randomness | Amusing quote of the day. (Reply)

This is a very portable set, though you'd be sad if you scuffed up the nice wooden box while carrying it around. Amusingly, it came with a page entirely in Russian, with several official-looking stamps and signatures. According to our resident Russian, it is a certification that the set conforms to all regulations and is legal to ship by any means including by aircraft. This is, for lack of a better description, probably a good example of what a case of vodka will buy you at a government ministry in Russia. Especially in powdered form, quite a few of these elements may not be shipped by air at all, and may not even be sent by cargo ship if they are together as part of the same shipment (on the theory that they might react with each other). Of course those regulations are silly when applied to such tiny quantities, so we see that there is a positive side to a government run on lubrication.

(From How to Get Your Own Element Collection)