Thus the catch-22: Recovering alcoholics smoke. A non-alcoholic bar wants them to be able to smoke, in part so they won’t head over to bars that serve alcohol. But in order to allow these patrons to smoke, this non-alcoholic bar has to sell booze. Which, in the case of recovering alcoholics, is defeating the whole purpose of giving them a booze-free bar environment.
Smoking Allowed
“If they say I have to serve a 12-pack, I will buy a 12-pack of beer, sell it for $5 a can, call all the media, stand in front of our sober club and pour it all out on the ground, just to show them how ridiculous it is,” Charbonneau said. We say, you go, Charbonneau. Normally we’re not much for folks charring their lungs, even folks who benefit from universal health care, but given the choice between recovering alcoholics charring their lungs someplace where no one’s drinking, or charring their lungs where everyone’s abusing their liver, well, one’s the smart(er) choice. Or at the very least, one makes the roads safer after the bars close.
Source: Edmonton Journal
AS FAR AS YOU KNOW, THIS ARTICLE IS 100% ORIGINAL
The Internet is a powerful tool for research—anyone with a computer connection can access thousands of newspapers, magazines, and Web sites from which to suck down information on anything from quantum physics to chicken recipes to (ahem) hundreds upon hundreds of stories of people doing really dumb things all around the globe. But while the Internet makes it easy to research, it also makes it easy to plagiarize—particularly for college students who assume that their professors will never know if they cut and paste significant portions of someone else’s work into their own paper, or even if they simply turn in a term paper they’ve found online.
Here’s a hint for you, kids: they’re on to you. One article about online plagiarism, entitled “Probing for Plagiarism in the Virtual Classroom” was published in the online version of Syllabus, a technology magazine for academics, in May 2003. It detailed a number of ways those crafty kids were wantonly plagiarizing material they found online—and how online tools also made it easier to expose those who plagiarized.
Enough Irony to Cure Anemia
So how’s this for irony: turns out that this article on plagiarism was—oh, come on, you can guess—plagiarized itself. Whole chunks were lifted out of a previous article, “Maintaining Academic Integrity in Online Education,” by Michael Heberling, president of Baker College for Graduate Studies in Flint, Michigan. And how did Heberling find out about the plagiarism? Online, of course. There are so many layers of irony (and plagiarism) here that it’s hard to know where to start.
Confronted with the lifted passages, one of the coauthors of the Syllabus article maintained the somewhat contradictory dual excuses of “it was unintentional” and “we had deadline pressure.” Interestingly, those excuses sound awfully familiar. People have been lifting those from other plagiarists for years.
Sources: San Antonio Express-News, The Chronicle of Higher Education (See? Sources! We have nothing to hide!)
F IS FOR FAILURE
We’re all used to hearing about kids who fail literacy tests, but when a superintendent of schools fails one, it’s really a cause for concern. Wilfredo T. Laboy, superintendent of schools for Lawrence, Massachusetts, failed the state’s required literacy test—for the third time. Ironically, Laboy had recently placed a couple dozen teachers on leave for failing an English proficiency test. Asked why he failed his own test, Laboy gave excuses that should sound familiar to any test-taker, including a lack of preparation and concentration. Back to the books!
Source: Associated Press
TIPS FOR STUPID CRIMINALS
Because without these tips, they’d have to get, you know, real jobs.
HE’LL BE CALLING FROM A CELL, NOT ON ONE Today’s tip: Keep your identity private.
Pedro decided he needed a car, so he took one at gunpoint from its owner. He also stole the cell phone that happened to be in the car. So far, so good (for Pedro, not the car’s owner). But it seems that the owner of the car really wanted it back. So he called Pedro on the stolen cell and negotiated a ransom for the car: about $350. But where to leave the money?
No problem: Pedro gave the car’s owner his bank account number. From there things went downhill pretty quickly for Pedro. “The owner rushed to us asking for help,” investigator Jose Bezerra said to Reuters news agency. “It was no Swiss account, so we quickly found him.”
Now Pedro has no phone, no car, and no freedom. At least he still has his bank account.
Source: Reuters
A HARD KNOCK LIFE
In Berlin in July 2003, jobs were not easy to come by—but “Fiona” needed a job. She made a trip to the government-run job agency with realistically low expectations. Just about any job would do.
Except for the one the job agency suggested for her—a job in a brothel. Yes, and not as a maid.
It was all a crazy misunderstanding said a spokesperson for the agency. “They were looking for someone to work in a massage parlor. We didn’t know it was a brothel.” Well, maybe a quick hit over at the brothel’s Web site would have cleared things up.
One of the “enticing” lines on the site proclaims to prospective clients, “We’ll spoil you with hot kisses, tender and loving massages, or no-holds-barred sex.” Really, it says that. We (ahem) checked ourselves. No, we won’t tell you the Web site. But let’s just say that when a place of business with a Web site like this notes that it’s in the market for “nice, pretty, unmarried women between the ages of 18 and 35,” they’re probably not looking for someone to do filing.
“You should see the job as an important challenge in your life,” the Web site suggests. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Fiona decided she wasn’t up for the challenge. “It really is a bit much if the job center assumes that the best thing is for you to try your luck in a whorehouse,” she quipped to the newspaper Tageszeitung. One wonders what the next job on the list might have been.
Sources: Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and that Web site that we’re not going to tell you about. So don’t ask!
DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE
Chew on this: in March 2003, the Wm. Wrigley
Jr. Company (purveyors of the Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, and Wrigley’s Spearmint chewing gum brands), patented a new type of chewable treat. In patent 6,531,114, the gum company describes “a method for treating erectile dysfunction in an individual comprising the steps of providing a chewing gum composition that includes a therapeutically effective amount of sildenafil citrate in the chewing gum composition.”
Translation: Viagra gum.
The patent says that putting a stick of the stuff in your mouth causes the sildenafil citrate (the generic name for Viagra) “to be released from the chewing gum composition into the oral cavity of the individual.” Each stick would contain anywhere from 20 to 100 mg of the drug. For maximum effectiveness, you’d need to chew the gum for no less than two minutes—say, the playing time of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” (or perhaps “Sexual Healing” would be the more appropriate choice)—no less than a half hour before following Marvin’s advice.
The patent does not address how desperately smacking on gum for several minutes before sex could actually be conducive to the act itself.
No word as to what this new gum might be branded. Sadly, “Big Red” is already taken.
Sources: Scientific American, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
HISTORICAL DUMBOSITY: DONKEY KONG KRAZINESS
We’re setting the time machine back to the magical year of 1983: a time of pastel clothing, a cross dresser named Boy George topping the musical charts, and all the Ewoks you could eat! It was also the era in which a tiny company called Nintendo of America released an arcade game, Donkey Kong, that took the country by storm.
Gorilla Tactics
In the game—if for some reason you’ve blocked all memory of it from your mind—the player controls Mario, a humble Italian plumber, who races up a series of ramps to rescue his girlfriend, who has been
kidnapped by a gorilla, the Donkey Kong of the title. As our intrepid plumber scales the ramps, the gorilla throws barrels down at him to stop his progress. It’s said that Donkey Kong’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, based the game on the classic “Beauty and the Beast” story, although few if any versions of the story up to that point featured gorillas, Italian plumbers, or barrels hurled down ramps.
But who cares? The game was a huge smash and earned Nintendo of America $100 million in its first year. The company was busy stuffing money in its pockets just as fast as it could in the form of licensing agreements, including versions of the game for various consoles and computer platforms. The game was sucking in quarters, dollars, millions. Things just couldn’t go wrong. Until entertainment giant MCA, owner of Universal Studios, decided to sue Nintendo.
Kong of All They Survey
Why? Simple: Universal Studios made the classic 1933 movie King Kong. MCA decided that the name “Donkey Kong” infringed on its copyright for King Kong. That being the case, MCA felt that Nintendo owed it a little something—say, all the profits made from the game and its various licensings. Oh, and MCA wanted Nintendo to destroy all existing unsold Donkey Kong inventory—just to make sure. Nintendo, quite obviously taken aback, and with no wish to turn over all its booty, started researching all it could find out about MCA, Universal Studios, and King Kong.
Media Giant Killer
And, wouldn’t you know, Nintendo found out something very interesting: namely, that MCA didn’t own the rights to King Kong; the rights had lapsed at some point in the past. And, not only did MCA and Universal know that, but in a previous, unrelated lawsuit, they pointed out that King Kong was in the public domain. Armed with this knowledge, Nintendo told MCA to go hang. MCA, enraged like a gorilla hurling barrels, sued anyway. But like the very creature it tried to litigate out of existence, MCA fell hard at the end. Ultimately, the courts ruled in favor of Nintendo and MCA was required to pay Nintendo $1.8 million in damages. That’s a lot of bananas.
Sources: Gamespy.com, Snopes.com
TIPS FOR STUPID CRIMINALS
Because our lawyers tell us we can’t legally be held responsible, that’s why.
SPELING MATERS Today’s tip: Good spelling matters.
If “Jerry” was known for anything, it was for being a poor speller. This worked to his disadvantage in June 2003, when it became clear to him that he was on his way out of his job as a maintenance man at a gas station in Napavine, Washington. Jerry decided to go out with a bang, and later in the day, a bomblike object was discovered in a closet at the gas station. Near the would-be explosive was a note: “The bom will bloe if you touch it.”
To be fair to Jerry, “bom” is an actual word, defined in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary as “a large American serpent, so called from the sound it makes.” But in this particular context, it was pretty clear that no large American serpent was present. And “bloe” just isn’t a word, no matter how you slice it. All signs pointed to a bad speller, possibly a disgruntled one. So that was how Jerry got himself arrested and charged with malicious placement of an imitation explosive device.
If he’s convicted, he’ll go to jale.
Source: Associated Press
THE REALLY STUPID QUIZ: THOSE DISTURBING ANIMALS!
Look! It’s another Really Stupid Quiz! One of these really happened; the other two are just shaggy dog tales. You pick out the purebred from the mutts.
1. A man claiming to be a herpetologist from the St. Louis Zoo was arrested at Newark International Airport when a snake he was transporting vomited up several plastic bags filled with heroin. The snake, a Brazilian rainbow boa, had been fed a small rabbit that had been stuffed with the bags of drugs. The drugs were discovered as baggage handlers took the snake out of the cargo hold of the airplane and noticed the plastic bags in the snake’s carry cage, along with the remains of the rabbit. The snake’s owner was held on drug charges as well as a charge of animal cruelty. The St. Louis Zoo later told the police the accused smuggler was not on its staff.
2. Call it the bat’s revenge: two Mexican teenagers inadvertently cut off the power supply to their Baja California town after one of the bats they were shooting at winged toward a nearby transformer station before expiring. Its carcass fell into one of the transformers and burst into flame, triggering an automatic safety shutdown of the station. The station crew had to remove the charred remains. Power stayed down for several hours; the boys were charged with malicious mischief but the charges were later dropped on the condition they surrender their weapons to the local police.
3. A man in Germany awoke to suspicious sounds in his garden. Fearing a burglary, he phoned the police, who came around and searched for evidence of a break-in. What they found was two hedgehogs making love. Strange as this may sound, it’s not the first time mating hedgehogs have been mistaken for burglars: in New Zealand in 2002, eight policemen, accompanied by dogs, searched for a burglar only to discover the small, amorous animals.
Which one is really stupid?
Answer page 311.
Source: Ananova
“If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?”
—Scott Adams
“The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
THANK GOD IT WASN’T A MEDICAL EXAM
Come with us now to India. In a town called Kavali in the Andhra Pradesh state, a young man we’ll call “Sameer” is in a theater watching a film, Gangotri, in which the hero of the film dresses up as a woman in order to take a school exam for the film’s heroine. This strikes Sameer as a clever idea, but he doesn’t seem to recognize that movies are unrealistic representations of life in which people do things like walking on walls or bursting into song.
Hey, Sis, Can I Borrow That Pink Number? This certain lack of comprehension goes a long way to explain why our friend Sameer was arrested not long after watching Gangtori for attempting to take his sister’s school entrance exams. He put on a wig and women’s clothing and actually managed to get into the entrance hall and take the test. However, one of the examiners noticed that Sameer’s signature on the test didn’t match the signature they had on file. Also he didn’t look much like his sister. This might have been because Sameer was 22 years old and his sister was 12 years old.
Sameer was arrested for impersonation and forgery. But look at the bright side: if Sameer was getting his big ideas from movies and actually thought an adult man could pass as a preadolescent girl, just how useful do you think his test answers would have been to his sister?
Sources: Deccan Chronicle, Ananova
HOW NOT TO HAIL A TAXI
You remember that scene in Midnight Cowboy where a taxi nearly hits Dustin Hoffman and he starts pounding on the hood of the taxi, shouting, “I’m walking here!” Or if you don’t remember it because the movie came out 33 years ago, then you know it from the various parodies of it in everything from Forrest Gump to Disney’s Hercules. Point is, you know it. It’s become the accepted way of harassing overaggressive taxi drivers the world over.
Well, “Jae,” a Korean businessman, apparently left his “how to harass a taxi driver” instructions at home, because when a taxi nearly ran him down in Manila, he decided to forgo the usual pounding and shouting and instead decided on an alternate method of protest: he flashed his genitals at the taxi driver.
Why the Southern Exposure?
We feel this choice of expression is enigmatic. We would think that of all the body parts to present in this situation, the ones you’d least want to expose would be the most sensitive ones of all.
Exhibiting one’s genitals in public is usually confined to strip clubs, rock festivals, and Mardi Gras. A passing policeman caught Jae in his moment of undress and hauled him in to the police station. Jae apparently cursed and shouted the whole way. But we’re willing to bet he kept the privates private
once he got there. Jail’s the last place you want to be flashing anybody.
Source: Reuters
HOW TO ANNOY A JUDGE, TIP #4,655
We can understand why people on probation would like to get off probation a little early. Probation is such a drag: there’s always someone checking up on you, asking you what you’ve been doing, who you’re hanging out with—it’s like they think you’re a criminal or something.
But if you want to get off of probation early, you need to have a really excellent excuse. And a really excellent excuse is not what “Lionel” had when he faced a Broward County, Florida, circuit judge and asked to be let off his yearlong probation when he still had four months to go.
Judge: “Why should I let you off early?” (or words to that effect)
Lionel: “Because I don’t eat poppy seed bagels.”
Judge: “What?” (or a word to that effect)
Lionel: “Well, I really love poppy seed bagels.
Uncle John's Presents: Book of the Dumb Page 18