“This is laughable…they make weapons to kill people and it’s utterly ridiculous to suggest they are environmentally friendly.”
Symon Hill of Campaign Against Arms Trade, on news that BAE Systems is designing a “green” range of arms, including lead-free bullets and reduced-toxicity rockets (The Sunday Times, London, 17 September)
“Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off.”
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Weilie Hu of Guangzhou General Hospital, China, on having to remove the first-ever successfully transplanted penis from a man who had lost his in an accident (The Guardian, London, 18 September)
“We don’t see this disease in India, Africa, China. We only see it in technologically advanced countries.”
Lee Riley, professor of infectious disease and epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, on how highly centralised food processing in the US led to the outbreak of E. coli in 21 states last week (The San Francisco Chronicle, 19 September)
“The thing is to stop wasting 120 million tons of sediment [each year].”
Denise Reed of the University of New Orleans on the recommendation by scientists that the muddy Mississippi river be diverted away from the Gulf of Mexico towards the sediment-starved marshes of Louisiana (The New York Times, 19 September)
“I’ve got monkeys in my pants.”
US Fish and Wildlife Service special agent Ho Truong on what Robert Cusack, a smuggler of endangered animals, said when asked if he had anything to declare. Cusack had flea-scratching pygmy monkeys in his underwear (Los Angeles Times, 19 September)
