Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Not all lawyers are spineless wimps

There are probably pretty close to as many lawyer jokes out there as blonde jokes. I'll bet you think twice about telling a lawyer joke to this Texas lawyer though. Last week the news reported on a man who had crashed in a ravine and was rescued two days later. It was reported that he was pretty well banged up and it took him two days to crawl out of the ravine. The Star Telegram spoke with this man today and here is his awesome story:

When Jerry Wood finally awoke, he was in the back seat of his mangled car at the bottom of a brushy ravine.

A stick, 3 feet long and as thick as his pinkie, was lodged in the bottom of his throat.

"I began to try and pull on it and get it out," Wood recalled, his blue eyes shiny and moist. "When I realized I could not dislodge it, that is when I began to panic."

Wood leaned forward and pulled out the pocketknife he kept in his console. Short of breath, he desperately tried to cut the stick. When that didn't work, the 49-year-old defense attorney did the unimaginable.

"I stuck the knife in my throat underneath the stick and was dislodging it," Wood said. "Eventually, the stick came out and the knife went in. A lot of blood came out all over everywhere.

"At that point, I thought that was the end. I thought I had cut my throat, slashed my throat. ... I sat there in the car and bled quite a bit. ... After a few minutes, I was actually still breathing and exhaling through the hole I had made in my throat."...
OK, so this is not a post about firearms or freedom. But it is an interesting story about one mans decision to do what needed to be done to survive. How many people would still be at the bottom of that ravine with a stick in their throat, waiting for someone to rescue them? Read the whole article here.

4 comments:

Joubert said...

Not all lawyers are evil. I've known a few decent ones. That story was most inspiring.

Anonymous said...

Test

John R said...

Patrick, I should have worked harder on the title, was hoping it would catch interest.

Hey mudkitty, your test worked.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Schlambaugh, a senior lecturer at the Chemical Engineering Department,University of Oklahoma, is known for posing questions on final exams like: "Why do airplanes fly?"

In May a few years ago, the "Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer " exam paper contained the question:

"Is Hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof."

Most students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or similar. One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we must postulate that if souls exist, they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls also must have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it does not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for souls entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some religions say that if you
are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than
one of these religions, and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to
Hell. With the birth and death rates what they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in the volume of Hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of the souls and volume needs to stay constant.

[Answer 1] So, if Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature in Hell willincrease until all Hell breaks loose.

[Answer 2] Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase in souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure
will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate (given to me by Teresa Banyan during freshman year) that "it'll be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and taking into account that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then [Answer 2] cannot be correct;
...... thus, Hell is exothermic.

The student got the only A.