misc quotes

i do love the british language. From the BBC:

For when he is not climbing mountains, Mr Gariano has a much more mundane day job - tending the pot plants at the KMI's laboratories.

Peter Mayle via metafilter via Richard W Bruner in Budapest Sun, on the downside of using pigs to hunt truffles:

"The pig is not content to wag his tail and point when he has discovered a truffle," wrote Mayle. "He wants to eat it. In fact, he is desperate to eat it. And you cannot reason with a pig on the brink of gastronomic ecstasy. He is not easily distracted, nor is he of a size you can fend off with one hand while you rescue the truffle. There he is, as big as a small tractor, rigid with porcine determination and refusing to be budged."

From Howard Rheingold's article in Wired on Amish use of technology:

"We don't stop with asking what a tool does. We ask about what kind of people we become when we use it."