鈥淲e鈥檙e all keeping warm from the heat of our computers.鈥�
Masanori Shishido speaking for the Japanese Ministry of Environment, which turned off the heating in its buildings last week to encourage the rest of Japan to meet its Kyoto protocol targets (Associated Press, 24 February)
鈥淚t鈥檚 totally gross, totally graphic, you know it鈥檚 going to be bad, but all you can do is watch it go down.鈥�
Advertisement
Dillon Foley, 18, on TV ads in Montana that aim to stop methamphetamine abuse, which state officials say is responsible for putting 80 per cent of prisoners behind bars (The New York Times, 26 February)
鈥淭he explosion wiped out the language. That鈥檚 how big it was.鈥�
Volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson on Mount Tambora鈥檚 eruption on 10 April 1815, which wiped out the people of Sumbawa Island in Indonesia. His team has uncovered traces of the lost society, including charred bones and pottery shards (San Francisco Chronicle, 27 February)
鈥淚f I were to hit my wife, no one would have trouble seeing that as an assault. When a child does the same thing to a sibling, the exact same act will be construed as a squabble.鈥�
David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire on growing evidence that sibling warfare can turn nasty (The New York Times, 28 February)
鈥淵ou put your ID card in your pocket, we put it in a tooth.鈥�
Patrick Thevissen, a forensic odontologist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, on a tooth microchip carrying personal information that can be read even after death (The Guardian, London, 28 February)