Today is TAKE OUR DAUGHTERS & SONS TO WORK DAY. Again, working at home, I do this all the time! Which is why my work is occasionally interrupted by showings of Winnie-the-Pooh...

Some people deserve to die in bed.
So there I was, wishing that the latest episode of Alias had not just ended (It's never quite enough.), when the emergency alarm on our floor sounded. I quickly opened the door and stuck my head into the corridor to check if it was time to evacuate with husband, daughter, and CPU, but it turned out to be a false alarm. The thing that irked was that one of my neighbors, who'd also done the foolish headfirst safety check, complained, "Ang ingay naman ng alarm." (The alarm is so loud.)


I'm sorry, but this strikes me as a criminally stupid thing to say. What, should the alarm be subdued and subtle so we can all fry in our beds if there's a fire or something? Rested but roasted, talk about your screwed-up priorities. Honestly, there are days when I could make a case for the eradication of the entire human race. Leave the planet for some specie with more brains, like the orangutans.


in the news today
A Nigerian landlord claims not to remember biting off his tenant's nose during a brawl at the landlord's house. Businessman Chukwu Christian said he only defended himself against the 24-year-old tenant's physical attacks. "People begged him to stop the fight, but he refused," Chukwu relates. "I didn't bite him; he wounded me. I don't know how he managed to get his own injury."


Not the kind of thing you forget, one would think.

TRIVIA QUIZ
Who was the first fictional detective?


answer to yesterday's question
A typical lightning bolt is two to four inches wide and two miles long. How anyone actually measures this, I really don't know, but I do know that lightning occurs when areas of positively-charged energy come close to areas of negatively-charged energy. This happens often during thunderstorms, when electrical discharges pass from negatively-charged cloud bottoms to the positively charged ground below.


I have no idea if Marc got this right, because I'm too lazy to convert from metric to English. But Alex made me laugh, the fool.