March 11, 2014: Rupert Murdoch, Douglas Adams, the Twilight Zone...

March 11: this day in history (from Wikipedia)

1702 – "The Daily Courant, England's first national daily newspaper is published for the first time." The next day, people started complaining about the lowering of journalistic standards.

1824 – "The United States Department of War creates the Bureau of Indian Affairs." Which should have been called, "Bureau of Indian Wars."

2011 – "An earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude strikes 130 km (81 mi) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people. This event also triggered the second largest nuclear accident in history, and one of only two events to be classified as a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale." I'll leave the jokes here to Gilbert Gottfried.

Notable quotes (from BrainyQuote unless otherwise sourced)

"One man's wage increase is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson, UK's Labour Prime Minister in the 1960's and 70's (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995)

"Bring on your tear gas, bring on your grenades, your new supplies of Mace, your state troopers and even your national guards. But let the record show we ain't going to be turned around."

"I have suffered as much as Martin Luther King. Only I didn't get the bullet. And I would have taken the bullet if I could have."

- Ralph Abernathy (March 11, 1926 – April 17, 1990)

"Look, the whole world wants to modernize, and when you look to what they mean by modernizing, they mean Americanize. Would a modern Greek prefer to live in Orange County than Piraeus? Yes. Absolutely."

"The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow."

- Rupert Murdoch (born 11 March 1931)

"The questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do." - Sam Donaldson (born March 11, 1934
)
"What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?" - Antonin Scalia (born March 11, 1936)

"It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." - Douglas Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001)

Song of the Day

Happy 66th to George Kooymans of Golden Earring: