Date: Thursday, 22 November 1984 22:11 mst From: James J. Lippard Subject: Miscellaneous Digest V3 #36 Reply-To: {mbx >udd>Multics>Lippard>misc>misc} To: {list >udd>Multics>Lippard>misc>misc} Miscellaneous Digest Volume 3 : Issue 36 Today's topics: Daily activities Cure for Jet Lag Blind ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Saturday, 10 November 1984 12:21 mst From: James A. Crossman Subject: Interesting article Taken from Tempe Daily News, Saturday, November 10, 1984 Every day Americans consume 200 billion more calories than they need, hand over $40 million (to bad it's not for the national debt..) to prostitutes and smoke more than 86 million packs of cigarettes. This picture of national dissipation emerges from a new book called 'In One Day' that features facts about what Americans accomplish in a single day. The compilation begins with how many people undergo a nose job - 150 - to how much cosmic dust makes its way to Earth - 1,000 pounds. His own curiosity about how Americans relate to big numbers led the author Tom Parker of Ithaca, N.Y., to come up with the idea for a book about five years ago. A biologist by education and artist by profession, Parker, 34, said, "I wanted to see if the numbers meant anything to people." Parker humanizes junk mail by noting that enough advertisements -- 5,000 TONS -- arrive in mail boxes across America every day to heat a quarter of a million homes. He breaks down the amount of McDonald's hamburgers served daily to the head of cattle that died to satisfy the country's Big Mac attacks - 2,250. The 17 million gallons of coffee Americans drink becomes a 30 second flow over Niagara Falls. So if you're wondering what your neighbors are up to on a daily basis, here is a sampling: o Americans eat 228,000 bushels of onions. That's a pile of onions 120 feet wide and 75 feet high. o About 25,000 people discover they have lice. o We spend $2.5 million washing our cars. o Almost 6,000 teenagers have sexual intercourse for the first time. o Twenty thousand people write letters to the President of the United States. o Americans spend $125,000 on tours and merchandise associated with Elvis Presley. o One thousand Americans have their pockets picked, and 375 have their purses snatched. The pickers and snatchers make about $250 per grab. (not bad...). jim crossman ------------------------------ Date: Saturday, 17 November 1984 08:16 mst From: Paul Dickson Subject: "A Cure for Jet Lag" Jet lag is one of the main curses of modern high-speed travel. Fly from New York to Tokyo, or from San Francisco to London, and your brain arrives six days after your body and five days after your luggage. And yet it is well known that north-south flights produce no such effects. One can fly from Montreal to Quito, or from Washington to Buenos Aires, and feel the same as usual. It is the east-west and west-east trips that produce the dreaded jet lag. Once this truth is recognized, we realize that a slight revision of airline flight patterns will solve the whole problem. All long distance flights will henceforth pass over the North Pole. The aircraft will fly due north from its origin until it reaches the pole, then fly due south along a suitable meridian of longitude until it arrives at its destination. Since only north-south flying is involved, jet lag effects will be eliminated. -Charles Sheffield (From the Mid-December Issue of Analog) ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 20 November 1984 21:56 mst From: Barry Margolin Subject: Blind From: avolio@grendel.UUCP (Frederick M. Avolio) Newsgroups: net.misc Subject: Blind drivers (no really) Date: Sat, 17-Nov-84 08:52:17 EST Organization: DEC, DC Area Gov't Projects Group I read this in November 16th's issue of the Memphis, TN newspaper *The Commercial Appeal*: "PEORIA, Ill. (UPI) -- A blind high school student is being forced to take a driver's education class to satisfy graduation requirements, officials said yesterday. Her principal defended the action by saying, "Who knows, there might be some dire emergency in her future where she might have to drive." As they say, Believe it or Not! -- Fred Avolio, DEC -- U{LTR,N}IX Support 301/731-4100 x4227 UUCP: {seismo,decvax}!grendel!avolio ARPA: grendel!avolio@seismo.ARPA ------------------------------ End of Miscellaneous Digest ***************************