1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
3607
3608
3609
3610
3611
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 08581d9 | Brave and anal: the ideal space explorer. Though you don't find "anal" on any of those lists of recommended astronaut attributes. NASA doesn't really use words like anal. Unless they have to." | Mary Roach | ||
| 29c2396 | He will be lowered into a vat of liquid nitrogen and frozen. From here he will progress to the second chamber, where either ultrasound waves or mechanical vibration will be used to break his easily shattered self* into small pieces, more or less the size of ground chuck. The pieces, still frozen, will then be freeze-dried and used as compost for a memorial tree or shrub, either in a churchyard memorial park or in the family's yard. | Mary Roach | ||
| 2d89ab8 | You mean like a small silicone breast implant?" I wasn't actually thinking that, but sure." | Mary Roach | ||
| 10cfd01 | didn't bother them that the corpses would arrive at their doors, to quote Ruth Richardson, "compressed into boxes, packed in sawdust,...trussed up in sacks, roped up like hams..." So similar in their treatment were the dead to ordinary items of commerce that every now and then boxes would be mixed up in transit. James Moores Ball, author of The Sack-'Em-Up Men, tells the tale of the flummoxed anatomist who opened a crate delivered to his la.. | Mary Roach | ||
| dba4f9a | Anne Marie's beauty and style belie a down-and-dirty education in the particulars of practical AI (artificial insemination). She has miked a boar of his prodigious ejaculate--over two hundred milliliters (a cup), as compared to a man's three milliliters--and she has done it with her hand. For, unlike stallions and bulls, boars don't cotton to artificial vaginas. (in part, because their penis, like their tail, is corkscrewed.) AI techs must .. | Mary Roach | ||
| 7b7f195 | If you're dying of thirst in the desert, drinking your urine won't help you. The proteins and salts are by that point so concentrated that the body needs to pull fluid from the tissues to dilute them, which puts you back where you began, only worse, because now you are saddled with the memory of drinking your own murky, stinking pee. Rhabdomyolysis | Mary Roach | ||
| a37f4a3 | Wallen, like Masters and Johnson, thinks it's possible that a majority of the so-called vaginal orgasms being had during intercourse are in reality clitoral orgasms. But unlike Masters and Johnson, he doesn't suggest that most women are having them easily. He believes, like Bonaparte, that the women having them--the paraclitoridiennes of the world--are an anatomically distinct group whose sexual response is different from that of the majori.. | Mary Roach | ||
| 58cbf31 | A few words in defense of military scientists. I agree that squad leaders are in the best position to know what and how much their men and women need to bring on a given mission. But you want those squad leaders to be armed with knowledge, and not all knowledge comes from experience. Sometimes it comes from a pogue at USUHS who's been investigating the specific and potentially deadly consequences of a bodybuilding supplement. Or an army phy.. | science | Mary Roach | |
| 66df7c2 | Unlike real tissue, human tissue simulant doesn't snap back: The cavity remains, allowing ballistics types to judge, and preserve a record of, a bullet's performance. Plus, you don't need to autopsy a block of human tissue simulant; because it's clear, you just walk up to it after you've shot it and take a look at the damage. Following which, you can take it home, eat it, and enjoy stronger, healthier nails in thirty days. | Mary Roach | ||
| a580318 | Human remains dogs are distinct from the dogs that search for escaped felons and the dogs that search for whole cadavers. They are trained to alert their owners when they detect the specific scents of decomposed human tissue. They can pinpoint the location of a corpse at the bottom of a lake by sniffing the water's surface for the gases and fats that float up from the rotting remains. They can detect the lingering scent molecules of a decom.. | Mary Roach | ||
| af4cece | Penguins can shut down digestion by lowering the temperature inside their stomach to the point where the gastric juices are no longer active. The stomach becomes a kind of cooler to carry home the fish they've caught for their young. | Mary Roach | ||
| 03d2d70 | The pay worked out to about $1,000 a year--some five to ten times the earnings of the average unskilled laborer--with summers off. The job was immoral, and ugly to be sure, but probably less unpleasant than it sounds. | Mary Roach | ||
| d3738ad | On top of its other charms, the maggot breathes through its ass. It | Mary Roach | ||
| 6befe50 | Humanitarian Benefits of Cadaver Research on Injury Prevention," Albert King calculated that vehicle safety improvements that have come about as a result of cadaver research have saved an estimated 8,500 lives each year since 1987. For every cadaver that rode the crash sleds to test three-point seat belts, 61 lives per year have been saved. For every cadaver that took an air bag in the face, 147 people per year survive otherwise fatal head-.. | Mary Roach | ||
| 2e512a1 | If you don't have a pair of cadaver shoes, you're not doing enough research. | Mary Roach | ||
| 5a40a84 | In a 1995 Journal of Trauma article entitled "Humanitarian Benefits of Cadaver Research on Injury Prevention," Albert King calculated that vehicle safety improvements that have come about as a result of cadaver research have saved an estimated 8,500 lives each year since 1987. For every cadaver that rode the crash sleds to test three-point seat belts, 61 lives per year have been saved. For every cadaver that took an air bag in the face, 147.. | Mary Roach | ||
| 0724b74 | The driving aesthetic of military style is uniformity. Whence the word uniform. From first inspection to Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers look like those around them: same hat, same boots, identical white grave marker. They are discouraged from looking unique, because that would encourage them to feel unique, to feel like an individual. The problem with individuals is that they think for themselves and of themselves, rather than for an.. | Mary Roach | ||
| 218b583 | Constipation ran Presley's life. Even his famous motto TCB-- 'Taking Care of Business'-- sounds like a reference to bathroom matters. | science song humor | Mary Roach | |
| 0880073 | If you don't have a pair of cadaver shoes, you're not doing enough research." In" | Mary Roach | ||
| 428ff6a | If you found this book in the New Age section of your local bookstore, it was grossly misshelved, and you should put it down at once. If you found it while browsing Gardening, or Boats and Ships, it was also misshelved, but you might enjoy it anyway | Mary Roach | ||
| 8de533a | Not all that surprisingly, Holmes began to go insane, spending his final years in and out of institutions. At seventy, he was placing ads in mortuary trade journals for a rubber-coated canvas body removal bag that could, he suggested, double as a sleeping bag. Shortly before he died, Holmes is said to have requested that he not be embalmed, though whether this was a function of sanity or insanity was never made clear. | Mary Roach | ||
| 7be903c | It was some time before this happened, for he had got a very fine hand indeed. I suppose it wasn't often that the boys of Market Snodsbury Grammar School came across a man public-spirited enough to call their head master a silly ass, and they showed their appreciation in no uncertain manner. Gussie may have been one over the eight, but as far as the majority of those present were concerned he was sitting on top of the world. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 65b35e7 | fine figure of a young fellow as far northwards as the neck, but above that solid concrete. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 6a48191 | A pictorial record of his hopes and despairs would have looked like a fever chart. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 6133abb | It can't be done, old thing. Sorry, but it's out of the question. I couldn't go through all that again." "Not for me?" "Not for a dozen more like you." "I never thought," said Bingo sorrowfully, "to hear those words from Bertie Wooster!" "Well, you've heard them now," I said. "Paste them in your hat." "Bertie, we were at school together." "It wasn't my fault." | jeeves | P G Wodehouse | |
| f152cd8 | A little," panted Mrs. Peagrim, who, though she danced often and vigorously, was never in the best of condition, owing to her habit of neutralizing the beneficent effects of exercise by surreptitious candy-eating. "I'm a little out of breath." -- | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 757bdc8 | He put the good old cup of tea softly on the table by my bed, and I took a refreshing sip. Just right, as usual. Not too hot, not too sweet, not to weak, not too strong, not too much milk, and not a drop spilled in the saucer. A most amazing cove, Jeeves. So dashed competent in every respect. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 67ed4f3 | They walked on in silence. Katie's heart was beating with a rapidity that forbade speech. Nothing like this very direct young man had ever happened to her before. She had grown so accustomed to regarding herself as something too insignificant and unattractive for the notice of the lordly male that she was overwhelmed. She had a vague feeling that there was a mistake somewhere. It surely could not be she who was proving so alluring to this f.. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 029a083 | Watching you at work, I was reminded of the young lady of Natchez, whose clothes were all tatters and patches. In alluding to which, she would say, "Well, Ah itch, and wherever ah itches, Ah scratches." | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 323faf2 | Mathematicians among my readers do not need to be informed that ". . ." is the algebraical sign representing a blend of wheeze, croak, and hiccough." | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 924dcd0 | How long Archibald slept he could not have said. He woke some hours later with a vague feeling that a thunderstorm of unusual violence had broken out in his immediate neighborhood. But this, he realized as the mists of slumber cleared away, was an error. The noise which had disturbed him was not thunder but the sound of someone snoring. Snoring like the dickens. The walls seemed to be vibrating like the deck of an ocean liner.... | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 138b791 | moment blighted Harold discovered that training meant knocking off pastry, taking exercise, and keeping away from the cigarettes, he was all against it, and it was only by unceasing vigilance that we managed to keep him in any shape at all. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| fd7b114 | In private life, Lottie Blossom tended to substitute for wistfulness and pathos a sort of "Passed-For-Adults-Only" joviality which expressed itself outwardly in a brilliant and challenging smile, and inwardly and spiritually in her practice of keeping alligators in wickerwork baskets and asking unsuspecting strangers to lift the lid." -- | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| d8a30bf | from his random observations after reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens) In the Old Curiosity Shop I discovered that in the character of Dick Swiveller, Dickens provided P.G. Wodehouse with pretty much the whole of his oeuvre. In David Copperfield, David's bosses Spenlow and Jorkins are what must be the earliest fictional representations of good cop/bad cop. | literature | Nick Hornby | |
| 92d2b99 | The first thing to do,' said Psmith, 'is to ascertain that such a place as Clapham Common really exists. One has heard of it, of course, but has its existence ever been proved? I think not. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 6a870fc | Come on," he said. "Bring the poker." I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it." | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 4eebde1 | Jeeves," I said, "those spats." "Yes, sir?" "You really dislike them?" "Intensely, sir." "You don't think time might induce you to change your views?" "No, sir." | jeeves | P G Wodehouse | |
| d853ad3 | He sallied forth, having told all those bally lies with the clear, blue, pop-eyed gaze of a young child. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 97fef69 | There you see two typical members of the class which has down-trodden the poor for centuries. Idlers! Non-producers! Look at the tall thin one with the face like a motor-mascot. Has he ever done an honest day's work in his life? No! A prowler, a trifler, and a blood-sucker! And I bet he still owes his tailor for those trousers!" He seemed to me to be verging on the personal, and I didn't think a lot of it. Old Bittlesham, on the other hand,.. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 78aba8d | Once in every few publishing seasons there is an Event. For no apparent reason, the great heart of the Public gives a startled jump, and the public's great purse is emptied to secure copies of some novel which has stolen into the world without advance advertising and whose only claim to recognition is that The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette has stated in a two-line review that it is 'readable'. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 38d8183 | She gave the impression of smiling with difficulty, possibly for fear of getting wrinkles. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 550ccc5 | Sippy had described them as England's premier warts, and it looked to me as if he might be about right. Professor Pringle was a thinnish, baldish, dyspeptic-lookingish cove with an eye like a haddock, while Mrs Pringle's aspect was that of one who had had bad news round about the year 1900 and never really got over it. And I was just staggering under the impact of these two when I was introduced to a couple of ancient females with shawls al.. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| e8a52fc | You never know what is waiting for you around the corner. You start the day with the fairest prospects, and before nightfall everything is as rocky and ding-basted as stig tossed full of doodlegammon. | P.G. Wodehouse | ||
| 7fb22d4 | What you want," I said, "is to look out for a chance and save her from drowning." "I can't swim." That was Freddie Bullivant all over. A dear old chap in a thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean." | P.G. Wodehouse |