Return-Path: [cate3@netcom.com] Received: from netcom2.netcom.com by piccolo.cco.caltech.edu with ESMTP (8.6.7/DEI:4.41) id IAA10549; Tue, 13 Dec 1994 08:00:59 -0800 Received: by netcom2.netcom.com (8.6.9/Netcom) id HAA00521; Tue, 13 Dec 1994 07:36:03 -0800 Date: Tue, 13 Dec 1994 07:36:03 -0800 From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate) Message-Id: [199412131536.HAA00521@netcom2.netcom.com] To: JWry.dl@netcom.com Subject: Life C.J Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com Status: R --------------- Date: 21 Feb 94 12:35:03 PST (Monday) Subject: Life C.J The following are selections from WhiteBoard News To join, send mail to: joeha@microsoft.com (Joseph Harper) ---------------------------------------------------- Fast News Forum: A suspected Mafia boss who had been on the run for 14 months was arrested in Italy after police spotted him window-shopping. When water pipes froze in his Long Island, New York, house, John Porter backed his car against an open basement window so the car's exhaust could thaw the pipes. His family was rushed to the hospital with carbon-monoxide poisoning. Asked to sniff out the theft of $100 in food from a restaurant in Modesto, California, the police Rottweiler, Nick, quickly traced a trail of hot dogs, chili, cheese and onions to a nearby home. A 17-year- old was arrested. A Woodbridge, Virginia, receptionist found out her boss was running a classified ad seeking her replacement. So she bought one to let him know she was quitting. Four Hong Kong tourists on a French Riveria shopping spree were detained after one of them lost his wallet - - containing 39 forged credit cards. Dutch couch potatoes are pretending to exercise with the nation's latest craze, described by one entrepreneur as "crazy but profitable": indoor trout fishing. Soviet leaders were even more hardheaded than the world thought. The big fur hats members of the ruling Politburo used as they reviewed military parades were lined with steel to provide protection against assassination attempts. A man wearing a ski mask robbed a bank in Waukegan, Illinois, of $10,600 during a snowstorm. His getaway vehicle? A snowmobile. 1994 is a new year for Mississippi's 1993 Officer of the Year. He has been charged with robbing an Alabama bank. -------------------------- Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada: Having a Big Mac attack in the Arctic Circle? Relief is just a phone call away. Alan Kaylo opened a McDonald's here in Yellowknife in 1992. Commercials, satellite dishes and fly-through service have done the rest. "We're sending an order, this week to Cambridge Bay, for a hockey team," says Kaylo. "Within three hours we can have an order almost to the North Pole," including Inuit settlements sometimes 1,000 miles away. And none too soon. "We get people lined up waiting for a Big Mac" at $4.60 a pop, says Craig Dunphy of Sanavik Co-op in Baker Lake. "We just nuke them. ... They eat them on the spot." -------------------------- Helsinki, Finland: A Finn has had his hunting dog's tooth repaired with a gold crown and claimed the $1,000 cost from insurance. The treatment for elkhound Iivo has sparked an argument among veterinary surgeons, the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat reported from the eastern town of Kupio. The paper, which carried a picture of Iivo and his new crown, quoted a vet and a dentist as saying the eye-tooth could have been fixed for a tenth of the cost. They also said such cases could send the cost of animal insurance soaring. But the specialist who operated on Iivo defended his work. "The elkhound isn't three years old yet and has four or five of its best hunting years ahead of it," he told the newspaper. -------------------------- San Francisco, California: Call it making a silk purse out of sow fear. A group of feral pigs -- complete with tusks and shaggy coats -- that ranges the Rancho San Antonio nature preserve near San Francisco has lately taken to chasing joggers and hikers in the park. But conservation officials -- who say the pigs are probably looking for food handouts -- have found that rather than deterring visitors, the swine are a drawing card. "Visitation is way up," park ranger Phil Hearn told the San Francisco Examiner. "Everyone wants to see the pigs." Many joggers, it seems, enjoy the chase. "Now we know what it's like to run for our lives," beamed James Reily after a pig encounter. "I hope they don't get rid of them." Washington, District of Columbia: -------------------------- "We have to carry a stick and make sure there are no bad apples. ... Wait, let me start again." Labor Secretary Reich at a briefing on workplace enforcement. -------------------------- Washington, District of Columbia: Secret data from military satellites in orbit thousands of miles above the Earth show that the planet is continually bombarded by big meteoroids that explode in blasts the size of atomic detonations. The data, from spacecraft meant to watch for rocket firings and nuclear explosions, were declassified recently by the Department of Defense and are to appear later this year in a book. ]From 1975 to 1992, the satellites detected 136 explosions high in the atmosphere, an average of eight per year. The blasts are calculated to have intensities roughly equal to 500 to 15,000 tons of high explosive, or the power of small atomic bombs. Experts who have analyzed the data are publishing it in the book, "Hazards Due to Comets and Asteroids," say that the detection rate is probably low and that the actual bombardment rate might be 10 times higher, with 80 or so blasts occurring each year. -------------------------- Oslo, Norway: A man accused of drunken driving got his case thrown out after a judge ruled that the vehicle in question - an electric wheelchair - was to slow to be a hazard. Roar Karlsen left a bar last June after drinking 6 beers. In his wheelchair, which has a top speed of 4 mph, he zipped past some police officers, then returned to ask them if he was allowed to operate the wheelchair since he had been drinking. The officers responded by testing his alcohol level and fining him the equivalent of $600.00 for driving under the influence. -------------------------- Centerville, Pennsylvania: Negotiations and tear gas were not enough to persuade a convicted drug user to surrender, so police decided to flush him out with 2,500 gallons of water sprayed into the house from fire hoses. A very cold and wet Charles Stiles, 39, emerged from his house into 30-degree temperatures on Sunday and was treated for hypothermia. Then police took him to jail. -------------------------- Kenmore, Washington: It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but a 21-year-old Bothell man now knows that using a taxi cab as a getaway car isn't the way to go. As a result, the man is behind bars for robbing a service station. Police said the man rode a cab to the store and asked the cabby to park away from the doors. He told the driver he needed to stop and pick up some cigarettes. Once inside the store, the man demanded cash and after punching the clerk several times, he opened the till, grabbed his loot and fled. The clerk watched the man climb into the cab, then called police. Police dispatchers immediately called the cab company and asked dispatchers there where the cab had dropped the man off. When the cab company dispatchers radioed the driver, he told them the man was still his passenger. Police pulled the car over on Interstate 5 and arrested the man, who still had the money taken in the heist. The cab driver was apparently unaware that a robbery had taken place, said a King County Police spokesman. -------------------------- New York, New York: Not into the upcoming football game this weekend? All may not be lost. The decorative-fabrics chain, Calico Corners, is going to have a "SuperBolt Sale." -------------------------- New York, New York: Time for the 1994 Toilet Paper Report, which unravels the mystery of all things loo-related. Commission by Quilted Northern bathroom tissue, the report asked 1,000 people how they spend their time in the bathroom and what they do to make their experience more comfy. In answer to the age-old "over or under" debate, 3 out of 5 respondents preferred their toilet paper be dispensed from over the top of the roll. We skip to the loo six times a day, with men averaging slightly more then 7 minutes for each stay; women, 8.3 minutes. And two-thirds say they read in the bathroom, with Reader's Digest the number 1 choice. -------------------------- Washington, District of Columbia: The Navy is naming its new class of cargo ships after entertainer Bob Hope, to thank him for the memories of all the years entertaining U.S. Troops. "We can never repay him for his contributions to the men and women in uniform, but we can show our appreciation," said Navy Secretary John Dalton. The new, 950-foot long ships will carry tanks, trucks and other heavy equipment. The first, the USNS Bob Hope, will enter service in 1998. Bob Hope's reaction, according to The Associated Press: "That's great, but how am I going to find a bathtub big enough to float it in?" -------------------------- Boston, Massachusetts: Some state employees soon will have some thin, slimy colleagues who work for table scraps. The Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental group, is donating three pounds of red worms that will be relegated to office-building basements. Their mission: to eat leftover food that usually gets thrown away. It's a dirty job, but the worms don't mind doing it. Three 3-by-2-foot green plastic bins went to the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. Inside each were some newspaper shreddings and about a pound of the critters, or 600 to 5,000 worms, depending on their age and size. "It does work and it saves us money," said Doug Foy, foundation executive director. At the group's headquarters, employees put their banana peels, pizza crusts and other leftovers into plastic containers in kitchens. "At the end of the day, a maintenance person empties them into the worm bins. They just gobble it right up," said Joanne Oechler, an executive assistant at the foundation. Environmental Affairs Secretary Trudy Coxe said Governor William Weld had asked her about the possibility of using worms to dispose of leftovers. "He is absolutely ecstatic about the worms," she said. "We want to get comfortable with worms and see how the worms really work and then we're going to pass it on to him." A pound of worms can eat about a pound of food a day, Coxe said. Worm excretions contain humus, which absorbs calcium, phosphorus and other nutrients that plants take in. -------------------------- "Oh no, you don't want my signature. I'm unemployed. I'm out of a job." Former president George Bush to an autograph seeker. -------------------------- "Some places can be hard to find in strange cities. A while back, I was in Hickory, North Carolina, looking for the country club. Running late for a speaking engagement, I stopped at a convenience store to ask directions. I asked the employee behind the counter, 'Where's the country club?' He said, 'It's in the cooler, next to the Old Milwaukee!'" Bryan Townsend, writer and business traveler. -------------------------- Spokane, Washington: Police officer John Strickland wanted to thank the teenage boy who gave up his 10-speed bicycle so the officer could catch up with a man he'd been chasing on foot. But after the arrest, the teen pedaled away. "I didn't even get his name," Strickland said. "I'd like to meet that kid. I'd like to buy him lunch." A 23-year-old Spokane driver took off on foot after Strickland halted him in a traffic stop Sunday. The man was wanted on a Washington State Patrol warrant. The officer was about to give up the chase after a six minute foot race through downtown alleys. "About that time, I was thinking 'I'm 37, I'm getting too old for this,'" Strickland said. "And then this kid at Fourth and Wall yells, 'Hey, you want a bike?' He must have seen my huffing." Strickland hopped on the bike and quickly chased down the man. The teen showed up at the capture site, shook Strickland's hand and then took off on his bike. -------------------------- Dallas, Texas: A federal appeals-court judge has roasted the Internal Revenue Service for making a series of bloopers. "This case makes plain the proposition that Kellogg does not have a monopoly on flakes," writes Judge Irving L. Goldberg in U.S. versus Walter Kellogg, trustee for West Texas Marketing Corporation, in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings. "Indeed, it is Kellogg's opponent, the United States Government acting through the IRS which has committed two scoops of errors, allowing a case which should have been a snap to dissolve into a series of crackles and pops." The judge continues: "In the serial antics of this case, the government has repeatedly failed to determine the actual tax refund owed to the debtor, West Texas Marketing, and has sugar frosted the refund, overpaying by a considerable amount." Judge Goldberg vacated a lower-court ruling and has ordered the case to be reviewed again. -------------------------- Marathon, Florida: A 21-year-old Cuban windsurfer took advantage of strong winds and, on a whim, headed north -- all the way to the Florida Keys, a distance of nearly 100 miles. Eugenio Maaderal, a jet-ski and windsurf instructor from the Varadero beach resort, landed Tuesday night after a nine-hour crossing he described as frightening but easier and shorter than expected. "I started to head out and head out, and there was no turning back," he told The Miami Herald newspaper. "Something was calling me. When I saw water all around me, I just kept on going." Maderal said he had wanted to come to the United States for a long time but hadn't planeed for it to happen this way. -------------------------- "Valentine's Day is great fun in Las Vegas. Over 2,000 people get married here on that day. On Valentine's Day, we'll be doing weddings every 15 minutes." Ken Burleson, Combinded Wedding Chapels Incorporated. -------------------------- Osaka, Japan: The air quality along highways in Osaka, Japan's second-largest city, has become so poor that the regional government plans to build a giant vacuum cleaner to suck up the automobile exhaust and purify it. The Japan Times reported that the proposed device would consist of a roadside duct 10 feet in diameter, and electric fans to draw the air into an underground tunnel outfitted with huge filters. After filtration, the air would pass through a chamber where bacteria is to separate nitrogen dioxide into nitrogen and oxygen before the purer air is released. A prototype is expected to be built sometime after April. Without such drastic action, air pollution levels at eight sites in the region will exceed government standards by 1999. ----------------------------------------------------
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