Monday, November 26, 2007

10 Disasters

Popular Mechanics listed the 10 worst disasters of the last 101 years - and delve into whether we are more prepared to face them now as compared to then. The disasters listed are:

1906 - San Francisco Earthquake Fire
1910 - The Big Burn (of Idaho and Montana)
1918 - Spanish Flu Pandemic
1925 - Tri-State (Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana) Tornado
1938 - The New England Hurricane
1964 - The Great Alaskan Earthquake
1974 - Super Tornado Outbreak (13 states in USA)
1980 - Mount St. Helen Eruption
1993 - Storm of the Century (eastern US)
2005 - Hurricane Katrina (with largest damage in New Orleans, Louisiana)

I don't want his help.

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other man pulls out his cell phone and calls emergency services.

He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator in a calm, soothing voice replies: "Take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard.

Back on the phone, the hunter says, "OK, now what?"

Monday, November 5, 2007

Motivate Thyself

"Lord make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light, and where there is sadness, joy."

"O divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

St. Francis of Assissi

If

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling