from Innumeracy:

A man who travels a lot was concerned about the possibility of a bomb on board his plane. He determined the probablity of this, found it to be low but not low enough for him, so now he always travels with a bomb in his suitcase. He reasons that the probability of two bombs being on board would be infinitesimal.

Some Wild Numbers:

it takes only about eleven and a half days for a million seconds to tick away, whereas almost thirty-two years are required for a billion seconds to pass...Modern Homo sapiens is probably less than 10 trillion seconds old and the subsequent complete disappearance of the Neanderthal version of early Homo sapiens occurred only a trillion or so seconds ago. Agriculture's been here for approximately 300 billion seconds (ten thousand years), writing for about 150 billion seconds, and rock music has been around for only about two billion seconds.

damn. how's that for some mother-fucking perspective?

when i was a little girl living in macon i used to think that there were monsters living under my bed. my fear of them, fortunately, was short-lived. after about a week of not touching the floor around my bed at night it occured to me that if i sang to them they would be so charmed by my little girl voice that they would not be able to bring themselves to tear my throat out in the middle of the night. and, imagine this, it worked.

then, when i was eight years old our school had its first production of sleeping beauty. i had a crush on prince charming, and stayed up at night learning every word to every song so that when sleeping beauty got the flu on opening night i could jump up on stage and directly into prince charming's ten year old arms. for what must have been a month i would sit up in my bed and sing and sing "i know you i walked with you once upon a dream" until my little body couldn't take it anymore.

sometimes i wonder how much time i actually spent singing to myself in the dark. a decade and a half later i still have monsters under my bed, these less easily charmed. i would sing to them but they know the songs already, they jump in howling after the first note. i'm not so bold with prince charming either. if only you could stand in the middle of a forest sing to the squirrels and the man you love would tumble over himself returning love for you. as it is, i only sing to the squirrels when i could not possibly be overheard, by prince charming or the wicked witch or the post man or anyone else.

this doesn't always work though. today i was singing to the squirrels and there was a man quietly sitting in his parked car. that's pretty he said, and just as soon as he spoke the squirrels ran away and so did i.

things i learned yesterday:

1. all gold is yellow, will eventually become yellow. a vs diamond contains very slight visible imperfections. diamond color is indicated by letter (starting with d for the whitest diamond). you're in the clear until about k and then you're dealing with a colored stone. s,t,u,v stuff are when diamonds get expensively colored, like j. lo's pink diamond or a canary yellow one. cut refers to much more than shape.
2. jewlers work on commission. they tell you these things because they expect you will buy from them. if you have no intention of buying and are just a curious girl who's got a spare hour and zero monies to play with, they will hate you. they will spit on you and refuse to shine you.
3. some girls will actually let perfect strangers touch their breasts.
4. don't worry please don't worry how many times do i have to say it there's no way not to be who you are and where
5. tits are much harder to fit than ass. no matter how flat or how big the ass.
6. reporters for abc news are not readily using the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" anymore unless to talk about what america doesn't have. we have now regressed to "weapons...ah...just weapons."
7. it is possible to plead poverty and get a discount if you look sad enough.
8. yesterday tomorrow same thing
9. never promise a woman anything nor let her know what you're going to give her. that's the only way to manage them. always keep them guessing. if you cant think of any other way to surprise them, give them a bust in the jaw.
10. here comes the sun.