CENAT - Natural Hazards Competence Centre - Research coordination body. Aims to effect interdisciplinary research on the causes of natural hazards, the processes involved, their effects on people and objects, and on appropriate means of protection.
PLANAT - Swiss National Platform Natural Hazards - Independent federal advisory commission aiming to improve preventation of natural hazards. Objectives, past events, actions undertaken, and projects. Reports on floods and avalanches.
When he first ran for office, he appealed to the voters: "I never stole anything in my life. All I ask
is a chance."
-- Anon. If you are going through hell, keep going.
- Sir Winston Churchill "Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." (Edger Allen Poe) Grow old with me! The best is yet to be!
-- Robert Browning Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible.
-- Margaret Mead Natural Hazards Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987 Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
-- Jerry Garcia I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.
-- Alexandre Dumas pere Natural Hazards
Luck is the residue of design.
- Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team "I couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself." (Dr. Ferdinand Porsche) Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
- Jean-Paul Sartre No one finds life worth living; he must make it worth living.
-- Anon. The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.
- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live Natural Hazards The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may
well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr For a male and female to live continuously together is...biologically speaking, an extremely
unnatural condition.
-- Robert Briffault A man should be taller, older, heavier, uglier, and hoarser than his wife.
-- Edgar Watson Howe Natural Hazards
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt "Everything in my life has been determined by mistakes." (Gene Wilder) The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I
have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
-- George Bernard Shaw Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld, Maxims, 1665 To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance
- Oscar Wilde Natural Hazards "The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked. 'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'" (Lewi Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
-- George Bernard Shaw "I'm basically an optimist in life but this doesn't prevent me from deducing as a scientist that we are probably doomed." (Vladimir Chaloupka, physicist, University of Washington, regarding mankind's Natural Hazards
The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church.
-- G. K. Chesterton I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in
charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.
-- Hen You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little
plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.
-- Ha "The man who never made a mistake never made anything." (Derek Longdon, Tongariro Power Development, Turangi, New Zealand) With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
-- Abraham Lincoln Natural Hazards "Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde) There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as
though everything is a miracle.
-- Albert Einstein "Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throat." (Martin H. Fischer) Natural Hazards
The fate of love is that it always seems too little or too much.
-- Anonymous I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. we are for the most part
more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
-- Thoreau You can pay attention to the fact, in which case you'll probably become a mathematician, or you
can ignore it, in which case you'll probably become a physicist.
-- Len Evans, professor, Northwestern Marital Freedom: The liberty that allows a husband to do exactly that which his wife pleases.
-- Anonymous "Truth lies not only in a dream, but in many dreams." (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian poet, novelist and filmmaker) Natural Hazards Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.
- Elbert Hubbard There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.
-- George Crane "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method." (Herman Melville, Moby Dick) Natural Hazards
When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole nearby.
-- Nigerian Proverb Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
-- Oscar Wilde You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they
do.
-- Olin Miller Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley
Temple could do it at the age of four.
-- Katharine Hepburn The philosophy exam was a piece of cake -- which was a bit of a surprise, actually, because I
was expecting some questions on a sheet of paper.
-- Smith & Jones Natural Hazards Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
-- Paul Boese Insurance is like marriage. You pay, pay, pay, and you never get anything back.
-- Al Bundy, character on "Married with Children," U.S. television show We are the echo of the future.
-- W. S. Merwin Natural Hazards
"To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may
well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr It ain't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.
-- Will Rogers Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
-- H. L. Mencken Why bother with marriage? Just find a woman you hate and buy her a house. Natural Hazards An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her. -- Agatha Christie Dogma is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency.
- Lewis Perelman Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
-- George Washington Natural Hazards
"My daughter has never forgiven me. for what, I don't know, because for years, she won't speak to me. She blackens my name in the press and makes me think abortion is an excellent idea." (Klaus Kinsk Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
-- Helen Keller God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at
the same time.
- Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
- J. Paul Getty A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
- Lao-Tzu Natural Hazards May you grow so rich your widow's second husband never has to worry about a living, God forbid. Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.
-- Baskins If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the
faculty of laughter.
-- Joseph Addison Natural Hazards
My wife ran off with my best friend last week. I miss him! Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
-- H. L. Mencken We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.
-- Buck Henry If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.
-- Tryon Edwards Silence is argument carried out by other means.
- ErnestoCheGuevara Natural Hazards The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-- B. F. Skinner >From error to error one discovers the entire truth.
-- Sigmund Freud blah "If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves." (Thomas Alva Edison) Natural Hazards
May you never leave your marriage alive. We trained hard - but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were
reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing,
and History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
-- Winston Churchill Here's a toast to your new bride who has everything a girl could want in her life, except for good
taste in men!
-- Wedding Toast Honor's a thing too subtle for wisdom; if honor lie in eating, he's right honorable.
-- Beaumont, Francis Natural Hazards There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.
-- George Crane Luck is the residue of design.
- Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say -- unless you insist on saying it.
-- Anonymous Natural Hazards
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
-- Albert Einstein "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." (George Orwell) "People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say." (Kurt Vonnegut) Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteeen.
-- Albert Einstein And life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be.
-- Grandma Moses Natural Hazards Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't
take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates...
-- Anonymous Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a losttradition.
-- Jacques Barzun Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau Natural Hazards
