Earlier this election season, consultant Dan Geary told the New York Times that the process of trying to maintain the puny servers behind Joseph Lieberman's website was "like trying to drink from a fire hose." John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, used the same watery simile to describe to the Washington Post the outsize attention his presidential candidate is getting from the press. So politicians and silly clichés go together like peas and carrots—we already knew that. What sort of other things can be compared to drinking from a fire hose? Gelf investigates.

Running Google.org, Google' s non-profit arm (BusinessWeek, which spells it "firehose").

Crowdsourcing (Corante).

Being a symphony conductor (The Oregonian).

Deciding which type of chocolate to eat (New York Times).

Fact-checking the New York Times (Slate, quoting from the collection of corrections compiled in Kill Duck Before Serving).

Watching stuff on YouTube (Los AngelesTimes Magazine; Dan Neil describes the service as a "video palimpsest of the eternal Now").

Listening in on all of America's phone conversations (Senator Patrick Leahy on CNN Late Edition).

Attending a Real Estate Wealth Expo (Chicago Tribune; Donald Trump gets paid more than $1 million per appearance).