E-Mail
Mike Pingree

Site design by
Mike Hanlon 

February 22, 2004

A SKILL THEY CAN USE ON THE OUTSIDE: Teaching math to convicts in an Arkansas prison, an instructor used rocks of cocaine and other drugs as examples in his problems instead of, say, apples and oranges.
To wit: "Rico sells 422 rocks per week in four different territories. He wants to expand to seven ... territories. If he continues to sell at the same rate, how many rocks per week will he sell in seven territories?''
The teacher, who explained he was trying to relate to his students, was reprimanded.
The answer, by the way, is 738.5 rocks.

YOUR FUTURE IS SMOKY, VERY SMOKY: A man's grandchildren, playing in his home in Shawnee, Okla., took a crystal ball off a table and put it on the living room couch. Sunlight shining through the crystal was magnified into a heat beam and caught the sofa on fire.

NOW, THIS IS A KNIFE: A masked intruder forced his way into the home of a 90-year-old man in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, and threatened his wife with a butter knife. In response, the old man pulled a carving knife. The intruder ran away.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY FOR 110? A man charged with various crimes vented his anger in a Knoxville, Tenn., courtroom, swearing repeatedly until the judge told him to stop, warning the man that he would get 10 days in jail for each four-letter word he uttered.
The man swore again. Ten days. And again. Ten more days. Long story short, the man swore for the tenth time as he was being hauled out of the courtroom, and the judge heard him. One hundred days.

OW, EXCUSE ME, OW, CAN YOU HELP ME?  A man snorkeling off the Pacific coast of Australia did not panic when a two-foot-long wobbegong shark chomped down on his leg just below the knee and would not let go.
He swam to shore and drove to the lifeguard's shack with the shark still attached. The lifeguards poured fresh water on it and it gave up. The man's leg was punctured, but he is OK.

Mike Pingree writes another Looking Glass column in the Boston Sunday Herald. You can read it by clicking here:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists.html

Top  |  Past Columns (The Archives)