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WITandWISDOM(tm) - May 3, 2000
~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: "It's not what you've got, it's what you use that makes a difference." - Zig Ziglar Source: Gagler's Quote of the Day, signupquotes@gagler.com via http://www.witandwisdom.org ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: The following facts about the invention of the American bathtub have been dutifully recorded in the Congressional Record: 1. The first American bathtub was introduced by Adam Thompson on December 10, 1842, to a group of derisive friends in Cincinnati, Ohio. 2. Doctors all around the country immediately denounced the bathtub as a menace to general health, and Boston banned it. 3. Virginia hastily levied a tax of $30 on every bathtub sold within its borders, and a bill banning the use of bathtubs entirely in Philadelphia from November 1 to March 31 was defeated by a narrow margin of two votes. 4. No bathtub was allowed inside the White House until 1851, when President Millard Fillmore bravely dunked his limbs in one of the fiendish contraptions. There is only one thing wrong with these interesting statistics: they are completely untrue from beginning to end. The editor and writer, H.L. Mencken, in one of his more playful moods, had invented them from whole cloth for a piece he wrote for the New York Evening Mail that appeared December 28, 1917. The "facts" were widely circulated in magazine and newspaper articles, speeches in the Congress, etc. When Mencken saw to his amazement that his little joke was being taken seriously, he tried desperately to convince everybody he had perpetrated what he thought would be a harmless hoax. But he was too late. Nobody would believe him. He had done his job so well that he was never able to undo it. Some of his "facts' have even persisted to this day. You may enjoy the following web site which provides a very interesting chronology of the bathtub hoax. http://www.syntac.net/hoax/bathtub.html Source: Bits & Pieces, April 27, 1995, Copyright (c) Economic Press, Inc., www.epinc.com via http://www.witandwisdom.org Submitted by Bob Dillon ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: Gateway 2000 User Manual: "If you use the system in a dirty environment, open it periodically and vacuum the boards and components with a small vacuum designed for this kind of work. Don't loosen anything in the process -- sucking all the chips off the system board with an industrial strength wet/dry vacuum is not covered by your warranty." Source: The Funnies, andychaps_the-funnies-subscribe@egroups.com via http://www.witandwisdom.org ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: Clinical Micro Sensors (CMS), a biotech startup in Pasadena, Calif., announced the results of its first clinical study using disposable biochip cartridges. These can analyze DNA faster and more cheaply than tests used in clinics today. And if they win approval, they could find wide use in patient clinics ahead of similar products from other biochip developers such as Affymetrix. In a recent trial, CMS scientists used the new so called eSensor technology to analyze the DNA samples of 66 patients for signs of hereditary hemachromatosis, a genetic disorder that, if left untreated, can lead to cirrhosis, diabetes, or even liver cancer. In all 66 cases, the results agreed with those gathered from the costlier procedures - perhaps paving the way for routine DNA diagnostics in health care. Source: Business Week, Copyright (c), May 8, 2000 via http://www.witandwisdom.org |