Date: 9 Jul 93 18:21:24 PDT (Friday) Subject: Life A.2 ---------------------------------------------------- The following are selections that I've pulled from a collection Mike Sierra has been building over the years [sierra@ora.com] -------------------------- [[[[[[ Attached TEXT file follows ]]]]]] The following news items and quotations were taken from The American Spectator, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Harper's, Heterodoxy, Insight, The National Review, The New Republic, The New York Times, Penthouse, Reason, Spy, Time, TV Guide, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Monthly, and more "year in review" issues than I care to mention. -------------------------- A New York City tour company advertised a special $40 bus tour of neighborhoods "that tourists do not get to see." The tour includes the South Bronx, described as a "burnout wilderness." -------------------------- Panhandlers in Manhattan include one man who asks for $200 for a wine-tasting course, another who stuffs whatever money she is given into her Gucci handbag, and one who returns any offering under $5. -------------------------- An article in the Fresno Bee concerning the Massachusetts budget crisis referred to new taxes that might help put the state "back in the African-American." -------------------------- In Los Angeles, at least three cops who witnessed the notorious videotaped beating of Rodney King have filed for worker's compensation, claiming that they suffered anxiety and stress. -------------------------- The only complete version of the newly-drafted Columbian constitution was wiped out by a computer error in Bogota. -------------------------- A new turn in the outing craze. The Bald Urban Liberation Brigade of New York City is posting fliers of celebrities who secretly wear toupees. -------------------------- Jacque Evans sued the Georgia Department of Human Resources and prison guard Robert Neal for physical injuries sustained during his attempted escape from a juvenile detention facility. Evans, 16 at the time, was detained for automobile theft and a previous escape. According to the suit, he was allowed to move freely about "despite the fact that he was a designated escape risk who was supposed to be confined in a restricted area." He was also "negligently permitted" to wear street clothes, making it easier to escape. When Evans and another youth ran for the fence, Neal chased Evans and grabbed his foot as he prepared to jump from the top of the fence. Evans fell head first to the ground and was paralyzed by the fall. Evans's lawyer says Evans had escaped from Neal before, and that Evans "thought [Neal] would just let him go and catch him later... He had no idea he was in danger" when he climbed the fence. -------------------------- Union rules dictate that firemen be present on diesel locomotives. On a division of the Norfolk & Western, crews get an extra day's pay every time they turn a locomotive around. Each freight crewman earns a day's pay for every 100 miles traveled, although freights can cover 400 miles in an eight-hour period. -------------------------- Ireland set out to crack down on alcohol-related traffic accidents. A spokesman for the Automobile Association in Dublin said it's time to stop blaming accidents on motorists: "In many cases the pedestrian is to blame. Often, he is lying prone in the roadway." -------------------------- The Sony Corporation invited ragtime pianist Eubie Blake to a ceremony to receive its First Legendary Innovator Award, saying that his attendance would be a tremendously "uplifting experience." Blake had been dead for eight years. -------------------------- A customer walked into an Amoco station in West Dundee, Illinois, at 3:30 a.m. on December 6, 1991 and bought a pair of gloves. Minutes later, a West Dundee police officer walked in and told the proprietor that he'd violated a local ordinance forbidding the sale of anything except automotive products between 2 and 5 a.m. The Amoco station could be fined up to $500. The customer had tried to buy the gloves at the Shell station across the street, but when the clerk there refused to sell them, the customer went to the Amoco instead and bought the gloves there. The clerk at the Shell station then called the police to report a violation of the zoning ordinance. -------------------------- Three animal rights groups have named a dolphin as a plaintiff in their lawsuit against the New England Aquarium in Boston. -------------------------- The trial of S&L kingpin Charles Keating revealed that his company once spent $1,948 on Silly String for an office Christmas party. -------------------------- The Oregon State Legislature set aside $9.7 million for construction of an archive to house the Oregon Constitution and other important historical documents in a climate-controlled, fire resistant environment. The project was later audited after loopholes in the purchasing and procurement guidelines led to extravagant spending: carpeting in the conference room that cost $127 a square yard, rugs for the entrance that cost $225 a square yard, $550,000 worth of Canadian maple paneling, travertine limestone floors that cost $180 a square yard, four lamp fixtures at $5,000 each, and ten walnut reading-room tables at $4,250 each. The building is across the street from Parish Middle School, which holds two temporary classes in its front yard. -------------------------- According to the Los Angeles Times, every Sunday night a team of lawyers from the prestigious Washington law firm Williams & Connally flies to the Florida headquarters of The National Enquirer and reads every word of the upcoming issue. -------------------------- The Harvard Divinity School placed recycling bins around campus to collect paper. The bins were originally labeled "white" and "colored." Someone anonymously relabeled the latter bins "paper of color." The school then relabeled all the bins "bleached paper" and "dyed paper." -------------------------- In October of 1991, Los Angeles physician Gershon Hepner pleaded guilty to 25 felony fraud and theft charges, admitting to stealing up to $8 million through false insurance claims. Now Hepner receives $266 a week in state disability payments for the stress he says he suffered as a result of getting caught. -------------------------- The city of Somerville, Massachusetts, distributes food from the Federal Surplus Food Program to senior citizen centers, and gives whatever is left to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. After city officials learned that extra food was missing, it hired a private investigator who found that four employees of the Somerville Public Works Department put 22 pounds of butter into a car. The city considered this to be stealing and fired the two main culprits. Another retired, and the fourth was suspended for five days. The Somerville Municipal Employee's Union filed a grievance against the city, saying department supervisors had taken food in the past and that the city did not have a written policy saying the practice was unacceptable. An arbiter found in favor of the two fired workers, and ordered the city to rehire them and pay them back wages, about $25,000 each. Somerville's mayor, Michael Capuano, sent a letter to city workers clarifying the city's policy. He wrote, "Simply put -- if you steal, you will be fired. I apologize to you for having to state such an obvious policy to all employees... I trust you, but an arbiter has ruled that the law says I must take this action if the City is going to take action against the very few thieves among us. Thank you for your understanding." -------------------------- Joe Comerico of Norfolk, Virginia, was summoned to the General District Court, where he was fingerprinted. His crime? Two years earlier, two wild geese decided they liked his yard and moved into a ditch beside it. There they raised a family, pushing the total to eight. An officer from the Department of Animal Protection spotted the geese and told Comerico that it was illegal to have more than one domestic fowl within the city limits. Comerico insisted that the geese were not domesticated and that he did not own them, though he did put up a fence around the nesting area to keep the people away. Even after calling the Botanical Gardens and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Comerico was still stuck with the geese. "I didn't mean to be rude or anything," he says, "but when the police officers fingerprinted me, I couldn't stop laughing." Comerico's lawyer advised him not to do anything. "If the city wants them, let them come and get them." -------------------------- George Morrison, an operating engineer supervisor in New York City, received $400,000 a year because his union contract specified he be paid overtime rates whether he was at work or not. Morrison, a supervisor at the Battery Park City housing development project in lower Manhattan, was entitled to receive unlimited overtime pay beyond his eight-hour workday if any union members worked overtime. Because a supervisor did not have to be on the site, Morrison was paid around the clock during times he was in Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, and South Carolina. Without overtime, his earnings would normally have been a mere $60,000 per year. -------------------------- Just as the New York Transit Authority is preparing to cut back rush-hour subway service, close auxiliary token booths, and pare major bus routes in an effort to cut costs, it has set aside $10 million to replace the windows in its Brooklyn headquarters. That's about $7.1 million more than the authority will save by making the service cuts. There are approximately 1,100 windows in the massive Brooklyn building, making the cost per window around $9,000. Transit employees interviewed by Newsday said they don't understand why the windows are being replaced. "What's wrong with the windows we have? They open. They close. You can see out of them. What do we need new ones for?" According to a report the authority sent to the Legislature to justify the capital budget, the windows are "drafty and allow water seepage during heavy rains." Elsewhere, Transit Authority officials disagreed with Angela D'Urso, a Manhattan legal secretary, on the possible need for capital spending at a station that she claimed had exposed electrical wires and... missing windowpanes. To prove her point, D'Urso snapped some pictures. Problem is, she violated an obscure Transit Authority rule that prohibits taking photographs in subways. So two Transit Authority officers slapped her with $75 in fines. When she said she couldn't afford that, she received another $50 ticket for breach of peace. -------------------------- Rep. Robert Dornan explained that the check he bounced in the House Bank scandal was used to buy stones for his backyard shrine to the Virgin Mary. -------------------------- A free-lance editor uncovered 3,700 errors in the history books used in the Texas public schools. Among the errors: * The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1963 instead of 1863. * The Civil War Battle of Vicksburg took place in Tennessee rather than in Mississippi. * President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1944 instead of 1945. * Sputnik, the first Soviet space satellite, was a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile * Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated during the presidency of Richard Nixon, not Lyndon Johnson. * General Douglas MacArthur led an anti-communist witch hunt in the 1950s, not Sen. Joseph McCarthy. -------------------------- Maurice Mann, a landlord in New York City, had one especially difficult "professional tenant" who never paid his rent and repeatedly hauled Mann into housing court for manufactured building code violations. After damaging the apartment in some way, the tenant would call the housing inspectors, who would order Mann to the notoriously pro-tenant housing court. The housing judge would order Mann to make the repair, while exempting the tenant from rent until all the violations were fixed. When Mann sent a repair crew to the apartment, the tenant wouldn't let them in. When the repair crew did manage to gain entry and make the repairs, usually to a broken smoke alarm, doorknob or window latch, the tenant would break them again. Mann thus spent a lot of time in housing court. He finally solved his short-term problem by making videotapes of his workmen doing repairs. "After we're done, we hold up a copy of today's newspaper to show when it was finished. Then we bring the tapes and play them in court." -------------------------- Harry Henry, a 67-year-old Martinez, California man attempted to start a commercial composing operation at his "firewood farm," using waste from commercial landscaper and tree services as well as charred timber from nearby hill fires. State authorities have told him that he lacks permits for composting, firewood sales, and a night watcher's trailer. Contra Costa County also said that he would have to come up with permits for pollution discharge, health risk assessment, construction and operations, as well as drainage, wetlands and flood control. The county also believes that Henry should study the property's seismic potential and look at noise and traffic patterns. Once all this is under control, the compost pile will have the government's seal of approval. Henry commented that "The whole problem here is that laws in Sacramento are being written by people who have never seen a pile of compost." Despite such burdensome permit requirements, California has also mandated that counties divert 25 percent of their waste products to recycling and composting by 1995, increasing to 50 percent by the year 2000. -------------------------- Henry Kissinger appeared on "CBS This Morning" as a guest weatherman, something he'd always wanted to do, he said. In referring to the forecast map, the former secretary of state repeatedly pointed in the wrong direction. -------------------------- Carlos Valdez, a co-sponsor of a school choice bill in Florida, received hundreds of angry letters from children after his article, highly critical of the Dade County School Board, appeared in the Miami Herald. Despite the high probability that the students were coached by their teachers and didn't fully understand what they were writing, the following passages exemplify the failure of Miami's public schools: "You will regrate stopping all this stuff like summer school while I don't really care if you stop summer school because should not have to go to school in are summer. It is are time but we need are education." "I think the budget is getting worse so put down the big company with higher money. little company lower value and keep the school for cutting teacher out their job." -------------------------- From the Office of the Marshal in San Diego County, California: Dear prospective juror: Congratulations on your selection as a trial juror. We sincerely hope your participation in the justice system is informative and rewarding. To that end, we would like to offer some information that will expedite your access to courtroom facilities throughout San Diego County. Knives with a locking blade or any blade over three inches (3") will not be permitted in the courthouse. Stun guns, mace or other caustic materials are also prohibited. If you are licensed to carry such items, you will be required to leave it with the Deputy Marshals at the screening station and you may recover it when you leave the building. Of course, non-prescription drugs and alcoholic beverages are also excluded. We recognize the inconvenience this screening represents, but our experience has shown that the enhanced security of the court staff, litigants, spectators and of course jurors, outweighs the delays you may experience... -------------------------- Philadelphia Inquirer, May 24, 1992: Malaysian officials are considering a plan to introduce strict Islamic laws. And they mean strict. Get caught stealing and they'll lop off a hand. And that has local doctors wondering: If a punished thief comes strolling into their office hand in hand, will they be allowed to sew it back on? The government is willing to discuss the problem with the medical association. But Abdul Hadi Awang, deputy president of the fundamentalist Islamic party, has strong ideas. He says the purpose of chopping off hands of incorrigible thieves is to shame them and deter crime. "If doctors and surgeons start reattaching the hands, the whole purpose is defeated," he said. -------------------------- Twelve-year-old Henry Frank III of Central Islip, N.Y. realized every red-blooded American child's dream when he got to ride on a fire truck. Unfortunately, Henry fell off the vehicle and broke his arm, prompting his mother to sue the Central Islip Fire Department for $1.1 million in damages -- even though the attorney for the plaintiffs says the accident occurred through the negligence of volunteer firefighter Henry Frank II, the boy's father. "The little boy is an innocent victim," attorney Sidney Siben told New York Newsday. Siben, who is representing the boy and his mother, added, "It was careless of the father to allow the son on the truck, but the Fire Department is responsible and they're going to have to pay. That's the purpose of being insured." -------------------------- The city of Indianapolis spent $242,000 over eight years to repair a $90,000 garbage truck; 166 work orders were issued on it in 1991 alone. Over the last eight months, the truck's odometer indicates it has been driven 15,178 miles, with records showing only 904 miles driven. "Taxpayers could hire limousines to carry away their garbage and it would cost less," said Mayor Stephen Goldsmith. -- Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com] The Life collection maintainer, selections of humor from the internet Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
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