Daily Dose - 030203 - Jewish tradition, THIS is TRUE, Driver's Ed, DDL, Rotten News

A young Jew and an old Jew are riding on a bus in Jerusalem.

The young Jew asks, "Excuse me, sir, what time is it?"

The old Jew doesn't answer.

"Excuse me, sir," the young Jew asks again, "what time is it?"

The old Jew looks up him, but still doesn't answer.

The young Jew is puzzled, "Sir, forgive me for interrupting you all the time, but I really want to
know what time it is. Why won't you answer me?"

The old Jew turns toward the young man and says, "Son, the next stop is the last on this
route. I don't know you, so you must be a stranger to this land. If I answer you now, according
to Jewish tradition, I must invite you to my home. You're handsome and I have a beautiful
daughter. You would fall in love with her and you'd want to get married. And tell me, why
would I want a son-in-law who can't even afford a fucking watch?"

___________________________

THIS is TRUE.........

JUST SAY NO: An eighth-grader at Morton Middle School in Omaha, Neb., says a fellow
student handed him some marijuana in class to "pass on" to another student. Joshua
Erdkamp, 13, took it over to the trash and dumped it, keeping a tiny sample as proof. After
class, he went to his counselor and reported the incident, preferring to turn the evidence over
to someone he "trusts", his mother said. Principal Ivory Woods says he should have told a
teacher immediately. "We want our school to be safe," she said as she suspended the boy for
five days for his delay. (Omaha World-Herald)
...And now that the one kid brave enough to report drugs has been suspended, the school is
safer, right?

********

GHASTLY GETAWAY: After a bank robber in North Miami Beach, Fla., collected his loot, he
shoved his gun into his pocket, where it fired. No one was more startled than he was,
witnesses say, and police are unsure if he shot himself or not. He did manage to run out of
the bank toward his getaway car across the street, but he didn't make it that far -- he was run
down by a passing van. "He was pretty banged up," said an FBI spokeswoman. "There was
blood everywhere." The horrified driver, unaware that the man had just robbed a bank,
helped him up -- and the robber got to his getaway car and sped off. In addition to blood, he
left behind two gold teeth that were knocked out when he hit the ground. The FBI is hoping
for a match in its DNA data base. (Miami Herald)
...Deficient desperado ducks discharge, departs, doesn't detect driver, drubbed. Detectives
dream of deduced identity for indictment before dentist dispenses Demerol.

********

MEATBALL MARAUDERS: Two robbers at a pizza parlor in Boston, Mass., took five
employees hostage, but allowed one to leave if he promised not to call the police. He broke
that promise: as Johnathan Ortega, 23, and Miguel Angel Correa, 27, waited for the time-
delay lock on the safe, officers surrounded the building. When the robbers realized they were
trapped, they tried to convince their hostages to tell police they were customers and that the
robbers had left. "They were telling us, 'Oh, please, help us! Tie us up!'," says the manager.
"One of them said, 'I've got kids, I don't want to go to jail!' They made believe they were
hostages, too." The robbers hid their guns and the employees tied them up -- and then let the
cops in to arrest them. (Boston Herald)
...Ortega and Correa are the sort of people that would have to be reincarnated twice to get all
the way up to "dumb".

********

SMURF CANDIDATE: Stan Jones, a Montana Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate,
thought that there would be a massive shortage of medical care due to the "year 2000"
computer crisis, and started drinking colloidal silver, a natural anti-bacterial. He drank so
much of the home-made liquid, however, that he now suffers from argyria, a condition that
colors his skin a shocking shade of blue. "I'm healthy," Jones insists -- he's merely blue. He
has stopped drinking the concoction, but his new skin color is permanent. (Great Falls
Tribune)
...OK, no problem. But when is he going to debate the Green Party candidate that's running
against him?

********

BODY SHOP, BAWDY SHOP, WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? "Brothel Found at Car Repair
Shop"
-- AP headline

__________________________

On Joke A Radio Radio, Bill Engvall was talking about his daughter being in Driver's Ed.
While they're out at the store one day, Bill pulls out of the parking spot and backs into another
car. Bill gets out, exchanges insurance information and says, "I think this would be a great
learning experience so I say to my daughter, 'Punkin', now this is what you should do if you
ever have an accident. Just exchange information and go on your separate ways.'"

Bill's daughter said, "Dad, that wouldn't have happened if you used 'SMOG.'"

"'SMOG'? What's that?"

"Signal Mirror Over the shoulder, then Go."

"SMOG, huh? They teach you that in Drivers' Ed? Did they teach you 'SUIT'? 'Shut Up
Immature Teenager'?"

____________________________

DDL

Back in the days of old Adam,
The grass served as mattress for madam.
And they spent the whole day
On the sex that today
They would bounce on box springs, if they had 'em.

____________________________

Oliver Wendell Holmes once attended a meeting in which he was the shortest man present.
"Dr. Holmes," quipped a friend, "I should think you'd feel rather small among us big fellows."

"I do," retorted Holmes. "I feel like a dime among a lot of pennies."

*********

Ruth rode upon my motor bike
directly in back of me.
I hit a bump at 95
and rode on Ruthlessly.

And my all time favorite poem:

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Some poems rhyme,
But this one doesn't.

********

Have you seen the toothpaste commercial with the woman who's always complaining that her
father, the dentist, checks her teeth every time she gets in the car.

She oughta be glad her old man's not a gynecologist.

____________________________

Rotten News... (true)

Amazon blushes over sex link snafu

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
December 6, 2002, 5:38 PM PT

In a incident that highlights the pitfalls of online recommendation systems, Amazon.com on
Friday removed a link to a sex manual that appeared next to a listing for a spiritual guide by
well-known Christian televangelist Pat Robertson.

The two titles were temporarily linked as a result of technology that tracks and displays lists
of merchandise perused and purchased by Amazon visitors. Such promotions appear below
the main description for products under the title, "Customers who shopped for this item also
shopped for these items."

Amazon's automated results for Robertson's "Six Steps to Spiritual Revival" included a
second title by Robertson as well as a book about anal sex for men.

"It seemed to us that this is a rather curious juxtaposition of the two titles," said Amazon
spokeswoman Patty Smith, explaining the company's decision to remove the link. Amazon
conducted an investigation and determined these results were not that of hundreds of
customers going to the same items while they were shopping on the site," Smith said.

Amazon removed the link to the sex manual earlier Friday after being notified of the listing. A
section that shows direct suggestions by other customers still contained links to the book as
of late Friday.

The linking casts a spotlight on potential pitfalls of technology that flags online shopping
behavior for promotional purposes.

*********

B.C. women to be human shields in Iraq

Stuart Hunter
Citizen Special; with files from The Times, London

Monday, December 09, 2002

VANCOUVER -- As tensions between Iraq and the United States grow, two Canadian women
have left for Baghdad, the latest recruits for an army of human shields intent on stopping the
conflict.

Roommates Irene Vandas and Jennifer Ziemann flew from Vancouver to Jordan on Saturday.
They are members of an anti-war group called Voices in the Wilderness and intend to use
their bodies to discourage a U.S. bombing campaign.

Ms. Vandas, a 30-year-old registered nurse, and Ms. Ziemann, a 32-year-old home care
worker, will wait in Amman, Jordan, for entry visas allowing them to drive into Baghdad, Iraq,
in the next couple of days.

"It will be a powerful experience," Ms. Vandas said before leaving. "I'm not too scared."

"What can I say?" said her mother, Lesley Vandas, from her home in Vancouver. "It's a scary
thing she is doing and I wish she wasn't going. But she feels very strongly that it is a thing
she needs to do and she is gone. We're hoping very much that she gets back safely, God-
willing."

The pair plan to work as volunteers, live with Iraqi families and stay until Christmas.

They will join fellow Canadians Linda Morgan and Irene MacInnes, who have been in Iraq
since mid-November. The foursome will work with Canadian doctors Amir Khadir and David
Swann, two anti-war activists. Up to 40 members of the group from Canada, the U.S. and
Britain are expected to act as human shields.

The group is chronicling its mission on the Web site www.iraqpeaceteam.org . One
instalment by Kathy Kelly reads: "The reality of Iraqi life gets lost behind the filter of mistrust
through which all stories from Iraq emerge. This creates an enormous problem when the
stories of 24 million people cannot be taken into account."

Ottawa Citizen

*********

Beat on the Brat
The economics of spanking.
By Steven E. Landsburg
Posted Monday, December 9, 2002, at 2:25 PM PT

In child discipline, as in pretty much everything else, the rich have more options than the
poor. If you're rich (or even modestly middle-class), you can take away the Game Boy,
confiscate the car keys, or turn off the Instant Messenger. But for families with no Game
Boys, no cars, and no Internet access, that whole range of punishments is unavailable.

If you're rich or middle-class, you can cut your kid's allowance; if you're poor, your kid might
need the allowance to live on. When a middle-class kid loses his allowance, he makes do
with fewer CDs or video games. When a poor kid loses his allowance, he makes do with
fewer school lunches. Depriving a kid of luxuries can be an effective punishment; depriving a
kid of necessities can be a form of child abuse.

Spanking, by contrast, is an equal-opportunity punishment; it works equally well whether
you're rich or poor. So simple economics suggests that the very poor, with fewer alternatives
available, should spank their kids more—and they do. Professor Bruce Weinberg of Ohio
State University has studied this. He found that if you're a kid in a $6,000-a-year household,
you probably get spanked every six weeks or so. If your parents' annual income goes up to
$17,000, you'll get spanked about once every four months. As income rises above about
$17,000, spanking falls off more slowly; $40,000 and $120,000 households are not much
different from $17,000 households. That makes sense; in today's America, you don't have to
be very wealthy before your kid has a Game Boy, so even a $20,000 household has good
non-spanking alternatives.

For allowance withdrawal, the numbers go exactly the opposite way, Weinberg found. If
you're a kid in a typical $6,000-a-year family, you'll almost never lose your allowance, but in a
family that makes $17,000 or more, you'll lose your allowance four or five times a year.

There are other cultural factors: Boys are punished more than girls, with substantially more
spankings and a bit more in the way of allowance withdrawals. Single mothers spank a little
less, and withdraw allowances quite a bit less, than other parents. Older and better-educated
parents are a bit less likely to spank and a bit more likely to withdraw allowances. Bigger
families spank less and withdraw allowances more. But Weinberg's study finds that the poor
spank more even after you've accounted for all of these effects. The question is why.

Here's one good alternative to the economic explanation: University of New Hampshire
sociologist Murray Straus has published multiple studies concluding that children who are
spanked are less successful as adults. If the link is causal—that is, if being spanked actually
lowers your earnings potential—and if spanking runs in families, then we have an alternative
explanation for Weinberg's numbers: Low-income parents are more likely to spank their
children because low-income parents are more likely to have been spanked themselves. Or
maybe it's as simple as this: Poverty breeds frustration, and frustrated parents lash out at
their kids. Does any reader have a better story?