Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News The RoundTable Round Table for New Year's Eve 2008

1) King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of the Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan.

Croesus said, "I'll give you 100,000 dinars for it."

"But I paid a million dinars for it," the King protested.
"Don'tyou know who I am? I am the king!"

Croesus replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no
difference who you are."

(2) Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid bowlers. However, all the Swiss league records were unfortunately destroyed in a fire, and we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.

(3) A man rushed into a busy doctor's office and shouted "Doctor! I think I'm shrinking!!"

The doctor calmly responded, "Now, settle down. You'll just have to be a little patient."

(4) A marine biologist developed a race of genetically engineered dolphins that could live forever if they were fed a steady diet of Seagulls.

One day, his supply of the birds ran out so he had to go out and trap some more. On the way back, he spied two lions asleep on the road.

Afraid to wake them, he gingerly stepped over them. Immediately, he was arrested and charged with transporting gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.

(5) Back in the 1800s the Tates Watch Company of Massachusetts wanted to produce other products and, since they already made the cases for watches, they used them to produce compasses. The new compasses were so bad that people often ended up in Canada or Mexico rather than California . This, of course, is the origin of the expression, "He who has a Tates is lost!"

(6) A thief broke into the local police station and stole all the toilets and urinals, leaving no clues. A spokesperson was quoted as saying, "We have absolutely nothing to go on."

(7) A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official who apologized profusely saying, "I must have taken Leif off my census."

(8) There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept on an elk skin, and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three became pregnant, and the first two each had a baby boy. The one who slept on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys.

This goes to prove that the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.

(9) A skeptical anthropologist was cataloging South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal brujo who indicated that the leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the brujo looked him in the eye and said, "Let me tell you, with fronds like these, who needs enemas?"

Risk is in the eye of the beholder, of course. But in 2002 an expert panel convened by the National Society of Genetic Counselors found that the risks of a first-cousin marriage are about 1.7% to 2% above the background risk for congenital defects and 4.4% above background (which is vanishingly low to begin with) for dying in childhood.

Whether 2% and 4% seem like a big extra risk or a piddling one probably depends on how much you want to marry your cousin, but Spencer concludes that “neither the scientific nor social assumptions behind [anti-cousin-marriage laws] stand up to close scrutiny. Women over the age of 40 have a similar risk of having children with birth defects and no one is suggesting they should be prevented from reproducing. People with Huntington’s disease or other autosomal dominant disorders have a 50 per cent risk of transmitting the underlying genes to offspring and they are not barred either.”

* 1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.

* 1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapses and splits into Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.

* 1983 – The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government.