| |
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful."
Volume 15, Number 16, April 18, 2010
Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, there are accomplishments and there are Accomplishments! A British man has kayaked, pedaled, walked, swam and skated to become the first person to circumnavigate the globe by human muscle alone. Jason Lewis, 40, traveled 45,505 miles in a journey that ended last week when he pulled his pedal boat across the Meridian line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The epic expedition took him 13 years, two months, 23 days and 11 hours. Lewis capsized in two oceans, was chased by a crocodile in Australia, had two bouts of malaria, surgery for two hernias and nearly died of blood poisoning 1,300 miles off Hawaii. He also suffered acute altitude sickness in the Himalayas, broke both legs when he was hit by a car in Colorado and was arrested as a spy in Egypt. "It's been a big, long journey. It's good to be back," a thin, leathered and weeping Lewis said simply as he crossed the finish line. (Bizarre News) (And here I am proud of myself for walking from the store to my car….)
Next, maybe I do have a chance to get elected (or none at all)…. Election officials in a Tennessee county said a town elected a deceased candidate mayor in a landslide -- 268 votes to the incumbent's 85. Donna Basham, administrator of the Grundy County Election Commission, said Tracy City voters elected Carl Robin Geary, who died suddenly a few weeks ago, over Mayor Barbara Brock, who took office about a year ago after the death of the last mayor, WTVC-TV, Chattanooga, Tenn., reported. Basham said Geary's death was widely reported in the town, but she would not speculate as to the reasons for his posthumous victory. The administrator said the city council will appoint a mayor to serve a four-year term. (Come November, throw ‘em all out!)
Finally, they’re out there! Ralph Conone, 68, was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, after witnesses identified him as the man who several times had walked up behind young children, punched them on the head when their parents weren't looking, and walked away as if nothing had happened. According to police, Conone confessed that he had been punching children in public for months because he liked the "excitement" of getting away with something. [Columbus Dispatch]
Idiots. Vaguely related to the last Bit, prosecutors say a Queens man yelled "toughen up" while fatally punching his crying 7-month-old son in the chest. Larry Greene was arraigned on a second-degree murder charge, which could lead to a 25 years to life in prison if convicted. Prosecutors also say Greene believed the baby preferred his mother. Laquana Greene says her brother is "a good person" who could not commit such a crime. The medical examiner said the baby also had bruises on his head and neck. District Attorney Richard A. Brown says it's the ninth time in five months that a family member or babysitter has been accused of killing or severely injuring a child in Queens. Brown says there is "no excuse" for such "senseless attacks." (www.wcbstv.com) (There are plenty of excuses… just no reasons)
"The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." Omar Bradley. (Just sayin’)
Dominique G. Homberger sets high expectations for her students. The biology professor at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge gives brief quizzes at the beginning of every class, to assure attendance and to make sure students are doing the reading. On her tests, she doesn't use a curve, as she believes that students must achieve mastery of the subject matter, not just achieve more mastery than the worst students in the course. For multiple choice questions, she gives 10 possible answers, not the expected 4, as she doesn't want students to get very far with guessing. Students in introductory biology don't need to worry about meeting her standards anymore. LSU removed her from teaching, mid-semester, and raised the grades of students in the class. In so doing, the university's administration has set off a debate about grade inflation, due process and a professor's right to set standards in her own course. (www.insidehighered.com) And “they” wonder why I say our educational system is broken.
Stories that end with more questions than answers: An 8-year-old Pennsylvania boy took more than 60 small bags of heroin to school and was passing some of them out to other third-graders before a teacher caught him, police said. Police and school officials in Wilkinsburg, near Pittsburgh, said a teacher at the boy's elementary school saw him fumbling in his pockets during class and asked him about it, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
I knew I went into the wrong profession. While state and local governments furiously slash budgets by laying off and furloughing workers, retired bureaucrats who receive defined-benefit pensions (rather than flexible 401(k) retirement accounts) continue to receive fixed payouts. According to a California organization advocating that government retirement benefits be changed from pensions to 401(k) accounts, one retired fire chief in northern California gets $241,000 a year, and a retired small-town city administrator's pension is $499,674.84 per year, guaranteed. [Wall Street Journal]
My wife recalls the time years ago when we were in line at the market and I was accosted by a woman who thought I didn’t treat my mother-in-law very well in my column (I used to joke around about her a lot). Anyhow, I thought of that as I found the next Bit, which I will try to offer without personal comment. A husband went on a day trip to France - forgetting he had left his mother-in-law waiting in the ferry car park at Dover. The man and his wife dropped their vehicle off in a long stay car park in Dover, after driving 300 miles from Bootle in Merseyside, reports Metro. But the couple - who were treating their relative to a cross-channel day trip - then forgot all about her and left her in the back of the car. It was only when police at the Port of Dover received an 'unusual' phone call from the absent-minded couple as they docked in France that they were able to find the pensioner. "Officers located the vehicle and ensured the safety and welfare of the elderly lady until her grown up children returned several hours later," a force spokesman said. "They advised us they had forgotten that their elderly mother was still in their car they had parked in the multi-story car park before their day trip." The embarrassed couple caught the next ferry back to Britain to pick up the abandoned woman who was in her 70s. "The trip was meant to be a treat, but it turned into a nightmare for the poor old dear, who was left sitting in the back seat of the car wondering what was going on," a police source said. "She must have been there for at least six hours, but she didn't cause a fuss - she just stayed where she was and waited for them to return - and then she gave them hell." (Uh, Grammy, want to go for a nice ride??? [I couldn’t resist])
A few weeks late, but…. Michael Kelly, 31, got a call from his mother. She was
hysterical: his son was missing, she said. Terrified, he raced over to her house -- at speeds up to 120 mph -- to rescue his 9-year-old. After blowing through a red light, Rowan County, N.C., deputies tried to pull him over; he kept going, leading a chase. When they finally got him stopped, Kelly was arrested and charged with the red light violation, driving with a suspended license, and speeding to elude arrest -- a felony. Oh, and the little boy? He was fine - it was April 1, and Kelly's mother was just playing an "April Fools" joke on him. (Charlotte Observer].
"It looked very snug in there and I thought how mean I was for disturbing it," says Abbie Hawkins, 19. The "it" was a bat; "in there" was her bra. She found the little guy tucked in there five hours after she got dressed. The Norwich, England, woman had felt it moving earlier, but dismissed the sensation. "When I was driving to work I felt a slight vibration but I thought it was just my mobile phone in my jacket pocket," she said. (London Telegraph)
I wonder what Freud (or Webmaster Eli) would say…. An Australian publisher is reprinting 7,000 cookbooks over a recipe for pasta with "salt and freshly ground black people." Penguin Group Australia's head of publishing, Bob Sessions, acknowledged the proofreader should have caught the "silly mistake." He said, "We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don't know." The typo was in the "Pasta Bible" recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto. Sessions said the publisher would replace the book for any buyer "small-minded enough" to complain. The reprinting will cost 20,000 Australian dollars ($18,500). (www.cbsnews.com)
Finally, to wrap up this week, the new generation may not have heard of the original Murphy’s Law – “If anything can go wrong, it will.” Here are a few more reminders derived from Murphy’s Law of how Life really works: (1) “If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.” (3) (A favorite of mine) “It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.” (4) “Enough research will tend to support whatever theory.” (5) (The story of my life) “Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.” (6) “A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).”
Later.
|
|