Whilst skimming the newspapers as I do while I eat lunch, a few quotes just caught my eye and made me go “Huh?”
- “It’s a terrible thing for a tree. … A tree doesn’t want to be kept out of ground — it’s like keeping a fish out of water. It would rather be cut in a living room, sucking up water and making kids happy.”
This is from a CNN article about what is more green: buying a fake tree that is shipped from far away and reused over and over vs.buying a cut (or living tree) grown elsewhere every year but shipped in? The best answer, of course, is to use a tree in your yard, or a locally-grown cut tree. But what caught my eye was that a tree would rather be cut, or that a tree wants to make kids happy. Shades of “The Giving Tree”.
- “While the KC-135 needs replacing, the (tanker) is only a pawn on the international chessboard of commercial aviation.”
This is from an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch about Airbus potentially moving production to the US. Airbus is considering this because they might win the KC-135 replacement contract, in which they are partnering with EADS and NG, and may be building the A330-based tanker in Alabama. They are looking into larger US production because of the weakness of the dollar. Although most of the company’s revenue comes in dollars (by international agreement, aircraft are priced in US$), it must pay most expenses in euros. The difference costs Airbus $1 billion in profit for every 10 cents the dollars drops, and it’s fallen 16 cents this year. What caught my eye was the similarity of the quote to the famous line from “Blazing Saddles,” “Mongo only pawn… in game of life.”
- “Tollway customers will have easy access to air at no charge for the next 20 years at least”
Well, that’s a relief. Air, as we all know, is a prerequisite to safe driving — it is hard to control the wheel when you’re gasping for breath. Actually, the quote comes from a Chicago Tribune article about ExxonMobil replacing the “pay” air compressors they had along the Illinois Tollway with “free” air compressors. The decision came two days after the Tribune’s Getting Around column reported that the machines — charging 75 cents for a few minutes of air — violated Exxon Mobil’s lease agreement with the tollway. The devices will be converted within a week. What caught my eye, however, is how the quote could easily be taken out of context, and seem quite silly (or a new profit center).
