their friends, King said, and bad behaviors such as delinquency and binge drinking tend to be group activities. In addition, married men "have more to lose" if they're caught doing illegal activities, and may care what their spouses think. It's also not clear why men with more antisocial behaviors may not marry in the first place, [Alexandra] Burt said. They are probably not the most eligible bachelors, she noted. "You may not be looking to settle down with someone who's prone to aggression, theft, and other things." And for men with these tendencies, marriage may not be so appealing, she added.--Alison McCook

Interesting that the lamestream media, mindlessly mouthing the mantra of Sarah Palin's lack of intellectual curiosity never thought to ask John Edwards what he was reading.--Sissy Willis

Fat, apparently, is not so much a feminist issue as a sexist one. Sauce for the goose? Scandal. Sauce for the gander? No problem.--Alistair Macauley

Look what happens before we run out for every drive, and who are all the guys standing over by the heater? It’s all offensive linemen. They’re not wearing sleeves, but believe me, that little headgear that I’m wearing, that’s OK with them.--Tom Brady

What made Don Meredith one of a kind … well, when he retired from football he was hired to become a broadcaster for this new thing called Monday Night Football. That was 1970. He had no broadcasting training. He was not exactly known for his detailed study or his intense work ethic. Nobody really knew how his Texas twang would play on a medium then known for the deep and crack-free voices of professional announcers.  How did it go? Well, I’d say this, and I doubt too many people would disagree: No color commentator — not in the long history of professional football on television — ever made professional football games as much fun as Dandy Don Meredith.  How did he do it? You don’t think there are television executives wondering that very thing? They have tried everything. They hired a comedian to be in the booth. They hired a funny newspaper columnist to be in the booth. They hired stars to sing the football openers. They designed some animated robot to dance after commercials. They hired every funny player and coach they could find. They have brought in guests, they have brought in impersonators, they have worked up insane graphics, they have worked up a million angles. But they have never quite recaptured when Don Meredith had when he was in the booth with Howard Cosell.  Maybe Meredith was just an unusual combination — a truly great football player who didn’t take football all that seriously. He brought authority and irreverence. He’d sing in the booth, of course. Turn out the lights! The party’s over! Well, he was always singing. He’d crack jokes that were always just a little bit rascally, jokes you had to be a certain age to understand (“Fair Hooker,” he said, repeating the name of the Cleveland Browns receiver. “I haven’t met one yet.”). As one person who worked closely with Meredith said, he was just one of those people who had life beat. Howard Cosell, with his big words and big mind and hyper-sensitivity, never stood a chance. ... Cosell would often say that he liked Meredith — “DAYN-dy DON!” — because he thought Meredith’s rustic charm played well off his own lawyerly bombast. But it really was the other way around. Meredith was the Fonz. Cosell was Potsie. Sure, Cosell was one of a kind in his own way, too, and his great strength was that he made the games matter. But Meredith made the games fun. And fun is what games were meant to be. ... In the 25 years that have gone by since he walked away from broadcasting, television scouts have tried desperately to find someone for the booth with some of Meredith’s spirit, someone who could broadcast not only the passion of football, not only the intensity of football, not only the tactics of football … but also the joy.--Joe Posnanski

I spent most of my adult life chasing bigger paychecks, loftier job titles and flashier possessions. These were my goals not because I chose them, but because I never considered that any other goals existed. My friends and family seemed to want these things, and I assumed that I wanted them, too.
When I accepted the job at Starbucks, it struck me that I probably would never again have money, titles or expensive possessions — yet one evening at Starbucks, I realized that I was as happy as I had ever been in my life. This “low-level” job gave me supportive bosses and coworkers, lots of human interaction and enough money to live a simple life. These were my real priorities, and I had never even known it. Instead, I had wasted most of my life pursuing other people’s goals.--Michael Gates Gill

... rates of churchgoing have fallen much faster among less-educated Americans than they have among college graduates, to the point where there’s now a strongly positive correlation between education and church attendance — one that didn’t exist in the ’70s. (The recent trend toward secularization, it turns out, may have been driven more by community college dropouts than by Richard Dawkins-reading Ph.Ds.)--Ross Douthat

And there you have it. Two nice normal people in a terrible mess not because they’re terrible people but because of the properties of systems. Now here’s the miracle. While this is very hard for two people to sort out on their own – which explains why we feel so stuck so often in our own relationships – it’s surprisingly easy for a good therapist who understands systems to sort this out, and you can do it without any blame. ... Change the context, change the assumptions, and you change the self. Do that with people in a relationship, and you change the relationship. --Mira Kirshenbaum