Subject: Daily Dose - 040324 - lesson in logic, BIZARRE NEWS, Dalmation dog, DDL, Rotten news

A fourth-grade teacher was giving her pupils a lesson in logic.

"Here is the situation," she said. "A man is standing up in a boat in the middle of a river, fishing. He loses his balance, falls in, and begins splashing and yelling for help. His wife hears the commotion, knows he can't swim, and runs down to the bank. Why do you think she ran to the bank?"

A little girl raised her hand and asked, "To draw out all his savings?"

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BIZARRE NEWS....

Bizarre Attempts to Fly

Man's attempts at flight date back to around 1020 when Oliver of Malmesbury, an English Benedictine monk, strapped a huge pair of wings to his body and try to soar into the air from Malmesbury Abbey. He broke both legs.

In 1783, Jacques Charles released a large unmanned balloon from Paris. It landed in Gonesse where it was attacked and destroyed by villagers who thought it was a monster.

In the early years of this century the Parisian Count de Guiseux created an Aeroplane Bicycle. The device featured large wings fixed to a bicycle with a propeller linked to the drive chain of the back wheel. To have any hope of elevation, the Count had to pedal furiously, making any form of flight an exhausting prospect.

The aerial velocipede was the brainchild of Monsieur A. Goupil in the 1870s. Resembling a unicycle beneath a Zeppelin, it proved spectacularly unsuccessful despite an optimistic write-up in the French trade press.

In 1742, French nobleman the Marquis de Bacqueville launched an ambitious attempt to fly across the River Seine in Paris with paddles strapped to his arms and legs. With a huge crowd gathered below, he leaped from a window ledge on the top floor of his house and began flapping vigorously. He fell like a rock but was lucky enough to land on a pile of old clothes in a washerwoman's boat. He sustained nothing worse than a broken leg.

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Keeping Them on Their Toes

OSLO, Norway - Women in the western city of Stavanger better keep an eye on their shoes, as a thief has been making off with several pairs of high-heeled shoes.

The shoe robber, described as a male in his 30s, enters homes, sometimes when the owners are there, and steals the pumps. Last month he knocked on the door of a woman's home and asked her if he could check a number in her phone book. She went to retrieve it, he jotted down a number, and he left.

It was only after he was gone that she realized all her high-heeled shoes were missing. The thief returned to the home on Saturday and took more shoes while she was showering and her boyfriend was in the living room.

Another woman said that highheeled shoes had been stolen from her home five times. Although other valuables are often nearby, he only takes the shoes.

The woman filed police complaints about the missing pumps, but there are no suspects as of now.

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Just Lion Around

LOS BANOS, Calif. - California state troopers patrolling a dusty Central Valley road spotted a living, healthy, 350-pound sea lion on the roadway's shoulder. Wildlife officials think the creature had used canals and rivers to travel some 100 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

"He was just sitting there on the shoulder of the road," said Officer Mike Panelli. "If any officers got too close, he sort of growled at them."

Eventually, experts from the state Department of Fish and Game and the Marine Mammal Rescue Center at Moss Landing, Calif., arrived to pick up the sea lion and haul it away.

"He's pretty big," Kathy Zagzebski, a project manager with the center, said of the 350-pound male. "We had 10 volunteers and a truck. It was a lot of work."

Zagzebski said the animal probably would be returned to the ocean this week.

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Rattling Her Cage

SOFIA, Bulgaria - One very lucky drunken man is still alive after entering the compound of a Himalayan bear at the Sofia zoo and refusing to leave.

The man leaped over the fence surrounding the outside part of the bear's compound. He plopped down on a piece of lumber, taunting zoo officials and police who had hurried to the scene.

"He was drinking from a bottle of liquor and shouting to the police: 'Hey come on, have you got the guts to come over here?'" zoo director Ivan Ivanov said.

The door to the cage that held the 330-pound female bear, Mila, was stuck, so she had to watch the scene from behind the bars of her cage. "She is not very friendly," Ivanov said. "She eats no meat, but she could have mauled and even killed him; the guy was lucky the cage door lock had got stuck."

Zoo officials went into the compound and locked the cage gate so that police could capture the intruder.

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Getting a Grasp on the Situation

LONDON - A man in London is expected to learn it's not a wise idea to drive at 60 miles per hour with a policeman hanging onto the car, The Mirror reported Tuesday.

At a trial at the Old Bailey, Constable Roy Teague explained how a car he was attempting to stop slowed down, but suddenly accelerated at him. Teague was struck and thrown onto the roof of the car, which luckily for him, had an open sunroof to which he could cling.

He testified the driver was swerving, braking and accelerating up to 60 miles per hour in an effort to throw him from the roof. "He started to punch me in the chin and mouth, shouting ...You are going to die -- I'm going to kill you'," Teague testified.

The policeman was eventually thrown off, breaking his wrist. The accused, Sean Huntroyd, appeared in court again Tuesday. He admits dangerous driving and actual bodily harm, but denies a charge of grievous bodily harm with intent (to kill).

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A nursery school teacher was delivering a station wagon full of kids home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmation dog.

The children started discussing what the dog's duties might be. "They use him to keep crowds back," said one youngster."No," said another, "he's just for good luck."

A third child concluded. "No silly, they use the dogs to find the fire hydrant!"

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DDL

There was a young man named Mcbride
Who could fart whenever he tried.
In a contest he blew
Two thousand and two,
And then shit and was disqualified

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Students at school were asked to write about the harmful effects of oil on fish. One 11-year old wrote, "When my mom opened a tin of sardines last night it was full of oil and all the sardines were dead."

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On a high school science quiz, there was the question, "When water becomes ice which of its physical properties increases?"

Everyone answered, "Its volume.." Except one wise guy who wrote, "When water becomes ice, its price increases."

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"7-Eleven announced that they were celebrating 2004 by giving out free coffee to anyone who was driving on New Year's Eve. 7-Eleven is also celebrating 2004 by throwing away all their sandwiches from 2002."
--Conan O'Brien

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Rotten News...  (true)

Soccer chief says women footballers need tighter shorts  
Fri Jan 16, 8:48 AM ET 

By Quentin Webb

LONDON (Reuters) - FIFA President Sepp Blatter has drawn condemnation from women's sports figures for saying the future of women's football could rest with tighter shorts.

"Come on, let's get women to play in different and more feminine garb than the men," Blatter told Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick in an interview.

Asked if he meant short skirts, Blatter said: "No, but in tighter shorts for example. In volleyball women wear different clothes from the men.

"Beautiful women play football nowadays, excuse me for saying so," he added.

Blatter said women already played with a lighter ball, making the game more feminine. "Why not in fashion?" he asked.

Blatter's remarks were translated by the Guardian on Friday.

Helen Donohue of the Women's Sports Foundation told Reuters: "This (comment) from the most powerful man in football -- it's belittling and an awful shame. In the past, he's been quoted as saying 'the future is female' and he's been a great supporter of the game. Hopefully, he'll be more than embarrassed."

England goalkeeper Pauline Cope told the Guardian: "He doesn't know what he is talking about," adding that women did not play with a lighter ball. It's completely irresponsible for a man in a powerful position to make comments like this."

"Within the next ten years, on a global basis you'll see as many women playing football as men," Donohue said. "That's what we want to talk about... about the technical ability and about the development of it in this country, not how tight the shorts are. (But) we do respect the fact that it's a commercial game. Whether you're David Beckham or Marieanne Spacey, we're not naive enough to think that it's not a factor as the game develops."

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Prison Officer Wins Bin Laden Joke Case  
Fri Jan 16, 9:02 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A British prison officer, fired for cracking a joke about Osama bin Laden , has won a claim for unfair dismissal after a tribunal ruled the jail governor's decision was "reprehensible," British newspapers said on Friday.

Colin Rose, who had 21 years experience within the prison service, was fired after being reported making an "insensitive" comment two months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York blamed on bin Laden's al Qaeda group.

When a colleague had asked him why he had used so much force to throw some keys down a metal chute at the jail in Lowestoft, eastern England, Rose had quipped: "There's a photo of Osama bin Laden there."

He said the remark was "barrack-room humor" but his superiors said a group of Asians visiting the jail might have been offended, newspapers reported.

However the tribunal ruled that Rose, a former soldier with Britain's Coldstream Guards, had effectively been accused of a "thought crime" as the visitors did not hear what he had said.

Ruling in Rose's favor, the tribunal criticized governor Jerry Knight's decision to sack him saying: "Conduct by the governor was reprehensible, totally unjustified. We wondered whether the governor lived in the real world."

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Sat, Jan 17, 2004
Cold Postmen Probed for Not Delivering Mail  
Fri Jan 16, 1:32 PM ET

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Ten Canadian letter carriers who refused to deliver the mail in temperatures hovering around minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit) could be disciplined, officials said on Friday.

Canada Post said it was probing why the employees in the city of Hull, in Quebec, had decided conditions were unbearable when other letter carriers around the country had coped with even worse temperatures.

"They decided it was too cold and didn't work so we're investigating to see if they followed all the procedures or not," said spokesman John Caines. "We've experienced extreme cold right across the country this year. Of all of our letter carriers -- and there are more than 20,000 -- these are the only 10 who have refused to work."

Caines said letter carriers were given training on how to deal with the cold and were given special boots, hats and winter coats. Carriers who could not find somewhere to warm up could request a delivery van to take shelter in, he added.