From: glen mccready To: Dead Beef <0xdeadbeef@substance.abuse.blackdown.org> Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 00:12:08 -0400



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 16:05:01 -0400
From: Keith Bostic <bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU>
To: /dev/null@python.bostic.com
Subject: Excerpted: WhiteBoard News for July 19, 1995

Forwarded-by: joeha@microsoft.com

"Ed was in show business two weeks when they changed
his name and castrated him.  Happens to many of us."

Alan Young, 75, "Wilbur" from the "Mr. Ed" show, on his
horse-is-a-horse-of-course-of-course co-star, a golden
palomino who hoofed along as Bamboo Harvester before
television gave him something to talk about.

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Washington, District of Columbia:

U.S. Mint Director Philip Diehl made a surprising confession to Congress
last week: The commemorative coins the government agency sells, often for
hundreds of dollars apiece, are a poor investment.

Some examples:

A 1986 gold Liberty coin that the mint sold for $170 now can be had for
$125.

A 1990 Eisenhower silver dollar that was offered for $23 now sells for
$13.

A 1991 Korean War silver dollar that was sold for $28 now sells for
$15.95.

Diehl said he would not quibble over how much the prices for individual
commemoratives have dropped.  But he bristled at one coin dealer's
suggestion that the mint's advertising for the coins should carry a
warning label like the surgeon general's notice on cigarette packages.

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Bloomington, Indiana:

The most spectacular burst of evolutionary diversification in Earth's
history -- the so-called Cambrian Explosion that happened 544 million
years ago and created most of today's animal body plans -- may have been
the result of a less-celebrated event: the origin of feces.

That is the argument of John Hayes of Indiana University and his
colleagues, who propose that the appearance of fecal matter in microscopic
animals such as zooplankton retarded decomposition enough to let oxygen
build up in the atmosphere.

It was life that created the Earth's oxygen, and oxygen that encouraged
more complex organisms to evolve.  But until fecal pellets slowed
oxygen-consuming decomposition, Hayes suggests, oxygen had little chance
to accumulate

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Cincinnati, Ohio:

A man ordered to marry his longtime girlfriend after he was convicted of
hitting her is asking the judge for a change of heart.

It's not the first matrimonial order issued by Judge Albert Mestemaker.

Scott Hancock, 25, had pleaded no contest to domestic violence and was
sentenced Thursday.

Mestemaker gave him a suspended four-month sentence, fined him $100,
placed him on nine months probation and ordered him to undergo counseling.
He also ordered Hancock to marry Yvonne Sevier within nine months.

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After years of searching, botanists in New Zealand found an orchid
believed to be extinct.  It was lying flattened under a groundsheet
when they took down their tent.