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In the old Persian story, a vizier renowned for his wisdom is asked which is more useful, the Sun or the Moon. "The Moon," he answers, "because the Sun shines in daytime, when it’s light out anyway."

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We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens... The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking for fresh nourishment.

― Johannes Kepler

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Best Stand-up Comedian: Henny Youngman (see also Most Unusual Stand-up Comedian and Worst Stand-up Comedian). p.68

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Best Cinematic Special Effects: The El Rey Theater, in Manteca, California, burst into flames shortly after a showing of The Towering Inferno. The fire, of undetermined origin, gutted the theater before firemen could put it out. pp.318-319

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Most Unusual Campus Fad: United States college students are reproducing wildly, according to recent reports. Since 1974, photostating of bodily organs and extremities has become fashionable on several East Coast college campuses, and at Princeton's Firestone Library, one undergraduate couple had themselves illicitly photostated by a coin-operated Xerox machine while they made love. Copies of the "pornostats" sold for fifteen dollars each. p.413

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Most Unusual Theft: A native of Fergus, Ontario, was busted by police for stealing four and a half quarts of bull semen. He told reporters, "I am not what they call a kinky." p.400

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Worst Cure for the Common Cold: Sniffles got you down? One way to unclog a stuffed head, according to nineteenth-century Indiana folk remedy, is to inhale deeply nine times from a dirty sock. (Incidentally, catching a weasel and barehandedly squeezing it to death was considered a sure cure for arthritis of the fingers.) p.440

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Worst Office Building: The world's worst office building was also, until recently, the tallest -- the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center, 110 stories of steel-and-concrete mediocrity on Manhattan's nether tip. Besides blighting the skyline and affronting the eye, the World Trade Center is also a wretched place to work. "When I approach the building, I just don't want to go in there," says one employee. Says another, "Sometimes I just walk out, intending to get out for an hour for lunch, and can't make myself come back."

The Center's horrors are many -- inexplicably sealed mail chutes, hopelessly snarled telephone lines, centrally controlled office lighting that can be controlled after hours only by means of a written request submitted at least a day in advance -- but the building's denizens reserve a special place in their spleens for the elevators. Plummeting downward so fast that their walls shake audibly, they break down frequently, spilling over with humanity during rush hours. "Sometimes I feel like a lemming -- or a salmon swimming upstream," says a New York State employee who works at the building. "If I can't leave at 4:45 I wait until a quarter past five or I walk down stairs rather than be squeezed into the elevator." A woman whose office is on the eighty-second floor describes the noontime trip to the cafeteria: "I have to take a local elevator to the seventy-eighth floor, then an express to the first floor, then an express to the forty-fourth, then an escalator to the forty-third, where I get a lousy meal."

Many workers have complained of the pyschosomatic ailments that are directly traceable to the Center -- one Manhattan physician has treated five such patients. Leonard Levin, a staff member of the New York Racing Board, whose office is in the Center, says, "There is one wonderful thing about the World Trade Center. It feels sooooooooo good when you get home at night!" pp. 278-279

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Brubaker started in shorts. First he climbed into long-handled woolen underwear, then into a skintight g-suit, which applied pressure on vital parts of his body so that when he pulled out of steep dives the enormous drag of gravity, the g's, would not suck all the blood from his head. He covered the g-suit with inch-thick quilted underwear, two pairs of short bulky socks and a third which reached his knees. Then came the rough part, for even though the watertight rubber poopy suit had already saved his life once, getting into it was always murder.

Since the neck band had to be tight to keep out freezing water and since no zippers were allowed, he had to get into the poopy suit in a special way. A long slash ran from the left shoulder across the chest and down to the right hip and he climbed in through this hole, pushing his feet down into the massive boots and his head up through the impossibly tight neck band. Then he grabbed the two flaps of extra rubber along the slash and rolled them together into a bulky, watertight seal which fattened him like a watermelon. As soon as he closed this final seal he began to sweat like a pig and every minute he wore the poopy suit he was smelly and wet and uncomfortable. From time to time he pulled the neck band out and blew fresh air inside to get some relief. That's why the ready room was kept so cold, to keep the pilots from sweating, but all the same they sweated. pp. 70-71

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