Return-Path: [cate3@netcom.com] Received: from netcom6.netcom.com by piccolo.cco.caltech.edu with ESMTP (8.6.7/DEI:4.41) id IAA13691; Tue, 11 Oct 1994 08:02:08 -0700 Received: by netcom6.netcom.com (8.6.9/Netcom) id GAA10450; Tue, 11 Oct 1994 06:58:14 -0700 Date: Tue, 11 Oct 1994 06:58:14 -0700 From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate) Message-Id: [199410111358.GAA10450@netcom6.netcom.com] To: JWry.dl@netcom.com Subject: Life C.2 Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com Status: R --------------- Date: 25 Jan 94 16:43:47 PST (Tuesday) Subject: Life C.2 The following are selections from WhiteBoard News To join, send mail to: joeha@microsoft.com (Joseph Harper) ---------------------------------------------------- Washington, District of Columbia: He may be in jail for fraud, but the federal government must pay perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche federal matching funds for his 1992 presidential campaign. The Supreme Court, without comment, rejected the Federal Election Commission's argument that LaRouche should be denied money because he engaged in fraud and abuse in seeking matching funds for his earlier campaigns. LaRouche has run for president in each election since 1976. He is serving a 15-year federal sentence on his 1988 conviction of mail fraud and conspiracy related to campaign fund-raising. LaRouche received federal matching funds for his campaigns in 1980, 1984 and 1988. To qualify, candidates must raise $100,000 in small donations from contributors in at least 20 states and must agree to abide by FEC regulations. The commission had rejected his request for matching funds in relation to his 1992 campaign. The amount to be awarded has not been released yet. -------------------------- Warrenton, Oregon: Some efficient beavers did such a good job building a dam inside a culvert pipe that water backed up for eight city blocks and kept public work crews busy for 24 hours. About a foot of rain water finally drained out of a soggy section of this town on the northern coast Thursday after work crews rammed a spruce log into the 60-foot-long, 3-foot diameter culvert pipe. "It was solid with packed sticks, mud and leaves," said Public Works Supervisor Dave Haskell. "It filled up the whole inside diameter of the pipe and it was a 4- to 5-foot long plug in there real tight." -------------------------- Bothell, Washington: After hitting a boy on a bicycle with his pickup truck, a man told police he had instructed the boy to stay down and not move. Instead, the youth jumped up, got on his bicycle and yelled back at another youth, "See, I told you these brakes were bad." -------------------------- Bethesda, Maryland: Hitting the road may get more interesting thanks to "Ride with Me"'s audiotapes aimed at travelers on interstate highways. The Bethesda company's 24 programs covering 17 states acquaint drivers with a particular area's history and oddities, such as the butterfly zoo on I-75 in Georgia. -------------------------- Belgrade, Yugoslavia: The number Wednesday was 286,125,293,792. It was not the day's winning lottery figures, nor the number of miles to the Hubble space telescope. It was the latest calculation of Yugoslavia's nearly incalculable inflation rate. To cover the costs of war and pay off the unemployed, the government has resorted to indiscriminately printing money. That has rendered the national currency, the dinar, practically worthless. At least 50 percent of the work force is idle. For those still with jobs, real wages have plummeted to the equivalent of $15 a month, from $500 a month in 1991. Meanwhile, prices have soared. Inflation grew at 0.7 percent per hour and amounted to 20,190 percent in November, Mirjana Rankovic, deputy director of the Federal Statistics Bureau, told reporters Wednesday. That translates into an annual inflation rate of 286,125,293,792 percent when compounding is factored in. -------------------------- Moscow, Russia: Russian customs officials have employed a group of rats to test for contaminated agricultural products from neighboring China. The Tass News Agency reported that the administration of the Russian Far Eastern Maritime Territory will not let Chinese potatoes into the country if their chemical content is so high that the rats won't eat them. -------------------------- Bering Glacier, Alaska: Alaska's immense Bering Glacier is on a rampage, speeding up in recent months rather than slowing as expected, scientists said. The surge, which began in May and measures up to 300 feet per day, affords scientists a rare look at how the giant ice wall behaves as it pushes forward. Molina said that the glacier is moving an average of 100 feet per day in places and that on some days it lurches forward 300 feet. -------------------------- Pendleton, Oregon: Two dogs summoned Umatilla County sheriff's deputies to a rural Eastern Oregon home Thursday on the county's 911 system. "It's never happened in all the years I've worked here," said Corporal Lori Jewell of the sheriff's department in Pendleton. Police received an emergency 911 call, but no voice came on the line, she said. Jewell said the call was traced to an address in the farming town of Adams, northeast of Pendleton. A deputy was sent, and dispatchers kept listening on the line. "We could hear shuffling and moving around," said Jewell. "You could hear movement, but we couldn't get anybody to answer." A deputy forced his way into an unoccupied home and found the phone there on the hook, she said. He went down the street and found another unoccupied home with exactly the same address and forced his way in there. This time, he had the right house. "It was two dogs who had knocked the phone over," said Jewell. "It had an automatic dialer, and when the phone dropped, it automatically dialed 911. -------------------------- Washington, District of Columbia: Ho Ho Ho: The Capitol Steps, a satirical singing group, offers an album of Christmas carols such as: "All We Got for Christmas Is a Tax Increase," "O Little Rock of Arkansas," "Rosty, the Chairman" and "Santa Claus's Budget is Down." -------------------------- Tokyo, Japan: And then there are devices for all tastes, both good and bad. Pioneer Electronics Corporation's car-navigation system uses CD-ROM disks and global positioning satellite technology to show drivers where they are. In addition, it plays games and karaoke music. The mike is mounted on a visor or worn on a headset. -------------------------- New York subway mugging victim Jerome Sandusky is suing to get the $4.3 million a jury awarded his attacker, Bernard McCummings, who was paralyzed by a police officer's bullet. McCummings, who spent more than two years in prison for the 1984 attack, sued for excessive force against the police and won. Sandusky said if he wins his case he'll donate the money for more subway officers. -------------------------- We've all heard the roar of an inferno -- at least on television. But fire makes subtler sounds as well. A flickering candle flame, for instance, registers a sound near the lower threshold of human hearing, while wood and other building materials emit very high- frequency sounds just before bursting into flames. It's the latter noises that fascinate National Institute of Standards and Technology researcher William Grosshandler. At his Gaithersburg, Maryland, lab, Grosshandler has crafted a sensor that listens for the tell-tale sounds of fires that are about to happen. As a section of wall heats up before bursting into flame, it expands, generating a vibration that races through an entire structure. Grosshandler's sensor employs a wall-mounted transducer that detects these inaudible vibrations, and sounds an alarm. The sensor can detect fires quickly, because sound travels faster than smoke or heat. Even more important, though, it can locate fires hidden between walls. Commercial applications is years away, however. -------------------------- Belgrade, Yugoslavia: Taking the kids to the zoo is getting a bit complicated. The monetary unit here, the dinar, is being so battered by inflation that it now stands at 10 billion dinar to one U.S. dollar. In addition, the inflation rate makes this number incorrect even as you read this. To compensate for such worthless pieces of paper, the Belgrade Zoo is no longer willing to accept them for admission fees, but instead is willing to barter. One adult ticket can now be paid by forking over one of the following: one kilogram of peanuts, two kilos of oats, six eggs, half a kilo of bananas, three kilos of corn or four kilos of apples. (A kilo is about 2.2 pounds.) For those not willing to part with food, you can gain admission by offering construction materials: three bricks, two cinder blocks or five kilos of cement per adult. -------------------------- New York, New York: The best office Christmas gift this year? (Or the worst?) Several major department stores now offer the "Yes Man," a four-inch-high corporate dweeb with an obnoxious smile who intones such phrases as "Whatever you say" or "I couldn't have said it better myself." -------------------------- Seattle, Washington: Seattle police domestic unit officer, Roger Amundson went to a Seattle home Friday to deliver two "no contact" orders. The resident refused to accept the citations, leaving Amundson facing a gigantic Great Dane on the porch. So Amundson rolled up one citation, held it in front of the dog, and the dog snatched it, took it up the steps, and dropped it at the front door. Then the dog came back, got the second rolled-up order and delivered it, too. -------------------------- This item comes from David Adam Edelstein: Lawton, Oklahoma: Two young men were arrested after videotaping themselves while allegedly robbing a store. The thieves even typed their names on the tape's subtitle feature. Dennis R. Thompson, 22, was tracked down and arrested Friday in the $1,800 September burglary at Top Cat Video Productions, Detective C.H. Brazzell said. A 15-year-old boy was arrested within days of the theft after a tip led police to some of the stolen goods and the videotape, which showed their faces and first names, Brazzell said. Beside burglary charges, Thompson was wanted for alleged military desertion. Authorities say he left his Indiana National Guard unit in July while training at Fort Sill near Lawton. -------------------------- This item comes from Rolf Nelson: Lillehammer, Norway: Lillehammer's Olympic Organizing Committee faced a problem: how to get dour Scandinavians to look happy and welcoming at next February's Winter Games. Their solution: the Smile Boeyle -- in English, "smiling hoop" -- a rubber band with plastic hooks that wraps behind the head and attaches to the corners of the mouth, forcing a grin. The LOOC will distribute 100,000 of them as part of its $120,000 "Smile -- You're a Tourist Attraction" campaign. Though the device is meant as a jest, when word of it leaked the LOOC was bombarded with complaints. Says the group's Torill Seeberg: "They were taking it too seriously." -------------------------- Medford, Wisconsin: The old piano Jake Thielke bought for $70 at an estate sale turned out to have $140,000 stashed inside. Thielke and his wife, Diane, wanted to know if the piano was worth repairing, so they asked piano technician Dan Shereda to check it. Then they watched as Shereda began pulling out neatly wrapped, moldy bundles of $5, $10 and $20 bills from the back of the turn-of-the-century instrument. Thielke consulted a lawyer, who said the cash still belonged to the estate of Harley Stimm, a Medford barber who also stashed money in a mattress and books before his death in October. -------------------------- Washington, District of Columbia: And you think the IRS is rough now? It is expected to get about 115 million returns this year and to audit about 1 percent of them. When 357,598 taxpayers filed the first modern income-tax returns in 1914, they had to sign them under oath before officials. And the Bureau of Internal Revenue audited every one. -------------------------- Carefree, Arizona: Are you one of those worrywarts, tossing and turning in your bed at night, unable to sleep? Wouldn't you love to cast your worries into the wind? Well, pilot Gregg Warren of Carefree, Arizona, can do just that with his company, Worry Free. Here's how it works: First you write your worries on a piece of paper. Then you burn the sheet of paper. Put the ashes and $5 into an envelope and send them to Warren. He will remove and brush off the $5, then take your ashes up in his plane and scatter them over the town of Carefree. -------------------------- "Here, we don't count years to retirement. We count winters. I've got six to go." -- Dan Shay, a New York Telephone Company repairman, who endured 12-degree temperatures in Syracuse fixing a broken underground cable. -------------------------- A Nashville, Tennessee, lawyer who tracks and analyzes legal cases to write analyses for several law journals has determined that dogs have more rights than cats under Tennessee law. -------------------------- Two escapees who robbed a pharmacy and planned to break back into their New Zealand jail before guards noticed were recaptured on their way back to their cells. Officials said the pair had expected to be back inside before they were missed at the next cell check. -------------------------- New York, New York: Conrad Teitell, a tax lawyer, sends friends his best wishes for a happy New Year -- "including, but not limited to, all calendar, fiscal and taxable years." -------------------------- Tel Aviv, Israel: In Israel, choosing epithets carelessly when insulting city employees can be costly. A Tel Aviv court imposed an $83 fine for calling an agency chief a liar but a $500 penalty for calling a traffic ticket agent a maniac. -------------------------- Cleveland, Ohio: Convicts who jump bail before sentencing or who violate parole or probation can legally collect welfare benefits while lying low. Under current welfare law, the government can't do a thing about it. Federal welfare statutes do not exclude fugitives from public assistance. And privacy laws limit the exchange of information between police, who have hundreds of thousands of fugitive warrants on file, and welfare agencies, which have no way to know which of their clients are fugitives. "If you meet the eligibility requirements, then you're eligible for assistance," said Joe Silver, a lawyer with the Ohio Department of Human Services. "If your benefits are terminated or your application is denied, it has to be because you didn't meet the criteria." -------------------------- Toronto, Canada: In U.S. Television ads, the Energizer bunny is threatened by the fictional likes of King Kong and Ernst Blofeld, the evil genius of James Bond spy novel fame. Canadian commercials menace the mechanical hare with something that's really dangerous: the country's awful winter. The U.S. "kill the bunny ads didn't go over well" in Canada, says Brent Pulford, a Canadian ad executive at Backer Speilvogel Bates. So Energizer's Canadian marketing team slogged up to Churchill, Manitoba, known as the Polar Bear Capital of the World, to shoot an ad that would have more appeal. The Canadian spot, which began airing in Canada last month, features the drum-thumping cottontail vying with a dog-sled team in a race across the frozen tundra. No prizes for guessing the winner. Production team members say the weather was brutal during the shoot. The temperature hovered near 30 degrees below zero, with the wind chill making it feel like minus 90. Cameras had to be wrapped in electric blankets to keep them from seizing up. The Energizer bunny got star treatment. The creature cost a cool $70,000 each, so Energizer was loath to see one frostbitten. "The bunny had his own truck where all his gear is. In between takes he was rushed back to the truck to keep warm," said Pulford, who wrote the spot. Two handlers looked after the hare while the commercial was being filmed. They put him together for shoots (the bunny's head comes off when he's not on a job), brushed his fur, and kept his batteries charged. (No, the bunny doesn't run on Energizer flashlight batteries, as the ads imply. But the company says it does make the battery pack that powers the creature's motor.) True to Energizer hype, the bunny kept going. Little wonder. With all his internal mechanisms, the bunny weighs in at 40 pounds and stands nearly 2 1/2 feet tall. He runs by remote control on a track, like a tank. When the winds peaked on the third and final day of the shoot, "everything else was blowing down" except the rabbit Pulford says. P.S., The bunny didn't just cross the finish line first in the Canadian commercial. He arrived towing the sled with the pooped canines stretched out on top.
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