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Yucks Digest V1 #43

Yucks Digest                Tue, 16 Apr 91       Volume 1 : Issue  43 

Today's Topics:
                          "I got better..."
                                cutie
              Females 'Contaminate' Male Asparagus Seeds
                         Noted from Herb Caen
                   Nuclear Detonation Model Wanted.
                              Semper Pi
                    Stretch Limo Business Shrinks
                             Sweet Jesus
                     Tabloids Make Hay Of Mob Hit
                           todays newsbite
                             US Tax info
                         Yucks Digest V1 #42

The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual, the
possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous.  It is issued on a
semi-regular basis, as the whim and time present themselves.

Back issues may be ftp'd from arthur.cs.purdue.edu from
the ~ftp/pub/spaf/yucks directory.  Material in archives
Mail.1--Mail.4 is not in digest format.

Submissions and subscription requests should be sent to spaf@cs.purdue.edu

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 16:35:27 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: "I got better..."
To: yucks-request

   Death row convict miraculously survives execution in Taiwan

   TAIPEI, April 16 (AFP) - Taiwan's judicial authorities on Tuesday
were mulling over what to do with a death row convict, who
miraculously survived his execution.
   Huang Ching-chia, 25, sentenced to death for robbing and stabbing
to death a fellow taxi driver, was shot once in the back of the head
instead of the heart on Monday because he had agreed to donate his
organs.
   His remains were rushed to the Veterans General Hospital so that
his organs could be preserved, but he miraculously survived and his
condition was "getting better and better," hospital doctor Lei
Yung-yao said.
   Dr. Lei reported the bizarre incident to the Taiwan High Court
Prosecutor Chen Chui, who was said to be baffled because there was no
precedent for such a situation.
   However, Vice Justice Minister Lin Shyi-hwu told reporters that
Mr. Huang should be executed again.

------------------------------

Date: 16 Apr 91 04:51:52 EST (Tue)
From: dscatl!lindsay@gatech.edu (Lindsay Cleveland)
Subject: life imitates art
To: spaf

Contributed by: mark thompson (mark@megatek.UUCP)

True fact (humor in the financial press):

A very large government contractor (VLGC) is involved in a proxy fight with
a questionable outside investor (QOI). The QOI published the following in
a large number of big city newspapers (BCNs). It quotes statements from the
VLGC's annual statement and the QOI's translation... quote

        [VLGC] says                               Our translation
We characterize 1989 as a transitional
year which prepared us for strong               1989 was a bad year
financial performance in 1990 and beyond.

[VLGC]'s sales increased slightly when          Sales are down $541 million.
adjusted for completion of the <plane 1>        But they're up if you count
program.                                        business we don't have anymore.

A third initiative centers on our efforts
to attract commercial aircraft sub-
contracting work to our facilities in           We still haven't found a
Georgia. We are continuing discussions          replacement business for the
with potential customers and expect to          <plane 1>.
build this base significantly.

The write-offs are expected to cover excess     The write-offs will be even
costs to completion after estimated pricing     higher unless the govern-
adjustments and contract changes.               ment agrees to rewrite the
                                                contracts.

Absent the write-off on the <plane 2> air-      Profit margins are down. But
craft modification program margins also         they are up if you don't
improved for the technology services group.     count the business we lost
                                                money on.
The stock buy-back program to recover from
the market share equivalent to those issued     We stopped buying back shares
to the ESOP was suspended in 1989, pending      because we were running out
clarification of the timing of cash require-    of money.
ments related to the 1989 write-offs.

There are hundreds of ongoing programs          Our funded backlog keeps going
throughout [VLGC] that form a solid business    down:
base. Many of the programs extend well into
the future. Ordinarily, because of the method   1986    $9.7 billion
of funding of government programs, they do      1987    $8.4 billion
not appear in the backlog beyond the current    1988    $7.4 billion
year.                                           1989    $7.1 billion

Early this year, we agreed with the customer
that work on future phases of this program      We got fired.
will be performed by another supplier.

Regarding the <plane 3>, several factors have
occasioned design and schedule difficulties
in developing the aircraft. Significant among
these factors was an expectation of a high      We bid on the wrong plane.
degree of commonality with the <plane 4>
which turned out not to be attainable due to
other performance characteristics required by
the Navy.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 12:36:46 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Females 'Contaminate' Male Asparagus Seeds
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU

From: lynne (Lynne Jolitz)

		Females 'Contaminate' Male Asparagus Seeds

Newark, NJ:
	Rutgers University is suing a commercial nursery for feminizing
its product - a macho all-male asparagus - by exposing it to "gross
contamination with females."

	Rutgers created the "supermale" seed in 1984 and contends that it
was contaminated by females sometime last year.

	A crop of the male hybrid can yield up to four times more
vegetable than a sexually mixed crop, partly because its energies are
not diverted to produce flower and seed...

	Before development of the macho seed, a mixed batch of seeds
produced about 1,300 pounds of asparagus per acre. The all-male seeds --
developed to form super-male plants with names such as the "Jersey Titan",
"Jersey King" and "Jersey Giant" -- produce more than 4,000 pounds.

	The lawsuit said Rutgers will lose money because it will take
two years to develop parent plants that produce the male seeds. The ones it
initially produced went to Nourse.

	Company attorney John Sikorski said the company followed all
directions given by the university and does not know how the all-male
hybrid became contaminated...			SF Chronicle 16 April 1991

==============
A few questions:

Why is interacting with females "gross"? In fact,
why shouldn't asparagus have the same fun everyone else has?

Has anyone ever thought of asparagus as "macho". Picture eating asparagus
with a beer and pretzel -- yummy, right?

Do males really put out four times more work if celibate? Is this extensible
to other species?

Why would a university give its prototype to a nursery for commercial use.
Couldn't they have waited until some more grew?

And in the classic male evasion, we get the "How could this have happened"
outcry -- as if we can't figure it out yet.

------------------------------

Date: 16 Apr 91 10:30:03 GMT
From: dmturne@ptsfa.pacbell.com (Dave Turner)
Subject: Noted from Herb Caen
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny

Excerpted From Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle,
Monday, April 8, 1991.

  TALKSHOW: KQED radio announced a few days ago that due to lack of
funding, it was canceling its "Perspectives" commentaries. Next
morning, Doug Edwards was checking the call-in tape for listener
reaction and came across this from a women on her car phone: "My
name is Julia. Longtime listener. I'm very upset that you're canceling
'Perspectives' and I'm considering canceling my support. Please
reinstate --," followed by the sound of squealing brakes, a crash,
shattering glass, and Julia yelling "Oh s---, you've made me so mad
I just rear-ended the f---er in front of me. Have to go now." Click.
Poor Julia. Funds were restored, and "Perspectives" is back on the air.

[KQED is a listener supported public radio station.]

------------------------------

From: mikes@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Michael Squires)
Subject: Nuclear Detonation Model Wanted.
Newsgroups: alt.sources.wanted

The Office of Civil Defense published a book called "Nuclear  Weapons
Effects".  It was used in CD training classes.  It contains equations and
nomographs that will let you determine how quickly an air, land, or water
burst will demolish various structures.  GE published a little booklet in
the '60's (the may still do it) that contained a nuclear weapons effects
slide rule, plus similar tables.

In terms of computer software the most famous is probably the SIR NEM model
(Strategic International Relations Nuclear Exchange Model) created by the
Agency for Interscience Methodology in Chicago in the 70's which was run
by ACDA and by the Joint Strategic Targeting Planning Staff.  Another
model still apparently in use is the Arsenal Exchange Model which was less
disaggregated.  (This is current as of 1980, the last time I spent much
time in this area..)  The sources for SIR NEM were available from ACDA at
one time, with all the comments removed (except for the JSTPS line
numbers!).

An interesting aside:  when I recompiled a version of AEM that I know was
used during the SALT I talks I was interested to find 13 FORTRAN errors
missed by the more primitive compilers of the early 70's (CDC 3600 FTN).
These were all uninitialized variables.  Now, about that 100% reliability
you promised....

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 12:36:13 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Semper Pi
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU

>From Federal Computer Week:

Macintosh users are proud of their fanatic dedication to their
computers. In Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm, a Marine Corps
captain - and Apple software and hardware developer - carried his loves
of Macs to an extreme.

In his after-action letter to Apple Computer Inc. chairman John
Sculley, Capt. Grant K. Holcomb of the 3rd Marine Division reported the
following:

	"On the 27th of February, just before noon, I discovered what I
	think was an Iraqi infantry regimental headquarters command
	bunker. Upon entering the bunker, I discovered an IBM
	microcomputer sitting on a desk.  Having in my posession
	several Iraqi hand grenades I had found earlier, I was consumed
	by a deeply suppressed desire. I ordered the other Marines with
	me to clear the area and take cover. I pulled the pin on a
	fragmentation grenade and placed it on the computer behind the
	monitor and ran like hell. I was shortly followed by a rain of
	electronic debris. I feel it fitting that on the eve of world
	peace a blow be made in the name of MS-DOS prisoners all over
	the world."

And PC's don't even have the Mac's little bomb icon announcing
a system error.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 00:12:59 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Stretch Limo Business Shrinks
To: spaf

   PORT SANILAC, Mich. (AP)
   The gross national product shrank. Unemployment grew. Now
limousine makers are getting stretched.
   Not only had the recession and the Persian Gulf crisis combined to
squeeze corporate profits and workers' paychecks, but the companies
that make limos aren't making quite so many these days.
   Limousine converters are those companies that saw regular cars in
half and add extra seats, a television, telephone, bar and the other
niceties you find inside. In the mid-1980s, converters sold about
4,000 stretch limousines a year, said Wayne Smith, a spokesman for
the Washington-based National Limousine Association.
   But with the recession, makers are expected to sell only 1,200 to
1,500 this year, Smith said. Meanwhile, the number of converters has
shrunk from about 50 two years ago to nearly a dozen today, due to
the tough economic times and a crackdown on safety standards, he said.
   Some of the bigger limousine converters are National Coach
Engineering Ltd. of Port Sanilac, Mich., Kristo Coach of Anaheim,
Calif., and DeBryan Coach of Springfield, Mo.
   Their vehicles are sold to the 2,000 full-time and 5,000 part-time
limousine rental companies that operate in the United States.
   Rental companies encountered a rough ride starting last year. When
economic times got tough, many traditional limo riders sought more
modest means of transportation.
   The drop in air travel during the Persian Gulf War also cut down
on the use of limousines to and from airports, especially
international hubs.
   The limo business is poised to pick up now that the war is over
and prom and wedding season have begun. The limousine association
estimates limos are used in 70 percent of all weddings.
   Improvement may not be so imminent for converters. Even before the
recession, they were battling a survival-of-the-fittest shakeout that
closed dozens of smaller shops that couldn't afford to meet federal
safety standards.
   "We intend to be one of the ones that's left when its all over
with," said Garret W. Forbis, president of National Coach, which has
built limos for celebrities like former heavyweight champion Buster
Douglas, singer Robert Goulet and the late Sammy Davis Jr.
   Forbis' company has operated since 1971, keeping more long, sleek
cars gliding through Port Sanilac than usual for a village of 650
people about 85 miles north of Detroit.
   With the economic slack, Forbis has stopped making cars at his
70,000-square-foot Port Sanilac building, using it for storage and
heating only a few offices.
   But 45 workers at his Forester plant turn out one limousine a day,
about the same as at the other big companies.
   Limousines for executives and government officials who use such
gear make up 80 percent of the market, Forbis said.
   A typical executive limousine might be stretched by 40 inches,
extending the length of a standard 18 1/2-foot Lincoln Town Car to
just under 22 feet.

------------------------------

Date: 11 Apr 91 15:55:55 GMT
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Subject: Sweet Jesus
Newsgroups: alt.tasteless,talk.religion.misc,soc.culture.australian

From the Glasgow Herald, 29-3-91:

        JESUS SWEET IN BAD TASTE

        A chocolate Jesus which bleeds red jam has outraged Church leaders.

        The Easter sweet is marketed as the "immaculate confection".

        It's a model of Christ nailed to a chocolate cross, and comes
        complete with a crown of thorns and a look of agony.

        The chocolate Christ is named Sweet Jesus by the man who invented
        it, Richard Manderson, of Canberra, Australia.

        He says eating them should make people more aware of the meaning of
        Easter than munching a chocolate egg.

        And he's hit on the slogan: "Put religion back into Easter with an
        edible icon".

        But Sydney Catholic Church spokesman Father Brian Lucas hit back:
        "They're irreverent and offensive.

        "It's an appalling exercise in bad taste."

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 02:05:18 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Tabloids Make Hay Of Mob Hit
To: yucks-request

   NEW YORK (AP)
   Did John Gotti order the execution of his own driver? If so, was
it because the man was involved with drugs? Singing to the feds?
Married to a party animal?
   The death of Bartholomew "Bobby" Borriello, like most alleged mob
hits, has produced many theories, scenarios and yarns, but very
little in the way of witnesses or evidence.
   But to the city's tabloids, locked in a battle of their own,
Borriello's shooting last weekend offered the promise of a mob war.
   Evoking the all-out, go-to-the-mattresses struggle depicted in
"The Godfather," the New York Post said the slaying "could be the
beginning of a long and bloody mob war." The Daily News wondered if
it would "open the spigot of a bloodbath."
   Fear extended to the jury pool for the upcoming trial of Gotti's
older brother Peter on racketeering charges. John Gotti, reputed boss
of the Gambino organization, the nation's largest crime family, was
held without bail awaiting his own federal racketeering trial.
   A potential juror in Peter Gotti's trial was excused Monday after
he expressed fear of being associated with the proceeding.
   "What are you afraid of?" the judge asked.
   "Just being here," the man responded, looking around the courtroom.
   The fact there has been no large-scale gangland warfare in more
than 50 years has not stopped unidentified police experts from
predicting Mafia armageddon whenever a notable hood gets rubbed out.
   Gambino boss Paul Castellano was gunned down outside an East Side
steakhouse in 1985 and underboss Frank DeCicco was blown up by a car
bomb the following year, but the family continued to do business,
with the usual steady succession of discrete murders and
disappearances.
   Despite pressure on reporters and investigators to make sense of
the slaying, a scholarly observer said most mob hits do not surrender
their mysteries readily.
   "The reason behind a hit usually takes time to come out, and
sometimes it never comes out," said Howard Abadinsky, a Saint Xavier
College criminologist and founder of the International Association
for the Study of Organized Crime.
   "When Tommy Eboli was hit (in 1972) everyone got it wrong,"
Abadinsky recalled Monday. "They said he was the head of the Genovese
family, but he was only a figurehead who got whacked because he got
out of line."
   After a hit, he said, investigators call in their informers and
begin reviewing electronic surveillance data to see if they missed
something. Both processes take time, and neither is sure to offer
reliable information.
   "It's not as if the word out on the street is right," he said.
"Often the guys who do the hit don't know why it was done. Nor do
they ask."
   The picture is further clouded, he said, by the fact that police
and mobsters "have been known to issue disinformation"  the cops to
destabilize a crime family or puff up a prosecutorial target, the
robbers to put investigators off their trail.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 18:27:25 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: todays newsbite
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU

From: rick@uunet.uu.net (Rick Adams)

	Israel has airlifted the entire Jewish population of Albania to Israel.

I can't help but wonder what exactly that entailed.  A 2 seat Cessna?
Federal Express?  A Fleet of 747s running nonstop for months?

Did the airliftees object?  Did Albania notice?

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 18:32:03 MDT
From: Steve Elias <eli@cisco.com>
Subject: US Tax info
To: eniac@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us

from the US Tax Table:

if your taxable income was $5, you owe $2 to the IRS.

if your taxable income was $4, you owe nothing to the IRS.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 13:02:03 -0700
From: Rex Black <rutgers!devnet.la.locus.com!rex>
Subject: Yucks Digest V1 #42
To: spaf

> On 60 Minutes last night (paraphrased), Richard Nixon said, "If I were
> the president right now, I'd have the CIA put a contract out on Hussein...
> that is, if they still did that sort of thing...  assuming they ever did."

Tricky Dick should know:  The CIA tried millions of ways to off Castro, and
of course there was Salvador Allende...

> In Editorial Pointers on page 5 of the April 1991 Communications of the ACM, it
> is stated that
>     "We are in the process of adjusting the content and "look and feel"
>     of the magazine to more effectively speak to the large, diverse,
>     international readership that now conspires the professional computing
>     community."
> Since being a computer professional is now a conspiracy, does that disqualify
> us from Star Wars research?

Has anyone sent this to SubGenius?  Sounds like the perfect article...

> >From the Guardian, 30.3.91, bylined Reuters in Beijing:
> A restaurant in China has been exposed for serving dumplings stuffed with
> human flesh which proved to be a hit with unwitting customers...

There is a great camp movie called "The Undertaker and His Pals" that sends
up a story virtually identical to this.  If you have 80 minutes free--and
can find it--I highly recommend it.  For the more seriously disturbed, there's
always the "Faces of Death" segment on that cult religion that involves
cannibalism.

And, just so I can say I contributed _somthing_ to this otherwise mindless
reply, I saw something rather funny in the L.A. Times this weekend.  As 
some may know, we Californians are having a serious drought, and it's 
_really_ bad down here in Southern California.  Well, in spite of the
draconian conservation measures that the various water departments are
imposing on us, it's still possible for a real estate developer to get
a permit for a new water hook-up.  Now, some of us Angelenos are no-growth
types (myself included), but our San Diegan neighbors are a bit more 
rabid about limiting development.  A bumper sticker is becoming quite
popular down there, it seems:

STOP GROWTH
FLUSH TWICE!!!

On the same note, some San Diego baseball star recently got his wrist
slapped for using 15,000 gallons of water in one day.  His reason:
He had to refill his Koi pond, which leaks.

------------------------------

End of Yucks Digest
------------------------------