Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 (10 page)

Now when you think of the U.S. government's $7 trillion deficit, you'll have to stay up nights wondering how much of it is being charged at the average credit card APR of 18.9 percent. Sweet dreams!

Source: Reuters

 

Y
ou would think that the average Irish citizen
would be aware of where the island of Cyprus is in the Mediterranean Sea: Cyprus is a small island split into two states (The Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) that don't really get along—which
is
something the Irish can certainly understand, come to think of it.

You would also think that the Irish postal service should definitely know where the island of Cyprus is, just in case (among other reasons) anyone would ever want to mail anything there. So when An Post, the Irish postal service, issued a commemorative stamp in May 2004 honoring the ten new members of the European Union, some folks couldn't help but notice that Cyprus, one of the new members, was represented on the stamp by an island shaped like Crete, another Mediterranean island that is part of Greece, a current EU member not being honored on the stamp.

An Post spokesperson Anna McHugh quickly moved to suggest that the long, thin, rather Crete-ish island positioned where Crete would be on most maps was actually the rather more squat island of Cyprus: “That really is meant to represent Cyprus, but we've had to take some cartographic license. We simply didn't have room,” she said. “Cartographic license” in this case being an “industry term” meaning “We screwed up royally but don't want to admit it.” Well, we bet that doesn't make the Cypriots feel better about being represented by a completely different island that is part of an entirely different
country. Perhaps Ireland wouldn't mind if Cyprus issued a stamp and represented the Emerald Isle by the island that now hosts England, Scotland, and Wales. Yes, we imagine that'd go over just
fabulously.

Another interesting bit from the stamp: the Irish island seems to have lost the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, a cartographic flight of fancy that didn't go over particularly well north of the border. Steven King, an adviser to the Ulster Unionist Party in Belfast, mailed An Post a copy of the 1998 peace treaty that allowed for Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, although King allowed the slight probably wasn't intentional: “I'm sure it's just sloppiness. I'm not genuinely offended,” he said. “We use British stamps up here anyway.”

Sources: Associated Press, BBC

 

I
nquiring minds wanted to know:
when the Hampshire, England county council authorized county staff to repaint lines in the road East Boldre in the New Forest, why did they make the lines so uneven? It seems that while one of the lines was straight, the other, usually about fifteen feet apart from the first, dipped towards the other lines by a couple of feet in more than one place. The result was very uneven lines on the road. Was this necessary? Did it mean something? Was someone drunk?

“Oh,
those
uneven lines,” said the members of the county council. Well, you see, that wavy line is there for safety reasons. Yes, you see, because nothing signals safety like lines making it appear as if the road
narrows.
Well, needless to say, most people weren't quite following the logic for that particular explanation.

So finally the county council cracked and admitted their lie and their mistake. The lines were uneven because someone couldn't read the plans. Council leader Ken Thorber owned up to it to the local press, “What we really wanted was simple straight parallel lines, one down each side of the road 480 cm [that's about 15 feet] apart. Unfortunately there was a problem with the drawings which were badly folded and creases made some of the measurements look like 430 cm [14 feet] and 420 cm [13 feet] instead. The painter followed the instruction which resulted in a straight line down one side of the road and a wavy one down the other.”

Good thing the plans weren't crumpled. The lines might have lead directly into
trees.

Source: Ananova

 

I
t's probably not easy being the railways minister for the country of India.
The rail system in the world's second most populous country has more than 60,000 miles of rail, much of which is old, unreliable, and in nasty state of disrepair. With 300 accidents a year in the system, nearly every day brings news of troubles small and large, and every now and again you get a real whopper, like a train hitting a boulder and derailing in 2004, an accident that killed 20 and injured 100. What a boulder was doing on the tracks is a question for another day.

And perhaps this is why in July 2004, India's railway minister announced that he was no longer responsible for the safety of India's rails. And he named a new executive to take charge of this thorny problem, one who, presumably, would have the resources to handle the needs of India's 13 million daily train-going passengers: Vishwakarma, the Hindu god of machines and draftsman for the entire universe. “Indian Railways are the responsibility of Lord Vishwakarma,” said Laloo Prasad Yadav, in passing the rupee. “So is the safety of passengers. It is his duty, not mine.”

Well, okay, but how does one let Vishwakarma
know
about the various day-to-day infrastructure needs of the nation's rail lines? Well, see, this is where Minister Yadav apparently springs into action, by talking to a picture of Vishwakarma he has placed on the wall. “I keep telling Him whatever accident or incident takes place on the tracks is His responsibility,” Yadav said.

So how did the locals react to Yadav's ideas about personal responsibility? Not very well. Columnist Varghese K. George agreed that the rail system was a national nightmare, but described Yadav's rationalism as “an ingenuous excuse.”
Times of India
journalist Manisha Prakash bemoaned the fact that “Gone are the days when railway ministers used to resign, owning responsibility for train mishaps.”

So what to do the next time you find yourself on a train in India? Well, obviously, pray. Think of it as speaking directly to the CEO.

Source:
The Times of India, The Indian Express, The Telegraph
(UK)

 

S
omething that's always puzzled us is
why do people try to scam money from the poor? It's not like they have a whole lot to begin with. And also, it's just plain mean. You're a criminal and you scam a rich person out of $100, and that's just drinks and a cab ride home. Scam a poor person out of $100, and you make them choose between electricity and macaroni and cheese for a month. Really, that's a mark against your soul. We're not afraid to say it.

Also, on a more
practical
level, scamming the poor while working among people who are paid to
help
the poor is not a smart idea and certainly not an ethical one. It tripped up “Marcie,” an office clerk who worked at Florida's Department of Children & Families. Marcie's coworkers suspected something was fishy when people who were in need of the department's services would come in and ask to speak to Marcie, whose job description did not include working directly with department clients.

One internal investigation later, the department discovered that Marcie had worked out a neat little scam in which she charged people hundreds of dollars for department services, mostly relating to government-assisted housing, that they were actually eligible for free of charge. Among her victims: a disabled woman, a single mother of three, and a little old lady whose husband had terminal cancer. Marcie scammed an extra C-note out of the little old lady by promising to help
get more medical treatment for her husband. All together now: Boooo, Marcie! Boooo!

Marcie was arrested on six counts of unlawful compensation for official behavior and one count of organized fraud and held on $125,000 bail. She's looking at 95 years in the clink. So ironically, it looks like at least one person
will
get government-assisted housing through her efforts.

Source: Associated Press,
Sun-Sentinel
(Fort Lauderdale, FL)

 

G
eorgia's low-income tax credits
are designed to give the state's poorest a little bit of a leg up. It's not much—$26 per family member at most—but if you're not making much money, $26 is nothing to sneeze at. Who is eligible for the low-income tax credits? Households with income of less than $20,000 dollars a year. Just like the ones headed up by prisoners.

Yes, prisoners. In 2003 alone, about 200 incarcerated guests of the state of Georgia have found a way to get a little scratch from their jailers, by claiming a low-income tax credit. After all, they
are
making less than $20,000 a year—if you're doing time in a Peach State big house, in fact, chances are you're making nothing at all. And while most people would not consider an 8-by-10-foot cell with an exposed, seatless toilet a household, for the State of Georgia, home is where you lay your hat. Or hide your shiv. Sadly, you can't claim your bunkmate as a dependent.

Georgia legislators are working to close the loophole that allows prisoners to claim the credit, noting that one of the reasons they can claim the credit at all is because they've become wards of the state. Even so, state revenue officials estimate that over the last five years more than $20,000 in credits has gone to incarcerated filers. We wonder how many of them were in for tax fraud.

Source: Atlanta
Constitution-Journal

 

Q
uick:
Can you name the ten countries that were added to the European Union in May 2004? If you're a citizen of the United States, a likely answer to this question is “The European Whos-whats-nitz, now?” And that's an entirely just answer: Europe is an entire ocean away, after all, and the people there frequently don't even have the courtesy to speak American (the nerve!). You can't reasonably be expected to tell your Slovakias from your Slovenias, and if you can, well, most Europeans would be pleasantly surprised, sort of like they would be by a brown bear that could tie its own shoes.

So if Americans are off the hook, what about the Britons? The UK is
in
the EU, after all, even if it's not so keen on the euro replacing the pound sterling. Surely the average Brit knows the names of the new EU members??

Well, now, not exactly. Just as American's have a hard time telling apart all those countries in Eastern Europe, so apparently do the Brits. Telecommunication provider
One.Tel
polled 2,500 Brits right around the time the new member states joined the EU and asked them to name the new members from a short list of European countries. Among the Estonias and Latvias and Lithuanias,
One.Tel
slipped in a ringer: “Luvania,” a country that could share a border with Freedonia and possibly Brigadoon.

Despite the absolute fictionality of Luvania, no less than 8 percent of poll respondents identified it as one of the new members of the EU. Moving out of Eastern Europe and heading west, another 15 percent managed to identify Austria as a real country (regrettable past episodes of
Anschluss
notwithstanding) and a member of the EU, which is good, but also believed it was one of the new inductees. This would no doubt come as a surprise to the homeland of Mozart, which had been laboring under the impression it has been an EU member since 1995.

Say what you will about these folks, at least they hazarded a guess, which is more than 40 percent of poll respondents managed to accomplish; they had no idea which countries were being added to the EU and apparently couldn't be bothered to care. Which seems darn uncharitable, from this side of the Atlantic. What if people from California didn't know about Rhode Island? Or Pennsylvania? Or the great state of New Jefferson? It'd be madness! Madness!

Source:
One.Tel