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• Position: Humor in the news - Buyers Guide

The Battleground Business

From an article in The Washington Post datelined Cu Chi, Vietnam, a former battleground that has been turned into an amusement park: "The dank, dark tunnels have been spruced up with life-size plastic action figures.... There is a video pavilion, a shooting range where people can pay $1 a bullet to fire M-16 or AK-47 rifles, a simulated minefield that visitors can tiptoe across.... The gift shops sell plastic model tanks, shirts proclaiming `I've been to the Cu Chi Tunnels,' and lighters engraved with military slogans such as `Kill 'em all. Let God sort them out.'"

Traffic Tater Toss

From the on-line edition of the Asbury Park Press of New Jersey about a road rage incident on August 8: Gary Baldwin and his fiancee pulled up to a stop light in separate cars, and he asked her "if she wanted him to pick up corn at the market. His fiancee never heard him, though, because the driver behind him was blowing his horn." After Baldwin made a hand gesture, he was pelted in the head. "Baldwin said he didn't know what hit him at first but realized it was a cooked potato when he smelled the butter dripping down his face."

Testing, Testing, One, Two, Three

From a Reuters on-line article datelined Minneapolis, Minnesota, on National Computer Systems, a private testing company, that mistakenly flunked nearly 8,000 high school students who took the state's basic math test this year: "David Smith, president of NCS's Assessment and Testing Services division, said an employee erred by changing the order of the questions on one form of the math test without changing the order of the corresponding answers. `We messed up,' Smith said." Minnesota pays $2.9 million a year to have NCS administer and grade the tests.

Over the Rainbow

From a wire service report on the University of Hawaii's football team, which dropped its rainbow logo because it felt the symbol had become too associated with gay and lesbian pride: "The school had used the rainbow symbol for seventy-seven years.... `That logo really put a stigma on our program.... It's part of the gay community, their flags, and so forth,' athletic director Hugh Yoshida said." The football team will now be known as the Warriors.

Frontiers of Free Enterprise, I

From a Reuters on-line...