Date: 17 Aug 93 16:07:10 PDT (Tuesday) Subject: Life A.A ---------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------- The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 criminalizes the sale of "Indian" art by non-Indians (Native Americans, that is). Under the law, European-inspired art created by an Indian is considered Indian art, and an impeccably woven Navajo blanket by a non-Indian is not. The law is overseen by the Interior Department's Indian Arts and Crafts Board, and it imposes a fine of $250,000 and five years in prison for first offenders. As a result, art festivals have dropped the word "Indian" from their titles, and Indians whose ancestors were not eager at the turn of the century to register with the Dawes Commission, which signed up Indians as a first step towards land allocation, have had to go to tribal councils seeking certification as "Indians" before selling their wares. Bert Seabourn, a famous painter of Cherokee descent whose work hangs in the Vatican, has been unable to obtain certification from the Cherokee tribe. -------------------------- Under California's 8.25 percent snack tax, doughnuts are not counted as a snack, but doughnut holes are subject to the surcharge. -------------------------- Smithsonian Institution Associate Director Robert Sullivan has a mission: to make the Museum of Natural History politically correct. Soon to go, for example, is a popular exhibit of Captain John Smith trading with the Powhatan Indians on the banks of the James River. Why? The Powhatan women are barebreasted, and that's sexist. Another popular exhibit that will get the axe is the leaping Indian tiger. Why? Many men like to have their photos taken with the tiger. That irks Sullivan because it makes the tiger seem like a hunting trophy. -------------------------- The Mayor of Boulder, Colorado, thinks that too many yuppies are moving into his city, and would like to attract more poor minority members to achieve balance. "What's happening is many, many upscale people from both coasts are moving to town... I'm worried Boulder is becoming an upper-middle class and very white community. I don't think that's very healthy for any community." According to the 1990 census, median household income was 10% above the national average, and that's unfortunate. City leaders want to attract more attention and money for Boulder's affordable housing program to attract poorer residents, and the University of Colorado needs more minorities to improve its racial mix. So if you're a member of a minority, come on down, but please stay away if you're affluent, since that would spoil the mix. -------------------------- While the Congressional Record was first published in 1873 as a daily, written account of the floor debates in the House and Senate, congressmen can now place almost anything in the Record. Furthermore, at the end of each day legislators can "revise and extend" their remarks. The 1991 edition thus ran to 36,500 pages and cost upwards of $25 million to publish and distribute. As of October, 1992, freshman Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has inserted more than 400 items into the Record at a cost of $405,000 to taxpayers. On February 3, 1992, Ros-Lehtinen accounted for 10 of the 24 "extensions" printed. These included a tribute to a 17-year-old constituent on his becoming the third Eagle Scout in his family, a commemoration of the recently deceased mayor of North Bay Village, Florida, notice that the annual Girl Scout cookie sale had begun in her district, congratulations to Miami's Southwest High School on its addition of sign language to the curriculum, recognition of the new manager at South Florida's Spanish-language Channel 51, a tribute to the Silverado Skies art gallery for their owner's "passion for the Southwest," and a tribute to South Florida's Blockbuster Entertainment Corporation for aspiring to expand their market. One the same day, her colleagues congratulated Odessa Permian High School in Texas for a state football championship, honored a constituent's 50 years of service at a sand and gravel company in California, and paid tribute to "the guiding force behind WPSX-TV," a public television station in Pennsylvania. Legislators typically send honored constituents a copy of the page on which they were mentioned. -------------------------- Steve Davis and his father, Jake, who run a landscaping business in Woodbridge in Prince William County, Maryland, hoped to earn some extra money during the holiday season by setting up their Christmas tree lot outside a shopping center and selling a few hundred trees. A county zoning official visited them and said they would have to get the following or face closing: A temporary commercial activity permit ($125); a business license ($10); and a vendor's license for each salesman, requiring criminal background checks, fingerprints, reference checks, and entitling each salesman to a laminated ID card ($20 apiece). Prince William officials said their regulations are necessary to screen out fly-by-night salespeople, who may presumably sell substandard Christmas trees and then skip town. -------------------------- In Waterbury, Connecticut, Dominic Monte was awarded $594,000 in damages for an accident that occurred when Monte crashed his motorcycle into a parked car while police were pursuing him for speeding. Under Connecticut's policy of "comparative negligence," a plaintiff whose negligence doesn't exceed 50 percent can receive damages. The jury decided that Monte, who was ticketed and admitted to speeding, was only 50 percent at fault. The jury also decided that the police officer and his "pursuit tactics" earned a 30 percent share, and that his superior officer earned 10 percent for failing to provide his officers with adequate high-speed pursuit training. The remaining 10 percent went to Enrique Navarez, into whose parked car Monte crashed, and who is now on the hook for $118,800. -------------------------- Alfred Spremo, Jr. has sued a neighbor, a mattress manufacturer, the company that repossessed his car, at least 12 attorneys (including his own), more than 30 state and federal judges, and his own mother. In all he has filed -- and lost -- at least 51 lawsuits. But now Judge Arthur Lonschein has ruled that Spremo may no longer sue anyone in his home state of New York. Spremo says he will appeal. -------------------------- Describing Jerry Brown's campaign team, Jacques Bazaghi, an aide to Brown, said: "We're not disorganized. We just have a kind of organization that transcends understanding." -------------------------- How many farmers receive government assistance in Bell County, Kentucky? Secretary of Agriculture Edward Madigan said 2,127 were on the rolls in one federal agency. That didn't seem possible to Sen. Richard Lugar (R, Ind.), ranking minority member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. After all, 85 percent of the county is forest. Lugar, perplexed by the count, then received a USDA printout showing 1,217 farmers, along with an explanation that the first number was a mistake. When he asked for more details, the USDA provided another list -- this one containing 57 names. When asked by Senator Lugar how many field offices the USDA had, Assistant Secretary Richard Albertson replied, "We have tried to get a straight answer to this question for as long as I have been here. Our staff still cannot give us an accurate number." -------------------------- More than 350 years after condemning Galileo for saying that the earth revolved around the sun, the Roman Catholic Church admitted he was right. -------------------------- Townspeople in Niamey, Nigeria, blamed the region's drought on women who wear short skirts. -------------------------- A Baltimore contractor sued for a minority set-aside because he weighs 640 pounds. An indigent New York couple with a combined income of $350,000 appealed to the mercies of the public as victims of "compulsive spending syndrome." A Virginia special education teacher who failed a teacher's test eight times claimed she was a victim of "slowness in understanding." A Wisconsin man who admitted to exposing himself 10,000 to 20,000 times was turned down for a job as an attendant in a park. He successfully sued, claiming he had never exposed himself in a park but only in coin-operated laundries and libraries. -------------------------- According to a report in the Washington Times, a District of Columbia police station chains its typewriters to desks to keep them from being stolen by officers and other police department personnel. -------------------------- Francis Scott Key High School in Union Bridge, Maryland, had its first female student try out for the football team. The school's lawyers had advised that it had to accept her under Title IX, which forbids sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. Tawana Hammond, a 17-year-old who had never played organized ball, was tackled in her first scrimmage and allegedly suffered injuries that required the removal of her spleen and half her pancreas. Hammond has now sued the school for $1.5 million. She alleges that the school did not properly inform her of the risks of playing football. -------------------------- In a move that infuriated several dozen car owners, New York City bureaucrats issued summonses, with fines of up to $1,000, to people whose cars had been vandalized and destroyed during a riot. The owners were informed that they were in violation of a law that prohibits "abandoning" their vehicles on city streets. -------------------------- John Hinton thought he might find some spiritual sustenance at Harvard Divinity School. But in one class students were asked to talk about what they thought was central to Christianity. After listening to the discussion for several minutes, Hinton thought that something important was being ignored, so he volunteered "Jesus." He was immediately derided by the others for being "Christocentric." -------------------------- Three New Jersey townships -- Upper Pittsgrove, Alloway and Quinton -- have contracted to have elevator inspectors, but there are no elevators in any of the three municipalities. The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs ordered all of the state's 567 towns to provide an elevator inspection service, even for municipalities without elevators. "Otherwise," a spokesman said, "the Uniform Construction Code would no longer be uniform." -------------------------- Junior high school student Christine Fisher's "What Christmas Means to Me and Why" was selected for publication in the school newspaper, but the principal refused to run it unless the sentence "It is also the day that Christians celebrate Christ's birth" was changed to "[Christmas] is also a day that people celebrate love." -------------------------- After Richard Jacobson of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, placed a "for rent" ad in his local paper that listed a cottage "ideal for couple," he got into a legal battle that lasted nearly two years, after which the courts finally ruled in his favor. The nonprofit Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council, which monitors housing advertisements in Southeast Wisconsin, filed a complaint that accused Jacobson of "a preference or limitation based on marital status in violation of the Wisconsin Open Housing Law." William Tisdale, a spokesman for the council, says, "An individual deserves the same protection as does someone who is black or gay, and we felt that 'ideal for couple' was just as discriminatory as 'ideal for white' or 'ideal for Catholic.'" Jacobson was slapped with a $500 fine by the state Equal Rights Division, ordered to take a $50 class on writing classified ads, and ordered to reimburse the Fair Housing Council $1,481 for legal fees. -------------------------- In an effort to comply with the vaguely-worded Americans with Disabilities Act, TCF Bank Savings of Minneapolis has installed braille instructions on drive-up automated teller machines. -------------------------- In 1990, the Skagway River overflowed its banks, and the city of Skagway in southeastern Alaska barely escaped flooding. Before the flood season in 1991, city residents decided they were not going to be caught with their guard down again and took steps to protect themselves. When Mayor Stan Selmer called the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ask for help, he was told he would have to wait until the city actually got flooded before the federal agencies could intervene. "Well, we weren't going to just sit there and let the river flood us," says Selmer. The city decided to bulldoze a channel through a dry riverbed that would divert floodwaters into a nearby inlet. Selmer notified the Environmental Protection Agency, the corps and the Alaska departments of Environmental Conservation, Fish and Game and Natural Resources, telling them what the city was up to. He got no notice to cease and desist from any of the agencies. However, in December, Selmer received a letter from EPA Field Operations Chief C.D. Robinson saying that the city had violated the Clean Water Act. According to the Skagway News, Robinson wrote that the city was mistaken in trying to protect itself without the participation of the Corps of Engineers and that even in an emergency the city should make reasonable efforts "to receive comment from interested federal, state and local agencies." "If I had time to do all that," says Selmer, "we'd all be underwater before anybody figured out we were in an emergency situation." Ironically, he notes, it is partly the EPA's fault that Skagway is in danger of flooding: In 1986 the EPA ordered a contractor to remove dikes that protected his property. In 1990, the river overflowed in the same spot where the dikes had been. Selmer is refusing to undo any of the work and plans to try to get the EPA to let him do more work to protect the city. "The amazing thing," he says, "is that the clean water the EPA is trying to protect is the same water that would wind up drowning the people in our community." -------------------------- Since 1987, four New York City corrections officers have been arrested for smuggling guns to prisoners. Rather than use the guns against other prisoners or as a means to escape, prisoners would use them to create self-inflicted wounds in order to bring lawsuits against the city, alleging that it failed to protect them from injury. -------------------------- A contractor who was required to hire union painters to paint a highway bridge across a river discovered that rules also required that a small boat patrol beneath the bridge to rescue any painter who fell, although the usual method of dealing with this hazard is to rig a net below the bridge. Union rules dictated that the boat be manned by a union painter. Since the boat had an outboard motor, however, and since rules did not permit a painter to operate an engine, a unionized operating engineer had to be added. The employer, who was obligated to pay skilled wage rates every day to both workers, complained that he was not even offered any of the fish the two "workers" were catching. -------------------------- A onetime U.S. Treasury Department employee showed up in a dress for a job interview with his former employer, and made it clear that if hired, he intended to wear women's clothes to the office regularly. The Treasury Department declined to reemploy him. Charging that he had been discriminated against under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the man filed suit in federal court, which eventually ruled that the man was not handicapped under the meaning of the law, but still ruled in his favor because the Treasury Department had *thought* he was handicapped, and had thus discriminated. -- 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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