This Blog -
Moved To:
http://professor-howdy.blogspot.com/

Absolutely no one over 16 admitted:
http://www.whitsend.org/
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Important Notice!

Employees dying on the job are failing to fall down. This
practice must stop as it becomes impossible to distinguish
between death and the natural movement of the staff. Any
employees found dead in the upright position will be dropped
from the payroll.

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1787: First of Federalist Papers Appeared

Before the U.S. Constitution could come into effect, it had to be
approved by each of the states. But many people opposed it because
they feared it would give too much power to the federal government.
In order to gain support for the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton,
John Jay, and James Madison wrote a series of articles known as the
Federalist Papers. Beginning with an article that appeared under the
name "Publius" in the "New York Independent Journal" on October 27,
1787, the Federalist Papers helped convince the nation to accept the
Constitution, and also established the theory of constitutional government.

Introduction to the Federalist Papers and links to the entire texts:
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/federalist/

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*Ever hear about the UNC student who got hurt
when she fell out of the tree while raking leaves?

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Doctors can be frustrating. You wait a month-and-a-half for an
appointment, and he says, "I wish you'd come to me sooner."

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1726: "Gulliver's Travels" First Sold to Public

A book entitled "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World"
went on sale in England, supposedly written by a restless sailor
called Lemuel Gulliver. Popularly known as "Gulliver's Travels," the
book was actually written by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), an Irish-
born Anglican priest. Swift avoided using his real name because he
feared the book's biting satire of the political establishment might
get him into trouble. It has remained in print for more than a
quarter of a millennium.

A brief biography of Jonathan Swift:
http://mural.uv.es/criscer/work.html

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Two UNC accounting students go on a fishing trip. They
rent all the equipment - the reels, the rods, the wading suits,
the rowboat, the car, and even a cabin in the woods.

The first day they go fishing they don't catch anything.
The same thing happens on the second day, and on the third
day. It goes on like this until finally, on the last day of
their vacation, one of the men catches a fish.

As they're driving home they're really depressed. One turns to the
other and says, "Do you realize that this one lousy fish we caught
cost us fifteen hundred bucks?"

The reply is, "Wow! Then it's a good thing we didn't catch any more!"
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This will SHOCK you!!! How Long DO we have???


About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:



"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."



"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:



1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage"



Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:



Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million

Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000
States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush: 2.1



Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country.
Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."



Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
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IRS Scams Involving E-Mail Proliferate

PAM DAWKINS pdawkins@ctpost.com

Maybe it starts with a bored teen - the 21st century equivalent of the prank phone call. Sometimes it comes from an unscrupulous scammer looking to make a quick buck at someone else's expense.

No matter how they start, these e-mails have one trait in common - they never go away.

Prank and scamming e-mails have become so common that many companies and government agencies include warnings against them on their Web sites. Independent rumor debunking sites like Snopes.com can also give wary consumers a heads up.

"The IRS does not contact taxpayers by e-mail concerning tax refunds," spokeswoman Dianne Besunder said, referring to one popular scam. An e-mail purporting to be from the IRS, with an IRS header and the Web address admin@irs.gov, tells recipients to click on a link to a form to get a tax refund. If a recipient clicks on the link, Besunder said, the form asks for personal data scammers can use to steal an identity, a tactic called "phishing."

Besunder said the IRS hears about this regularly, particularly around tax-filing season. Recipients should forward the e-mail to phishing@irs.gov.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which investigates the e-mails, has identified more than 24 IRS-related scams coming from Web sites in many countries, including the United States, Japan, Indonesia, China and Mexico, Besunder said.

Another popular e-mail reports the upcoming release of cell phone numbers to telemarketing companies, adding consumers must put their cell phone on the national Do Not Call registry in order to avoid costly incoming calls

"That's gone around over and over and over again. There's no truth to it," according to Claudette Carveth, spokeswoman for the state Department of Consumer Protection.

She said this e-mail might trace back to a plan to create a directory of cell phone numbers. Cell phone users would be able to opt out of this directory.

While telemarketers can call any phone number, Carveth said, federal law prohibits them from using autodialers when calling cell phone numbers, and most telemarketers today use machines to dial. Consumers can, if they wish, put their cell phone number on the Do Not Call list.

Carveth said she believes consumers are more likely today to be cautious in responding to unsolicited e-mails. But, she added, the scams change and evolve. For example, some now purport to come from banks or online businesses like PayPal, telling recipients there's a problem with their account.

"There's always something new coming out on the horizon," Carveth said.

Go to www.donotcall.gov to get on the Do Not Call registry.
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