About This Blog

This Blog includes political and cultural views of the Right and the Left with critical commentary from time to time. The most popular feature is the odd news items from around the world - the interesting tidbits and reports of eccentric and bizarre behavior. Send your news items to criticalcurmudgeon@yahoo.com. Refer your friends to this blog. Our Internet address is: http://thingsillconsidered.blogspot.com

The following articles are included in this Blog updated on Saturday, September 6, 2003.

1. Study Finds Many Ignore Warnings on Sex Practices - Nearly one of every two people in this NYC survey do not use condoms. Read this report and be prepared to be appalled.

2. Why Road Signs Should Get to the Point - A quick laugh when well-meaning clergy interfere with highway signs.

3. Say It Isn't So Contessa, Say It Isn't So - Britain had Lasagne in 1436, 200 years before the Italians?

4. New Zealand Farmers Protest Flatulence Tax - They mail in their stinky protest to government officials.

5. Man Found Guilty After Mooning Jury - Not the brightest move, especially when he did this before they began deliberations.

6. Stupid Is As Stupid Does - A bank robber writes the note on the back of his resume and then leaves it behind.

7. Official Apologizes for "Skirt" Remark - The gentle folks in Niles, Illinois were offended by this "vile" sexist remark.

8. Lawyer Charged with Mailing Deadly Snake - An Arkansas lawyer mails a copperhead to his intended victim.

Study Finds Many Ignore Warnings on Sex Practices

Condensed from an article By Richard Perez-Pena in the August 9, 2003 issue of the New York Times, this report will scare the hell out of you. It makes you wonder if these people have a death wish. The difference in condom use among gay men and heterosexual men is not that much different - 45% to 38%. One has to believe that these results may very well be the norm in every major metro area.

Most New Yorkers with multiple sexual partners do not know whether they are infected with H.I.V., and more than 40 percent did not use condoms the last time they had sex, according to what city officials say is the most comprehensive survey ever conducted of the city's sexual habits. People with multiple partners were more likely than others to use condoms and to have had a recent H.I.V. test, but not much more, according to the survey, by the city's
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In all, the results call into question the continuing effectiveness of nearly two decades of messages about protected sex since the onset of the AIDS epidemic.

Last year, the department conducted a telephone poll of a random sampling of 10,000 adult New Yorkers about a wide range of health issues, providing a rich source of data on subjects like diabetes and obesity. The department has not yet formally released its findings on sexual practices, but they were posted last week on its Web site, www.nyc.gov/health.

People need to talk to their sexual partners about H.I.V. status and condom use. The department's new motto is "Do ask, do tell." Among city residents who had three or more sex partners in the previous year, 58 percent said they used a condom the last time they had sex. City health officials said the figure would have been much lower if respondents in this group, who made up one-seventh of the population polled, had been asked whether they used a condom every time they had sex in the last year. In that same group, 34 percent said they had been tested for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, in the previous 18 months.

Among all the New Yorkers surveyed, the poll found that 36 percent used a condom the last time they had sex, and that 26 percent had been tested for H.I.V. in the preceding 18 months. Men who had sex with men were more likely than others to use condoms. But again, as with those who had three or more sex partners, high-risk behavior was not accompanied by a dramatically higher rate of condom use. Of men who had sex with men, 45 percent said they used a condom the last time they had sex, compared with 38 percent of other men.

The survey found that middle-aged people were less than half as likely to use condoms as younger adults. Among people aged 45 to 64, 24 percent said they used a condom the last time they had sex. Among those 18 to 24, the figure was 61 percent, and rose to 73 percent for those who had three or more partners. The findings suggest that messages about protected sex have taken root most firmly among people who grew up with them.

Department officials said there was no such generational divide among gay men, probably because those in middle age now were the original targets of pro-condom campaigns when AIDS first burst on the scene in the 1980's, and they are the ones most likely to have been scarred by seeing their friends and partners die of the disease.

AIDS deaths in New York City have dropped sharply from a mid-1990's peak of 8,000 people each year, thanks in part to new classes of antiviral drugs. But contrary to perception, the disease has continued to kill people in large numbers, including 1,774 in the city in 2001. Among illnesses, only cardiovascular diseases, cancers and pneumonia and influenza caused more deaths.

And as long-term survival with H.I.V. becomes the norm, the number of infected people continues to climb steadily. About 80,000 people in New York City have tested positive for H.I.V., and an unknown number have the virus but do not know it, according to city health officials.

Why Road Signs Should Get to the Point - Quickly

A priest and a pastor from local churches were standing by the side of the road, pounding a sign into the ground, which read:

"The End is Near! Turn Yourself Around Now Before It's Too Late!"

"Leave us alone, you religious nuts!" yelled a driver as he sped past.

From the curve ahead, they heard screeching tires and a big splash. The pastor turned to the priest and asked, "Do you think the sign
should just say: BRIDGE OUT? Si, padre, si!

Say It Isn't So Contessa, Say It Isn't So! - Britain May Have Had Lasagna Before Italy? - Oh, no che mala vita!

Condensed from an AP report by Sue Leeman in London.

After a hard day's jousting, what a medieval English knight needed was .... a plate of lasagna.

And he apparently could have it, according to British researchers who claim to have found a British recipe for lasagna dating from the 14th century — long before Italian chefs came up with the delicious concoction of layers of pasta topped with cheese.
(and meat lady, we all aren't cheese only eaters.)

"This is the first recorded recipe for a lasagna-based dish," David Crompton, one of the researchers, said Tuesday. "The Italian dish has tomatoes, which were only discovered two centuries later in the New World." Crompton didn't claim that the English invented lasagna, and other food historians have suggested the dish has a very ancient history.

Crompton and others who are organizing a medieval festival to be held at Berkeley Castle in southern England this summer found the recipe in "The Forme of Cury" at the British Museum, commissioned by King Richard II in 1390 and regarded as one of the world's oldest recipe books.

"We prepared the medieval lasagna yesterday at the castle and it was delicious, although strangely sweet and spicy," Crompton said. Among its ingredients are cinnamon and saffron, not usually found in the Italian version.

Predictably, the Italians are having none of it. "Whatever this old dish was called, it was not lasagna as we make it," The London Daily Telegraph quoted an Italian Embassy spokesman as saying.

(Cinnamon and saffron - strange ingredients indeed but perhaps they could not be worse than those psuedo cooks who load their sauce up with Oregano and think that's Italian. My personal vendetta against the spice is that it is overused and dominates all the other flavors. If I had my way I would ban it from all Italian cooking and administer random beatings to those who violated the ban. Sugar in sauce - more random beatings to administer to those who add sugar. But speaking as a PR practitioner, my clever counterparts made the global news and got great press for their medieval festival. Well done, chaps!)

New Zealand Farmers Protest 'Flatulence' Tax

Condensed from an AP article by Ray Lilley, this piece will make you wonder if everyone who gets elected to government posts lose their minds as well as touch with reality. Next thing you know they will be asking us to swallow microchips to monitor our gaseous discharges and tax us accordingly.

New Zealand farmers are mailing parcels of sheep and cow manure to lawmakers to protest a so-called "flatulence" tax on greenhouse gas emissions from their flocks and herds, the New Zealand's postal service complained Tuesday. The service said about 20 reeking packages and envelopes had been sent to the nation's Parliament and that the protest — dubbed the "Raise a Stink" campaign — was endangering the health of postal workers.

Farmers are angry that the government has levied the tax to raise 8 million New Zealand dollars (US$4.7 million) a year — about 300 New Zealand dollars (US$177) for average farms and ranches — for research into methane gas emissions from agricultural animals. Millions of sheep, cattle and other animals that graze on New Zealand's lush farmlands are thought to produce 55 percent of the country's greenhouse gases. New Zealand Post spokesman Ian Long said sending manure by the mail was a crime.

Parliamentary security officials said some stained and damp mail items had been intercepted before they made it to government ministers. (Too bad!)

Adam Fricker, editor of the Rural News newspaper which encouraged the protest, said farmers had taken "radical" action to get the ear of the government.

(Adam, don't you mean to get the nose of the government?)"

I wonder if any of our readers remember the equally moronic move by the State of Oregon which caved in to equally moronic activists who complained that the mules being used in logging operations were contaminating streams by urinating and defecating in them. The State's solution: Canvas diapers for the mules. Yes, unfortunately this is a true story but thank God this idiocy was abandoned. I suppose it was abandoned because they could not catch and diaper the bears, deer, rabbits, birds and everything else in the woods that poops and pees in the streams.)

Man Found Guilty After Mooning Jury

Panama City, Florida jurors who were mooned by a defendant needed only 30 minutes Thursday to find the man guilty of armed burglary and aggravated battery. Cornell Jackson, 29, punctuated his insanity defense by loudly hooting "cuckoo-cuckoo" and then dropping his pants to moon the jury. A pair of bailiffs and two Bay County sheriff's deputies dragged Jackson from the courtroom after he exposed his buttocks during the trial proceedings.
(Was there flatulence involved your honor and would that make it an aggravated offense?)

Stupid Is As Stupid Does - Bank Robber Writes Holdup Note on Resume

A bank robber in Fort Worth, Texas made the ultimate bad career move when he wrote a holdup note on the back of his resume. Police used the job-search information to identify the man, who was arrested and charged with robbing a Wells Fargo bank branch on the city's east side.

The man had tried to hide the personal information by taping black construction paper over it. But then he forgot to retrieve the note and take it with him after giving it to the teller. Police then just peeled the tape from the note. A tip led police to a Fort Worth motel, where the man was arrested. He remained in federal custody on a bank robbery charge in the July 15 holdup. (I hope he also was charged with Stupidity!

Official Apologizes for Skirt Remark (Oh, give me a break!)

A Niles, Illinois Township High School District 219 board member says he's sorry for telling people at a recent committee meeting "to keep your comments like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject, but brief enough to keep me interested."

Knudsen acknowledges that he made the comment during the board's Finance Committee meeting and other board members let him have it.

"The kind of comments Mr. Knudsen made are not appropriate," board member Lynda Gault Smith said in a telephone interview. "They were humiliating. They were degrading. And they could, in my mind, constitute a hostile work environment, and, most definitely, sexual harassment."

(I have refrained from using the word asshole in this Blog out of deference to my more cultured readers and my daughter who says I overuse the word. But please give me a break. You have to believe this woman is an asshole. If she described this mild expression with such vituperation what in heavens name would she say if he called her the C word. Would she be speechless? I hope so because she used up all her big words earlier.

What would she have said about Tex Antoine who used to do the weather on the NYC ABC affiliate until he had one drink too many between his six o'clock and 11pm reports and tried to be funny with the following: "The weather is like rape. If we can't do anything about it we should relax and enjoy it. He compounded matters by trying to say it in pidgin Chinese. Ole Tex was off the air and out of a job before he sobered up and has not been heard of for the past two decades. Perhaps he is with Judge Crater. There is a free T-shirt waiting for anyone who remembers who Judge Crater was. Now if I were to characterize Tex Antoine I would have to use THE body part word again but we all know what he is. How many times have you regreted taking that third martini at dinner Tex?)

Lawyer Charged with Mailing Deadly Snake

An Arkansas lawyer and his son have been charged with using the US Postal Service to send a man "nonmailable matter" in the form of a deadly poisonous copperhead snake, federal prosecutors say. Lawyer Bob Sam Castleman and his son Robert Jerrod Castleman were charged last week on suspicion of mailing the snake to a fellow resident of Pocahontas, a small town 140 miles northeast of Little Rock, "with the intent to kill or injure" the addressee, the prosecutors said. The pair face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

The three-foot copperhead survived its trip through the postal system and arrived very much alive at the home of Albert Staton, who was considered the target of the attack. His wife, who opened the package, was not injured in the incident. She called the police who arrived and killed the creature.

(There are two things I want to know about this story but were not included in the report - motive. Second I would like to know if the intended victim was also a lawyer. If so he probably would have been immune to the bite of a mere copperhead. He should have mailed a rattler.)