Yale epidemiology professor Durland Fish, on a new target of interest as a cause in the spread of Lyme disease, contracted by humans from the deer ticks - Fish and other researchers having ruled out raccoons, skunks, opossums, chipmunks, and catbirds as animals in which Lyme spirochetes hide: "We've long thought that mice were the primary reservoir of infection . . . (but) robins turn out to be really good reservoirs. There is research demonstrating that almost all ticks feeding on (robins) get infected."
XXX
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of finance to French King Louis XIV: "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing."
XXX
David Frum, author and columnist for the Canadian newspaper, National Post: "Many Americans see Canada as a kind of utopian alternative to the United States: a North American democracy with socialized medicine, same-sex marriage, empty prisons, strict gun laws, and no troops in Iraq. What they don't see is how precarious political support for this alternative utopia has become among Canadian voters in recent years."
XXX
Jane Fonda, in her book, "My Life So Far," on being photographed in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War: "That two-minute lapse of sanity will haunt me until I die. . . . I realize that it's not just (a picture of) a U.S. citizen laughing and clapping on a (North) Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun: I am Henry Fonda's privileged daughter who appears to be thumbing my nose at the country that has provided (me with so many) privileges."
XXX
Vermont writer Geoffrey Norman, on the latest in gardeners: "Gardening snobs are something new. These are the people who must have the best goatskin gloves - and make sure that you know it. A pure statement of the impulse is contained in this gem from style.com: 'If you're serious about breaking new ground, there are chic tools aplenty, like Hermes leather-handled trowels and shears, which look particularly lovely with Burberry's new flowered apron. And while Ugg has not yet come out with gardening shoes, Birkenstock's urethene clogs will protect your pedicure.' . . . Actually, if you call it 'dirt,' you are pretty much announcing, right there, that you are a gardening stiff. It is 'soil.' Always."