Declarations

The Road Less Downloaded

“New Yorkers not only benefit from a… discount in a state with one of the steepest insurance rates in the U.S., but they can do so with ease and comfort simply by logging on from their computer any time they like.”

—Gary Alexander, founder of Improv Aware, a company that has been approved to offer an online defensive driving course New York. Drivers who pass the course qualify for a 10 percent, three-year insurance discount and receive a four-point reduction on their driving record.

Anxious Chimp

“It’s understood by everyone that Xanax is medication intended to be used by people, not animals.”

—Paul Slager, a catastrophic injury attorney in Stamford, Conn., commenting on revelations that a 200-pound chimpanzee, which mauled a woman in March, had the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in its system. Investigators haven’t determined whether the drug played a role in the attack. The victim’s family is suing the chimp’s owner for $50 million.

AIG’s Stowe-away

“Whenever you lose the deep pockets behind you, it’s concerning.”

—Ken Biedermann, general manager of the Green Mountain Inn in Stowe, Vermont, where insurance giant AIG is.selling Stowe Mountain Ski Resort. The sale comes as AIG tries to sell assets that aren’t part of its core insurance business.

Fire In The Sky

“It was almost like seismic,” he told The (Wilmington) News Journal newspaper. “My house was rocked.”

—John Cartier of New Castle County, Delaware, who said he could see the flames from his home at least three miles away when a Sunoco refinery along the Delaware-Pennsylvania border exploded last month.

10 Years

“Unless there’s some Einstein out there that knows something none of us do, the prevailing thought among the researchers is that a good 24-hour forecast of intensity change is a goal, a stretch goal, that might be attainable (in 10 years).”

—National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read telling Reuters that hurricane forecasters have cut their errors in predicting the track of hurricanes but are probably a decade away from being able to foresee a storm quickly revving up from a mild Category 1 to a destructive Category 5.