Tidbits
on March 21, 2005
Bob
Jensen at Trinity
University
For earlier editions of New
Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Archives of Tidits: Tidbits Directory --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click
here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search
Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term
"Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that
covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's home page is
at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
In matters of conscience, the law of
majority has no place.
Mahatma
Gandhi
The United Nations celebrates International Women's Day --- http://www.un.org/events/women/iwd/2005/
From UCLA: Archive of American Folk Medicine --- http://www.folkmed.ucla.edu/
Nations from Europe to Eastern Asia are on a fast track to pass the United
States in scientific excellence and technological innovation.
For more than half a century, the United States has led
the world in scientific discovery and innovation. It has been a beacon, drawing
the best scientists to its educational institutions, industries and laboratories
from around the globe. However, in today’s rapidly evolving competitive world,
the United States can no longer take its supremacy for granted. Nations from
Europe to Eastern Asia are on a fast track to pass the United States in
scientific excellence and technological innovation. The Task Force on the Future
of American Innovation has developed a set of benchmarks to assess the
international standing of the United States in science and technology. These
benchmarks in education, the science and engineering (S&E) workforce,
scientific knowledge, innovation, investment and high-tech economic output
reveal troubling trends across the research and development (R&D) spectrum.
The United States still leads the world in research and discovery, but our
advantage is rapidly eroding, and our global competitors may soon overtake us.
"THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY: IS THE UNITED STATES LOSING ITS COMPETITIVE
EDGE?" THE TASK FOR C E ON THE FUTUR E OF AME R I CAN INNOVAT ION, February
`6, 2005 --- http://www.futureofinnovation.org/PDF/Benchmarks.pdf
Reinvigorating the Humanities: Enhancing Research and Education on Campus
and Beyond
Association of American Universities --- http://www.aau.edu/
Founded in 1900, the Association of American Universities (AAU) initially
consisted of the fourteen universities that offered the Ph.D. degree. Currently
their number includes 60 American universities and two Canadian universities.
The AAU's overall mission is to develop national policy positions of primary
relevance to academic research and graduate and professional education. Of
course, the organization's work also extends to other germane areas, including
timely discussion of undergraduate education. On the AAU site, visitors can
learn about the organization's most recent work, read about its positions on
intellectual property issues, and peruse the latest AAU newsletters. The section
of the site dedicated to internally produced reports will be of great interest
to some, as it contains helpful work on such topics as "Reinvigorating the
Humanities: Enhancing Research and Education on Campus and Beyond"
Quoted from the Scout Report on March 17. 2005
Defining a new role for the humanities in the
university and in society
More recently, the humanities have been caught in a conflict between
over-simplified aristocratic and democratic notions of liberal arts education.
Under the former, the liberal arts are viewed as being distinctly not useful;
under the latter, they are seen as providing ideas of value to all citizens.
Indeed, scholars and university administrators need to bear in mind the value of
the humanities in the education of all of a university’s students, the
usefulness of this knowledge in the professional lives of those students, and
society’s need for a common base of understanding and an educated citizenry.
Recently, those closely involved with the humanities —scholars, university
administrators, academic society officials, and others—have begun separate
reexaminations of established traditions and expectations, leading perhaps to
defining a new role for the humanities in the university and in society. This
report is intended to further prompt that reexamination of the humanities on
university campuses, to identify steps that some institutions already have
taken, and to propose future action.
I quoted the above from the Executive Summary at http://www.aau.edu/issues/ExecSumm.pdf
You can get more details from http://www.aau.edu/issues/humanities.cfm
University of California researchers surveyed
thousands of faculty members throughout the system’s campuses on the number of
hours they spent providing care of any sort for their families. They previously
released general data confirming conventional wisdom: that women have more care
burdens than men. But additional data presented Saturday at the annual
meeting of the American Association for Higher Education compared hours spent on
care by male and female faculty members of the same age groups, and with the
same status of being a parent or not being one. The following table shows
that while gaps are minimal between men and women without children, they are
significant for men and women with children:
Hours Spent on Family Care, by Age
|
Democragraphic group
|
Under 34
|
34-38
|
38-42
|
42-46
|
|
Women with children
|
37
|
43
|
38
|
34
|
|
Men with children
|
25
|
21
|
23
|
19
|
|
Women without children
|
6
|
10
|
7
|
8
|
|
Men without children
|
8
|
7
|
7
|
10
|
Marc Goulden, a researcher for the University of
California, said that the data pointed to a shortcoming of many policies adopted
by colleges to help parents. The policies tend to focus on the time demands on
new parents, but ignore the reality that time demands are as great or greater
when kids start to grow up as when they are babies.
Scott Jaschik, "Unequal Burden," Inside Higher Ed, March 21,
2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/21/care
Breakthrough in adult (as opposed to embryonic) stem cell research
Experiments have shown adult stem cells isolated from
the olfactory mucosa have the ability to develop into many different cell types
if they are given the right chemical or cellular environment," explains
Mackay-Sim. New nerve cells, glial cells, liver cells, heart cells, muscle
cells -- all were grown in a dish from stem cells from the human nose.
Establishing the versatility of these adult stem cells was in itself a
significant scientific achievement, but the Griffith University team's
experiments also uncovered a raft of additional advantages. For starters,
such cells are easily harvested. The research team's doctor, prominent Brisbane
ear, nose and throat specialist Chris Perry, was able to extract them from
consenting patients - and later from the scientists themselves - by simply
spraying the inside of the nose with a local anaesthetic and then removing a
sample no bigger than a grain of pepper. The harvested stem cells were not
only readily available but proved to be astonishingly easy to grow in the
laboratory, with millions of them forming within weeks. Down the track, once all
the required trials are carried out - which could take at least another five
years - it might well be possible for a healthy person to have his olfactory
stem cells harvested, a mildly uncomfortable process that takes barely 10
minutes, grown in a lab and then frozen for injection years later into -- to
give just one example -- the withered muscles of a heart after a heart attack.
Wayne Smith, "Sweet Smell of Success," The Australian, March
22, 2005 --- http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12616654^28737,00.html
More nonprofit colleges may be purchased by for-profit institutions
Sean Gallagher, a senior analyst at Eduventures, which
does research on the education industry for investors and colleges, said he is
not surprised to see an institution like Saint Mary’s turn to a place like
Regis to take over adult education programs. “Higher education is scalable and
larger providers have a huge advantage in marketing and online education,” he
said. “It’s just very difficult to develop a curriculum and manage and
market it” in adult education, when you are a small college, Gallagher
said. Eduventures — which counts both Regis and Phoenix among its
clients — has predicted that more nonprofit colleges may be purchased by
for-profit institutions. That happened this month when Bridgepoint Education, a
for-profit higher education company, bought the Franciscan University of the
Prairies. But he said the same factors that prompt that prediction may
also apply to places like Regis that are big enough to compete with the larger
for-profit institutions. Officials at Saint Mary’s said they were drawn
to Regis because it is a nonprofit institution. And Husson, the Regis
administrator, said that the university’s traditional emphasis on values and
ethics shapes all its programs.
Scott Jaschik, "How to Compete," Inside Higher Ed, March 18,
2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/18/regis
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education programs are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Neil J. Salkind, a professor and a book agent, offers advice on how to get a
publisher interested --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/03/21/salkind
What is the current bid for the solutions manual and test bank of your
chosen textbook?
Wiley officials declined to release the names of those
who were sued. But they said that settlements have been reached with students at
Arizona State, Northeastern, Pennsylvania State and Wayne State Universities;
the Universities of Florida and Wisconsin at Madison; and several University of
California campuses. “This is a new form of cheating and copyright
violation with a Malthusian growth cycle,” said Roy S. Kaufman, legal director
of Wiley. Students somehow obtain the materials, copy them and then distribute
several copies, which are in turn copied and sold, he said. Even with
Wiley’s efforts of the past few months, sales of the materials are rampant, he
said. On eBay, you can find these materials by searching for “solutions
manual;” there are choices of texts in many fields and from many publishers.
Science and engineering fields seem to be particularly hot sellers, with bids
for the materials related to many books standing at more than $100.
Scott Jaschik, "A New Form of Cheating," Inside Higher Ed,
March 18, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/18/cheating
Vietnam Chronicles: Separating Fact from Fiction
The Vietnam War suffered famously from such home-front
confusion, and from policy confusion too. Thus "Vietnam Chronicles"
(Texas Tech University Press, 917 pages, $50) is especially welcome -- for what
it tells us about Vietnam, of course, but also for what is says about the
myth-making and misperceptions that surround any war. The book consists
primarily of recently declassified transcriptions of the weekly intelligence
updates at U.S. military headquarters in Saigon -- officially, at Military
Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV).
James Schlesinger, "Where Myth Trumped Truth," March 18, 2005;
Page W6 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111110094318983000,00.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal
Surge in undocumented immigrants
The nation's undocumented immigrant population surged
to 10.3 million last year, spurred largely since 2000 by the arrivals of
unauthorized Mexicans in the United States, a report being released Monday
says. The population of undocumented residents in the United States
increased by about 23 percent from 8.4 million in the four-year period ending
last March, according to the analysis of government data by the Pew Hispanic
Center, a private research group. That equates to a net increase of
roughly 485,000 per year between 2000 and 2004. The estimate was derived by
subtracting the number of unauthorized immigrants who leave the United States,
die or acquire legal status from the number of new undocumented immigrants that
arrive each year. The prospect of better job opportunities in the United
States than in their native countries remains a powerful lure for many
immigrants, said Pew center director Roberto Suro, pointing to a reason often
cited by other researchers.
Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press, March 21, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/immigrantsMarch21
Civil rights and immigrant activists say a handful
of bills in the Legislature unfairly target foreign nationals, but sponsors of
the legislation claim they're just trying to slow the flow of illegal immigrants
into Tennessee. One proposed law would require drivers license exams be
given only in English, and another would deny public benefits such as TennCare
and driving certificates to foreign nationals. One bill would prohibit
immigrants from getting any state government services if they cannot show
they're in the country legally.
WBIR, March 21, 2005 --- http://www.wbir.com/news/news.aspx?provider=KNS&storyid=24208
Iraqi Business Women's Association
I am explaining all of this so you, the reader, may
understand how brave a woman like Tammy is. Tammy, of course, is an alias. She
is Iraqi. Tammy is President of the Iraqi Business Women Association (IBWA).
The objective of the association is to assist Iraqi women in realizing their
ambitions. Iraqi women (who live within the "red zone") are trained
how to start and run their own business. They learn how to use the computer, how
to type resumes, speak better English and so much more. It is a non-profit
organization founded in 2003. I had my first meeting with Tammy a few
weeks ago. She went through tremendous circumstances just to meet me. The
purpose of the meeting was to find out more about her organization and in what
ways I could help. We decided what they could use the most is proved and
solid advice from American women. Real women in real jobs. Real women in real
businesses. Real women in real careers. Giving them the opportunity for their
minds to be opened to the plethora of opportunities awaiting them, possibilities
of being: doctors, lawyers, store owners, restaurateurs, owning and operating
manufacturing plants, salons, distributorships,...and doesn't the list goes on?
William D. Hodges, "Iraqi Business Women's Association," Free
Republic, March 21, 2005 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1367174/posts
Jensen Comment: Many Iraqi's, men and women, are being especially brave in
their efforts to bring a new freedom and a new economy to Iraq.
Corruption Scandal in France
Senior allies of President Jacques Chirac -- including
four former ministers -- were among nearly 50 people who appeared in court in
Paris at the start of one of France's biggest ever political corruption
trials. A total of 47 defendants -- including politicians, party
officials, and representatives of some of France's biggest building companies --
are accused of fixing public works contracts in the Paris region in order to
obtain illegal party funding. One of several financial scandals to come to
light from Chirac's long tenure to 1995 as mayor of Paris, the affair centres on
kickbacks worth more than 70 million euros (93 million dollars) allegedly paid
by the building firms in order to secure bids to renovate secondary schools
around the capital. Under a secret arrangement that lasted from 1989 to
1997, companies funnelled back two percent of the money paid by the regional Ile-de-France
council, with 1.2 percent going to Chirac's Rally for the Republic (RPR) and its
ally the Republican party (PR), and 0.8 percent going to the Socialists (PS),
according to the prosecution.
"Chirac allies among 47 accused in major French corruption trial," AFP,
March 21, 2005 --- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1511&e=5&u=/afp/20050321/wl_afp/francejusticepolitics_050321142150
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Texas lawmaker proposes ban on cheerleading since it is contradictory to
sexual abstinence
"It's just too sexually oriented, you know, the
way they're shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down," said
Edwards, a 26-year veteran of the Texas House. "And then we say to them,
'don't get involved in sex unless it's marriage or love, it's dangerous out
there' and yet the teachers and directors are helping them go through those kind
of gyrations." Under Edwards' bill, if a school district knowingly
permits such a performance, funds from the state would be reduced in an amount
to be determined by the education commissioner.
April Castro, "Lawmaker Seeks to End 'Sexy' Cheerleading," Washington
Times, March 18, 2005 --- http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/S/SUGGESTIVE_CHEERLEADING?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
The Psychology Department: Where the hard and the soft sciences
overlap is still pretty soft
For all its flaws, neuroimaging is here to stay. No
self-respecting psych department can afford to forgo it. Of the dozen or so new
faculty members recently hired by his department, says Phillip Shaver, chairman
of psychology at the University of California, Davis, 10 use primarily
neuroimaging. Economists, political scientists and sociologists are not far
behind. As with all powerful tools, let the user beware.
Sharon Begley, "While Brain Imaging Offers New Knowledge, It Can Be an
Illusion," The Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2005; Page B1
--- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111110678590183261,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
Accounting to the rescue
Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea has offshore oil and gas
fields and related pipelines it is currently developing with international
partners, led by BP. Central Asia's Kyrgyzstan depends on gold mines, the
largest of which is owned by Canadian-based Centerra Gold, for about 10% of its
GDP. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has financed these
projects and is among the international and local entities encouraging greater
transparency and improved governance in state and private enterprise across the
region. These two young states are at the vanguard of a fledgling movement
among poor nations with valuable hydrocarbon and mineral wealth to publish the
revenues received from their multinational partners. It is much hoped that
greater transparency and accountability in the resource sector will enhance
reform in other aspects of these countries' transition to market economies based
in well-functioning democracies. Revenue reporting is vital in combating
corruption and what is known as the "resource curse." Many countries
seemingly blessed with oil, gas, precious metals and minerals and other
high-value nonrenewable resources have suffered macroeconomic destabilization
from huge and rapid inflows of resource revenues, particularly for oil and gas.
Some governments have squandered such revenues. This is easily done when taxes
and royalties paid to government by mining and logging companies are not
reported publicly via the legislature as would be normal in developed
democracies. Experience shows that citizens of such countries can end up
worse off than previous generations when corrupt elites use the revenues to
stifle necessary reforms, to suppress dissent and to promote their own ethnic
groups and cronies. The result, as seen in parts of Africa in particular, can be
civil unrest, even outright war.
Jean Lemierre, "Beating the 'Resource Curse' With Transparency," The
Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2005, http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111110016176782969,00.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
Bob Jensen's threads on revenue reporting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/eitf01.htm
The condition of large tails in the distribution is known as
leptokurtosis.
I bet you really wanted to know this about return distributions: This
means that there are more frequent large negative outliers than there are large
positive outliers.
Return distributions can be described by what are
known as "moments" of the distribution. Most market participants
understand the first two moments of a distribution: they identify the mean and
variance of the distribution. Often in finance, it is assumed that the returns
to financial assets follow a normal, or bell-shaped, distribution. However, this
is not the case for credit-risky assets. Credit-risky assets are typically
exposed to significant downside risk associated with credit downgrades,
defaults, and bankruptcies. This downside risk can be described in terms of
kurtosis and skewness. Kurtosis is a term used to describe the general condition
that the probability mass associated with the tails of a return distribution,
otherwise known as "outlier events," is different from that of a
normal distribution. The condition of large tails in the distribution is known
as leptokurtosis. This means that the tails of the distribution have a greater
concentration of mass (more outlier events) than what would be expected if the
returns were symmetrically distributed under a normal distribution. The skew of
a distribution is also measured relative to a normal distribution. A normal
distribution has no skew--its returns are symmetrically distributed around the
mean return. A negative skew to a distribution indicates a bias towards downside
exposure. This means that there are more frequent large negative outliers than
there are large positive outliers. This indicates a return profile biased
towards large negative returns.
Mark J.P. Anson, Frank J. Fabozzi, Moorad Chaudhry, and Ren-Raw Chen,
Credit Derivatives: Instruments, Applications, and Pricing, (Wiley,
2003, ISBN: 047146600X, Page 15)
Question
What do you ask (newly admitted MBAs to the Sloan School at MIT) students to do
before they get to campus?
Answer
We have an admit Web site, where the school loads different information for
incoming students. We offer advice on many aspects of the program -- from
recommended business attire to summer reading material. We have them fill out
Meyers-Briggs and Career Leader self-assessment tests, and we review them in a
day-long seminar during orientation.
"What Sets Sloan MBAs Apart: Career Development Director Jacqueline
Wilbur hails MIT's B-school grads for their intelligence and quirky
individuality," Business Week, March 16, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/SloanNewMBAs
I won't raise my glass to this one!
Alcohol consumption accounted for 1,715 deaths among
traditional-age college students in 2001, according to a study
released Thursday by the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
That represents an increase of about 6 percent (after being adjusted for the
rise in the number of college-age people) from the 1,575 alcohol-related deaths
three years earlier, in 1998, according to the study, which was published in the
latest edition of the Annual
Review of Public Health. The study also found a sharp rise in the
proportion of students aged 18 to 24 who acknowledged driving drunk, to 31.4
percent in 2001 from 26.5 percent in 1998. That represents an increase in the
number of students who drove drunk over that three-year period to 2.8 million,
from 2.3 million.
Doug Lederman, "Death by Drinking," Inside Higher Ed, March 18,
2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/18/alcohol
The minority pool among GMAT takers is just not big enough
Like Murphy, most of the latest round of B-school
applicants are now receiving acceptance -- or rejection -- letters for this
fall. And as the offers go out, the level of minority enrollment is a pressing
concern for administrators at top schools. Enrollment of Asian Americans is
strong, at around 15% to 25% for top MBA programs. But overall enrollment of
under-represented minorities -- African Americans, Hispanics, and Native
Americans -- has remained flat at about 10% at accredited business schools,
according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of
Business."OUTDATED TERM." That figure is way below those groups' share
of the population. Recruiting African Americans, who comprise 12% of the U.S.
population and only about 7% of the U.S. B-school student body, is particularly
difficult. Although the number of nonwhites taking the GMAT has steadily
increased in recent years, the number of African Americans taking the exam
dropped slightly in 2003, according to the Graduate Management Admissions
Council. And some B-school insiders fear the effort to correct the balance is
about to get even more difficult.
Francesca Di Meglio, "Building a Fire Under the Melting Pot: Top
B-schools are doing their best to boost the number of minority applicants.
Trouble is, there just aren't enough to go around," Business Week,
March 16, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/MeltingPot
Goodnight, Peter. Goodnight, Tom. Goodnight, Dan.
Until Ted Turner ruined it. The networks' business
model never had room in its schedule for long-form news coverage. By the time
Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw retired, they were Lears in a dying kingdom, overrun
by barbarian talk-show hosts and Internet bloggers. Are we better off? The
political diversity the networks ludicrously refused to admit as a problem is
now everywhere. Cable, notably FOX, has democratized and leveled the opinion
field. For all the pious right-mindedness that gushed out of the three networks,
Barbara Walters and Lesley Stahl never had a snowball's chance of sitting in
those anchor chairs, while now most of cable's anchors seem to be women.
In the golden age of the network Anchorman, TV news was often pompous, wrong and
yes, waaay too liberal. But for all this, it brought -- it forced -- the world's
most liberal standard of free speech and discussion into some rather dark and
closed places. It was about this time that the United Nations -- chockablock
with dictators -- started holding conferences on America's "cultural
imperialism." In no small part, they meant Dan, Peter and Tom and their
probing camera armies. This week, when grand images poured out of Lebanon
of a million people massed against an occupier, it was reported by whichever
cable anchor was on shift that hour. News itself rules the kingdom now, so
there's no longer much call for an Anchorman Chronicles. Goodnight, Peter.
Goodnight, Tom. Goodnight, Dan.
Daniel Henninger, "Lifting Anchor: The Last Chronicle Of Dan Rather," The
Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2005; Page A12 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111110324952483100,00.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
Former Ernst & Young Tax Advisors: Caught in the Middle of a
Post-Sarbanes Client Tug-a-War
Carolyn Campbell says she decided it was time to leave
accounting firm Ernst & Young when she realized she would have to build a
new client base largely from scratch if she stayed. Ms. Campbell, 35 years
old, is an accountant whose specialty is advising large companies on local and
state taxes. For most of her career, the Big Four firm's audit clients supplied
the bulk of her work. But those jobs are harder to come by. Amid concerns of
conflicts of interest, more public companies are cutting back on giving other,
lucrative "nonauditing" assignments to their independent auditors amid
concerns of conflicts of interest. That means less work for consultants employed
by Big Four firms. In some cases, Ms. Campbell says, Ernst told her that
longtime audit clients were off-limits ... So in October Ms. Campbell, an
11-year Ernst veteran, left her position in Houston as a senior tax manager to
work for Alvarez & Marsal LLC, a consulting firm that doesn't do audits.
"I think I had a better opportunity working for a nonaccounting firm,"
she says. Now she is one of 13 former Ernst consultants at the center of a
lawsuit that Ernst filed last month in a New York state court in Manhattan,
accusing Alvarez & Marsal of raiding its tax and real-estate divisions'
personnel, poaching its clients, interfering with its business and
misappropriating confidential information. Alvarez says it hasn't engaged
in any improper conduct and argues that the suit is a sign of the accounting
industry's struggle to adjust to the post-Enron Corp. world.
Jonathan Weil, "In Post-Enron World, Accounting Firms Fight Over the
Pieces," The Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2005, Page
C1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111109239427082751,00.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing
Bob Jensen's threads on auditor independence and professionalism are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Professionalism
The new Foucault Society
The Foucault Society is involved in the study and
application of Michel Foucault's ideas within a contemporary context and to open
up a discourse to the widest possible audience. The Society's new website
serves as a resource for information, news, and events. It is designed to serve
as a means of exchanging ideas about the works of Michel Foucault.
Foucault Society ---
http://www.foucaultsociety.org/
I dream of the intellectual destroyer of evidence
and universalities, the one who, in the inertias and constraints of the present,
locates and marks the weak points, the openings, the lines of power, who
incessantly displaces himself, doesn't know exactly where he is heading nor what
he'll think tomorrow because he is too attentive to the present.
Michel Foucault, "The End of the Monarchy of Sex" from Foucault Live:
Interviews, 1966-1984, tr. John Johnston, ed. Sylvere Lotringer (New
York: Semiotext(e), 1989), p. 155.
The English have been watching too much U.S. television: Take a
flying leap in legal lotto
A teenage criminal who received £567,000 in
compensation after falling through a roof while trespassing boasted about his
wealth yesterday, saying that he was looking forward to buying "a few houses and
a flash car". I deserve this money and I don't care what anybody
says about me," he said. "I'm going to buy a big house so I have a place to live
with me mum when she gets out of jail. I might buy a few houses - I'll buy
whatever I want." He added: "The papers just call me a yob and a thug because
I've been done for robbery and assault but those were just silly stupid little
things, like. "I want to spend my money the way I want without people
interfering and I want to have a prosperous future."
Peter Zimonjic, "I'll buy houses and a flash car, says yob awarded £567,000,
Telegraph-News, March 2, 2005 ---
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/20/nyob20.xml
Forwarded by Barb Hessel
Flying Lutern Airlines
Velcome to da Lutern Airlines! Da
latest air service to sprout up in Minnesnowta vit service to Visconsin, Nort
Dah-kota and sometimes Sout Dah-kota.
Ve are a no-frills airline. We are all
in da same boat on Lutern Air, vair flying is an uplifting experience, so
velcome aboard. I am Lena Ingvist, yer flight attendant and stewardess, tew. As
you know, dere is no first class on Lutern Airlines, airflight tew tousand
tventy tew.
Meals are pot luck: rows one tru 6 ver
to bring da lefsa; 7 tru 15, da salad, 16 tru 21, da main hot- dish, and 22-30
da rømmegrøt.
Ve vill be singing 99 bottles uv beer
on da vall, so basses and tenors pleess sit in da rear of da aircraft, and
remember everyvun is responsible for der own baggage. All fares are free-vil
offering and the plane vil not land until da budget is met.
Direct yer attention to yer flight
attendent who vill acqvaint yew wit da safety system aboard this Lutheran Tvin
Yet 599.
"Okay, den listen up; I'm only
gonna say dis vunce. In da event of sudden loss uv cabin pressure, I am frankly
gonna be real surprised, so vill Captain Olson, becuz ve vill be flying right
around 2 tousand feet, so loss of cabin pressure vud probly indicate the Second
Coming or somting of dat nature, so I vuldn't bodder vit dem little masks on dem
rubber tubes. Yer gonna have bigger tings to vorry about dan yust dat. Just
stuff dose tings back up in der littl holes. Probly da masks fell out because of
turbulence, which to be honest vit yew, ve've been flying at 2 tousand feet and
dat is sort of like driving across a plowed field, but after a vile, you vill
get used to it.
In da ewent of a vater landing, I'd say
yust fergit it. Start saying Da Lord's prayer and yust hope you have time to git
to da part about forgive us our sins as ve forgive dose who sint against us (vich
some people say "tresspass against us", vich isn't right., but den,
vat can ya dew?)
Use uf cell phones is strictly
forbidden, not becuz dey interfere vit the planes navigational system, vich, by
da vay, is "seat of the pants all da vay." No, cell phones is a pain
in da wazoo, and if God had meant yew to use dem, he vould have put yer mout on
da side of yer head, so stow dose suckers!
Ve're gonna start lunch, buffet style
vit da coffee pot up front. First, ve'll have da hymn sing; hymnals are in
da seat pocket right in front of yew. Don't take yers wit you ven you go
or I am going to be real upset wit yew, and I ain't kiddin' eeder!"
So lets say grace:
"Come Lord Jesus, be our
gest, and let dese gifts tew us be blest.
Fadder, Son and Holy Ghost,
May ve land in Dulut or pretty clos."
Amen
Tanks for flying Lutern Airlines,
flight tew tousand tventy tew.
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