A TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES
Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars! into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?
Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles.
You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon -! not once, but several times - and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."
Stand proud, America!
It was nice of Canada to notice.
Canadian Beer Experiment
Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
American car horns beep in the tone of F.
No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times.
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
1 in every 4 Americans has appeared on television.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.
Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
The 57 on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.
Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
Betsy Ross is the only real person to ever have been the head on a Pez dispenser.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.
Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in jelly.
Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
Average life span of a major league baseball: seven pitches.
A duck's quack doesn't echo and no one knows why.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal."
The second? William Jefferson Clinton.
"Why did the Chicken cross the road?
KINDERGARTEN TEACHER: To get to the other side.
PAT BUCHANAN: To steal a job from a decent, hardworking American.
LA POLICE DEPARTMENT: Give us five minutes with the chicken and we'll find out.
DR. SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, But why it crossed, I've not been told!
GRANDPA: In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.
PLATO: For the greater good.
ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.
KARL MARX: It was an historical inevitability.
TIMOTHY LEARY: Because that's the only trip the establishment would let him take.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
RONALD REAGAN: To reach America, the shining city on a hill!
CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.
MARTIN LUTHER KING: I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.
FOX MULDER: You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?
BILL CLINTON: I certainly have no recollection of the fact that the chicken did cross the road. It depends on your definition of a chicken...It may be a hen, it may be a rooster... Either way, I swear that the chicken did NOT cross the road...I don't know any chickens. I have never known any chickens. And if I DID know any chickens I did not cross the road with THAT chicken.
FREUD: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.
BILL GATES: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. And Explorer is an inextricable part of the operating system.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON: The chicken did not cross the road ... it transcended it.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die. In the rain.
EINSTEIN: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
COLONEL SANDERS: I missed one?
I know how to please a woman.
Then please leave me alone.
I want to give myself to you.
Sorry, I don't accept cheap gifts.
Your hair color is fabulous.
Thank you. It's on aisle three at the corner drug store.
You look like a dream.
Go back to sleep.
I can tell that you want me.
Yes, I want you to leave.
I'd go through anything for you.
Let's start with your bank account.
May I have the last dance?
You've just had it.
Your place or mine?
Both. You go to your place, and I'll go to mine.
So, wanna go back to my place?
Well, I don't know. Will two people fit under a rock?
Is this seat empty?
Yes, and this one will be too if you sit down.
What's it like being the most beautiful girl in the bar?
What's it like being the biggest liar in the world?
Haven't I seen you someplace before?
Yeah, that's why I don't go there anymore.
So what do you do for a living?
Female impersonator.
Sorry, I don't date outside my species.
Man: "I'd like to call you. What's your number?"
Woman: "It's in the phone book."
Man: "But I don't know your name."
Woman: "That's in the phone book too.
As a result of an overwhelming lack of request, and with research help from that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Clause!
No Known Species of Reindeer Can Fly
But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
There are 2 Billion Children (Persons Under 18) In the World
But since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish & Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Populatoin Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes ther's at least one good child in each.
This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). Th is works out to 822.6 visits/second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, disrtibute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh, and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 stops are evenly disrtibuted around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 miles/household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding & ect.
So Santa's sleight must be moving at 650 miles/second 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a puny 27.4 miles/second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/hour.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2lb.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight, On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 lb. Even granting that "flying reindeer" could pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9 reindeer. We need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons.
This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth
This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 0.00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-lb. Santa (seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force.
If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas!!!
30) "You Are Different and That's Bad"
29) "Dad's New Wife Timothy"
28) "Pop! Goes The Hamster....And Other Great Microwave Games"
27) "Testing Homemade Parachutes Using Household Pets"
26) "The Hardy Boys, the Barbie Twins, and the Vice Squad"
25) "Babar Meets the Taxidermist"
24) "Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence"
23) "The Boy Who Died from Eating All His Vegetables"
22) "Start a Real-Estate Empire With the Change From Your Mom's Purse"
21) "The Pop-up Book of Human Anatomy"
20) "Things Rich Kids Have, But You Never Will"
19) "The Care Bears Maul Some Campers and are Shot Dead"
18) "How to Become The Dominant Military Power In Your Elementary School"
17) "Controlling the Playground: Respect through Fear"
16) "You Were an Accident"
15) "Strangers Have the Best Candy"
14) "The Little Sissy Who Snitched"
13) "Getting More Chocolate on Your Face"
12) "Where Would You Like to Be Buried?"
11) "Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her"
10) "The Attention Deficit Disorder Association's Book of Wild Animals of North America - Hey! Let's Go Ride Our Bikes!"
9) "All Dogs Go to Hell"
8) "The Kids' Guide to Hitchhiking"
7) "When Mommy and Daddy Don't Know the Answer, They Say God Did It"
6) "Garfield Gets Feline Leukemia"
5) "What Is That Dog Doing to That Other Dog?"
4) "Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Become Friends"
3) "Bi-Curious George"
2) "How to Dress Sexy for Adults"
1) "Daddy Drinks Because You Cry"
If you don't understand the goverments of the world, let's make it simple by using cows to explain:
Feudalism
You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
Pure Socialism
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.
Bureaucratic Socialism
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.
Fascism
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
Pure Communism
You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
Russian Communism
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
Dictatorship
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
Singaporean Democracy
You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.
Militarianism
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
Pure Democracy
You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
Representative Democracy
You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
American Democracy
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".
British Democracy
You have two cows. You feed them sheeps' brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.
Bureaucracy
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
Anarchy
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.
Capitalism
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Hong Kong Capitalism
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly - listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the fung shui is bad.
Environmentalism
You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
Feminism
You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.
Totalitarianism
You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
Political Correctness
You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
Counter Culture
Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.
Surrealism
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
If you work too hard, there is never any time for her.
If you don't work enough, you're a good-for-nothing bum.
If she has a boring repetitive job with low pay, it's exploitation. If you have a boring repetitive job with low pay, you should get off your butt and find something better.
If you get a promotion ahead of her, it's favoritism. If she gets a job ahead of you, it's equal opportunity.
If you mention how nice she looks, it's sexual harassment. If you keep quiet, it's male indifference.
If you cry, you're a wimp. If you don't, you're insensitive.
If you make a decision without consulting her, you're a chauvinist. If she makes a decision without consulting you, she's a liberated woman.
If you ask her to do something she doesn't enjoy, that's domination. If she asks you, it's a favor.
If you try to keep yourself in shape, you're vain. If you don't, you're a slob.
If you buy her flowers, you're after something. If you don't, you're not thoughtful.
If you're proud of your achievements, you're an egotist. If you're not, you're not ambitious.
If she has a headache, she's tired. If you have a headache, you don't love her anymore.
IN PRISON you spend the majority of your time in an 8x10 cell.
AT WORK you spend most of your day in a 6x8 cubicle.
IN PRISON you spend the majority of your time in an 8x10 cell. AT WORK you spend most of your day in a 6x8 cubicle.
IN PRISON you get three meals a day. AT WORK you get a break for 1 meal and you have to pay for it.
IN PRISON you get time off for good behavior. AT WORK you get rewarded for good behavior with more work.
IN PRISON a guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you. AT WORK you must carry around a security card and unlock and open all the doors.
IN PRISON you can watch TV and play games. AT WORK you get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON you get your own toilet. AT WORK you have to share.
IN PRISON they allow your family and friends to visit. AT WORK you cannot even speak to your family and friends.
IN PRISON all expenses are paid by taxpayers with no work required. AT WORK you get to pay all the expenses to go to work AND then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.
IN PRISON you spend most of your day looking through bars from the inside wanting to get out. AT WORK you spend most of your time wanting to get out and inside bars.
IN PRISON there are wardens who are often sadistic. AT WORK they are called MANAGERS.
IN PRISON you get three meals a day. AT WORK you get a break for 1 meal and you have to pay for it.
IN PRISON you get time off for good behavior. AT WORK you get rewarded for good behavior with more work.
IN PRISON a guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you. AT WORK you must carry around a security card and unlock and open all the doors.
IN PRISON you can watch TV and play games. AT WORK you get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON you get your own toilet. AT WORK you have to share.
IN PRISON they allow your family and friends to visit. AT WORK you cannot even speak to your family and friends.
IN PRISON all expenses are paid by taxpayers with no work required. AT WORK you get to pay all the expenses to go to work AND then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.
IN PRISON you spend most of your day looking through bars from the inside wanting to get out. AT WORK you spend most of your time wanting to get out and inside bars.
IN PRISON there are wardens who are often sadistic. AT WORK they are called MANAGERS.
© 2005 [email protected]