[869] in Humor
HUMOR: More NoTW
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Mon May 8 11:53:40 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 08 May 1995 11:47:53 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Fri, 05 May 1995 18:05:06 -0400
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.376 (News of the Weird, April 21, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* Three men in recent months have been ordered by judges to continue child
support payments even though none is the father of the child. Blood tests
exonerated men in Ramsey County, Minn., and Talbot County, Md., and a
Baltimore, Md., mother admitted that she committed perjury in identifying
a man as her child's father. In each case, however, appeals courts (in
Maryland in October and Minnesota in March) ruled that state law requires
that the men continue to make the payments. [Baltimore Sun, 10-12-94;
Minneapolis Star Tribune-AP, 3-7-95]
SEEDS OF OUR DESTRUCTION
* At a booksigning appearance in Tampa, Fla., in July, astronaut Alan
Shepard refused the request of John Williams, 55, to sign a photograph,
telling the man he would sign only purchased copies of his new book on
the space program. The photograph Shepard refused to sign was a 1961 shot
of Williams, then a helicopter crewman, pulling Shepard out of the
Atlantic Ocean after his Mercury capsule splashed down on America's first
manned space mission. [St. Petersburg Times, 7-22-94]
* Last fall, the resume of the newly appointed Mexican secretary of
education, Fausto Alzati, was challenged in the press. Alzati claimed
to have a doctorate from Harvard, but his office later conceded that he
had only a master's degree in public administration from Harvard. A month
later, his office said that actually, he did not have even a bachelor's
degree. In January, Alzati resigned, admitting that he was expelled from
the second grade for bad behavior. [Globe and Mail-N. Y. Times, 1-24-95]
* In September, the Air Quality Management District covering Los Angeles
and surrounding counties imposed regulations on restaurants that cook fat,
contending that they release nine times more soot particles than all the
region's buses. Restaurants would have three years to reduce emissions
to the equivalent released by cooking about 500 quarter-pound hamburgers
per day. [San Francisco Chronicle-L. A. Times, 9-2-94]
* Among the examples of the continuing economic problems in the former
Soviet Union: Lumberjacks in northern Russia were paid at the end of
August in tampons because the employer was short of cash. And in
December, Ukraine issued a new banknote worth 500,000 karbovanets and
announced that 35 tons of old karbovanet notes with denominations below
100 would immediately be recycled into toilet paper. [Washington Times-
Reuters, 9-5-94; Columbus Dispatch-AP, 12-10-94]
* Last year, residents of an area near Renton, Wash., grew weary of the
state's three-year planning and permitting process for renovating a
dangerous highway intersection. Six neighbors, using private equipment
and money, built their own turn lane on the highway in December. The
state transportation agency was highly critical, listing several laws and
regulations that the people violated, but, asked one of the six, "Why
should we wait for their multimillion-dollar turn lane that never comes?"
[Atlanta Journal-Seattle Times, 12-30-94]
* In January, Mathew Panak, president of the Warren (Ohio) Board of
Trustees, said the regularly scheduled Monday meeting would take place on
January 16 even though it was the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. Said
Panak, "None of us is colored. It's not going to affect us." Several
days later, Panak changed his mind and postponed the meeting. [Akron
Beacon-Journal, 1-17-95]
* In March, U. S. astronaut Norman Thagard agreed to follow Russian
cosmonaut customs in their joint mission to dock with a Russian space
station. Among the customs was one established by the first cosmonaut,
Yuri Gagarin, and followed by all subsequent cosmonauts--men and women:
to urinate on a tire of the bus that takes them to the launch pad. [Boston
Herald, 3-14-95]
* In September, a Rotterdam businessman announced his company would start
local home delivery of up to 30 grams of hashish and marijuana (which are
legal in the Netherlands). In July, a political organization in Amsterdam
called the Interest Group for Drug Users reported that it had received
about $120,000 from the government to support its work, which includes
lobbying for liberalization of drug laws and providing counseling for drug
abusers. [Fairfax Journal, 9-2-94; Chicago Tribune, 7-15-94]
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
* According to a report in the Toledo (Ohio) Blade in October, some
parents who are deaf rejoice in the news that their children have been
born deaf because they see themselves not as handicapped but merely as a
linguistic minority. Last spring, about 20 deaf protestors demonstrated
in front of Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (Canada) against the
use of bionic ear implants for children. Said one protester, "I've grown
up being deaf, and I haven't missed anything." [St. Petersburg Times-
Toledo Blade, 10-11-94; Ottawa Citizen, 5-28-94]
* Several news reports on the Kobe, Japan, earthquake mentioned instances
in which the Japanese are hindering world efforts to help victims. The
New York Times reported that the Japanese government refused offers of U.
S. vaccines, doctors, dogs (to sniff out persons alive under rubble), and
medicines. An Associated Press dispatch noted Japanese refusal for the
homeless to be treated on a nearby U. S. aircraft carrier or to be treated
at a Japanese country club because that would not be fair to those who
were not treated in such luxury. [N. Y. Times, 2-5-95; San Juan Star-AP,
1-28-95]
* In February, in Islamabad, Pakistan, a Christian boy, 14, and his uncle
were convicted of blaspheming Islam and given the traditional mandatory
death sentences. The boy had written an anti-Islam message in chalk on
a wall and then had immediately erased it. The next week, another court
overturned the conviction because no evidence existed against the
two--since the words had been erased, and all eyewitnesses feared
repeating the words, even in court. [Washington Times-AP, 2-24-95]
MISCELLANEOUS ELOQUENCE
* University of California anthropology professor Alan Dundes, quoted in
the Wall Street Journal explaining why some people collect items from
McDonald's restaurants (e.g., Big Mac wrappers, Happy Meal toys): "The
arches, if you want to look at it that way, could be breasts. [Many
people see] McDonald's as a big nurturing place to get your meals." [Wall
Street Journal, 3-29-95]
Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use may
be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
