NEWS/TONGUE IN BEAK
6A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, MAY 4. 2005
6A THE UNIVERSITY Satire: Goat CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8A
The fake goat was custom-made out of spare lawnmower parts and real Nubian goat skin by Hollywood special effects guru Randall Skurwitz. His past projects include the movie "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze." Skurwitz is modest about his work on Donatello's fingers, but he says this goat is his masterpiece.
masterpiece.
"I have specially designed Melaku to be as stubborn as a real goat," Skurwitz said. "He has three settings: 'ornery,' 'ornierer,' and 'asleep.'"
Skurwitz is sure that his creation will provide a good time for all comers, but he warns against treating Melaku like his bovine counterpart over at Coyote's.
"This guy's got real horns I took off a real goat, so he can stick you pretty good," Skurwiz said. "He also has a setting to try to take a bite out of anything put out in front of him, so you should stay to the side."
stay to the side.
Wedu Gender, Addis Ababa employee, said that the staff will ask all riders to sign a liability waiver, and male riders are discouraged from standing behind Melaku.
Satire: Briefs
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8A
asked DJ Chris Ramer. Ramer received a dozen or so calls asking him about the band and if they were touring.
"Warning" is not actually a song and "The Emergency Broadcast System" is not actually a band. It is a monthly required test that KJHK airs in compliance with the FCC.
Ramer admits the station's eclectic mix makes it difficult to tell at times what is "music" and what is not.
Owen Morris
and what is it?
"I was confused the first time I heard it too," Ramer said. "I thought for sure it was Appleseed Asylum, or maybe Seals of Starlets. The silences were masterful. Somebody could definitely do a pretty good remix on those beats."
John Bolton 'prick at family reunion
Singer/songwriter Michael Bolton has become the latest critic of John Bolton, the White House nominee for chief delegate to the United Nations.
Bolton alleges that his cousin, John Bolton, was drunk and obnoxious at a 2002 family reunion in Beloit, Wisconsin.
"I personally witnessed John put down at least 10 Milwaukee's Bests in two hours," Michael Bolton said. "He verbally attacked me. He said I sang sissy music and that my hair looked like someone pissed on a poodle. He chased our third cousins around, offering mustache rides. He cheated in the potato sack race. And he even yelled at Aunt Barb that her potato salad was 'chunkier than Bob and stank worse than Steve.'"
States fail to control obesity problem
BY ALEX DOMINGUEZ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BALTIMORE — None of the 50 states received on "A" on a report card grading legislative efforts to control obesity.
Boiton said at the conclusion of the reunion his cousin ended up naked in a kiddie pool singing Toby Keith and cursing at a curious toddler. Courtesy
California, which enacted a childhood obesity prevention act in 2003, was the only state to receive an "A" grade for efforts to control childhood obesity.
The report card is one of a number of efforts by the University of Baltimore on the issue. Known primarily as a law and business school, the university is studying the issue as a public health problem similar to
smoking and AIDS, drawing from fields such as economics and law.
law.
About two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese. That compares with one-third to a half in European countries, and the problem is worsening, contributing to higher health care spending. According to a study released in March in the New England Journal of Medicine, obesity is even threatening to lower life expectancy in the United States.
United States were graded on if they proposed or enacted legislation to address obesity overall and
childhood obesity. Five states received a failing grade for not taking any action to fight obesity, 11 received a "D," 23, including Kansas and Missouri, received a "C," and 11 earned a "B." Fifteen states, including Kansas, earned a "B" for their efforts to fight childhood obesity, 21, including Missouri, were given a "C," seven received a "D" and six failed.
While some business groups fight efforts to limit the sale of sugar-laden soda and snacks in schools, for example, obesity raises the cost of health care for everyone, said Kenneth R. Stanton.
an assistant professor of finance at the university's Merrick School of Business.
"We think overall, they'll come out ahead if they recognize they're part of the solution." Stanton said.
ical profession were brought to bear on those problems, McCann said.
Maryland Health Secretary Anthony McCann, who spoke at a conference at which the university released the report card, compared obesity to the battle against AIDS and smoking, noting it affects the health of children as well as adults, and increases health care spending. Public-private partnerships involving a wide variety of fields outside the med-
McCann said. "If we are going to solve this problem, it seems to me we need the same kind of answer," McCann said.
In addition to the report card, the university conducts surveys and other obesity-related research, not only in terms of health care costs, but also obesity's impact on industry and the work force.
work force. General Motors, for example, spends $1,525 per vehicle on health care costs and "it's being escalated by obesity." Stanton said.
Into the deep
Mike Hentz/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
One of seven rough-toothed dolphins slides into the Atlantic Ocean yesterday 14 nautical miles off the Florida Keys near Key Largo, Fla. The mammals were released after a two-month recovery at the Marine Mammal Conservancy in Key Largo following a March 2nd stranding involving a total of about 68 rough-toothed dolphins off Marathon in the middle Florida Keys.
WORLD
iraq swears in its new government
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The first democratically elected government in the history of Iraq was sworn in yesterday against a backdrop of violence, and the new Shite prime minister pledged before a half-empty parliament that he would unite the country's rival ethnic factions and fight terrorism.
Despite months of tortuous negotiations, there was no final decision on seven positions in the 37-member Cabinet, including the key oil and defense ministries. More critical still, the partial Cabinet fails to give the country's disaffected Sunni Arab minority a meaningful governing stake.
governing the Cabinet that took office yesterday includes 16 Shiite
Arabs, nine Kurds, four Sunnis and one Christian. Two deputy prime minister's slots, including one Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari hopes to offer to a woman, were left vacant and five ministerial portfolios were in temporary hands.
Al-Jaafari played down the disputes still roiling his government more than three months after millions of Iraqis risked their lives to vote in landmark parliamentary elections on Jan. 30.
He blamed the delay in filling the Cabinet on Sunni infighting and said the matter would be resolved in two to three days.
three days.
"But we are not in a hurry," he told reporters after yesterday's ceremony. "We want the choice to be accepted by all the Iraqi people."
Finger found in custard
FAST FOOD INDUSTRY
The Associated Press
BY VALERIE BAUMAN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RALEIGH, N.C. — This time, no one is doubting the claims: A customer really did find part of a worker's finger in a pint of frozen chocolate custard purchased at a shop in North Carolina.
North Carolina. Despite the horrifying find — and widespread media coverage of an infamous finger incident at a Wendy's restaurant in California in March — workplace statistics show that the chance of a body part winding up in food is extremely small.
upin to the floor. The piece of index finger, which an employee had severed at the first knuckle, was found Sunday by Clarence Stowers in a pint of dessert he purchased from Kohl's Frozen Custard in the coastal town of Wilmington.
the coastal town of Kohl's owner Craig Thomas said 23-year-old employee Brandon Fizer tried to catch a bucket of custard he had dropped and accidentally put his finger into a machine that beats the custard mix. As shop workers tried to help Fizer, a drive-thru window attendant unknowingly scooped frozen custard from the bucket containing the finger and served it to Stowers.
The state Department of Labor is investigating to determine whether Kohl's was in compliance with state workplace safety rules — a probe that likely will take about two weeks.
weeks. Stowers did not return repeated calls for comment yesterday. He has reportedly hired a lawyer and is holding on to the severed finger as evidence in a possible lawsuit.
"I thought it was candy
because they put candy in your ice cream or whatever to make it a treat," he told a Wilmington television station on Sunday. "So I proceeded to put the object in my mouth, got all the ice cream off of it and spit it in my hand."
After rinsing it off with water, Stowers said he realized what it was and "just started screaming."
was and just is. While national statistics show that people do lose fingertips on the job, they rarely do so in situations where they can get into food.
into food.
Mark Zak, an economist with the U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that in 2003 the agency recorded 5,620 nonfatal fingertip amputations in private workplaces that resulted in the loss of at least one day of work. He said only 300 of those occurred at leisure and hospitality workplaces — a category that includes restaurants and ice cream parlors.
No specific statistics are available on how often amputated digits actually end up in the food supply, said Fred Blosser, a spokesman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
and Health Robert Baldwin, president of Indianapolis-based workplace safety consultants Safety Resources, said yesterday he has never heard of major problems caused by body parts getting into food, but his major concern would be disease.
would be deceitful.
"That is the issue to me more than anything," he said.
"Hepatitis B is always the concern in the food industry; that's why you see all those workers wearing gloves."
Vegas woman made headlines around the country with a claim that she found a finger tip in bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose, Calif.
The North Carolina discovery came not long after a Las
Investigators have called Anna Ayala's claim a hoax and charged her last month with attempted grand theft related to millions in dollars of financial losses Wendy's has suffered in northern California since news of her claim broke. It is not known whose finger it was; Ayala denies that it was a hoax
Ayla tenuis last month, a man sued the owner of an Arby's restaurant in Ohio for $50,000, claiming he found a 3/4-inch slice of human skin on his chicken sandwich in June 2004.
June 2004.
For Kohl's, Sunday's fingertip amputation was the second time in less than a year that a worker lost a finger on the same frozen custard machine. The worker, William Franklin, was found by investigators to have been negligent in the July 2004 incident, and the state Labor Department cleared the company of wrongdoing.
Franklin, however, contends he was only in his third day on the job and had been given no safety training when he was left alone to work on the machine. He is suing Kohl's, which he said fired him a short time after the incident, and has made several complaints to the Labor Department about his injury.
"I am outraged now," Franklin said. "I told them there was going to be another one, but I couldn't believe it. I had hoped that they would somehow try and prevent that."
Franklin said his severed finger didn't end up in any food. He recovered it, but doctors were not able to reattach it.
NATION
Air Force probes intolerance claims
DENVER — A task force will investigate allegations of anti-Semitism and other reports of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy after cadets lodged dozens of complaints
said yesterday. Acting Air Force Secretary Michael L. Dominguez made the announcement yesterday, saying the actions of senior commanders would be reviewed. The academy said it would cooperate with the investigation.
vestigation. Last week, Americans United
in internal surveys, officials said yesterday.
for Separation of Church and State sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a 14-page report based on a two-month investigation. It concluded that students, faculty, staff and members of the chaplains' office frequently pressured cadets to attend chapel and receive religious instruction. The Associated Press
The Associated Press
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