Facts we could have gotten through the day without: According to Gillette, the “average North Atlantic male”–whatever that is–“generates an average of 27.5 feet of facial hair in his lifetime.”
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“If they want to call it bribery, that’s fine with me. It’s bribery, but it’s open bribery…. It’s just something you can’t turn down.” So says Martinsville mayor Truman Dean of the $800,000 “no-strings” state grant his downstate town got to keep up its interest in hosting a “low-level” radioactive waste dump. Reports Bill Kemp in Illinois Times (February 1-7), “State money paid for new sidewalks, a new police patrol car, new doors on the township firehouse, a new roof on the aging high school, and funding for a night police patrolman. The [state] Department of Nuclear Safety also paid for college scholarships for high school graduates and got the Martinsville school district out of debt.”
Dept. of soreheads. From a survey recently conducted by the Forest Preserve District of Will County: “Three percent of respondents indicated they would like less picnicking or ski trails, and six percent wanted to see a reduction in camping or canoeing opportunities.”
“For over a century, the Chicago area has been the center of America’s confectionery industry,” writes Tom Andreoli in Chicago Enterprise (February 1990). “Even today, the region accounts for nearly one in 10 candy-making jobs nationwide. And while the local sector has shown a substantial [30 percent] loss in employment over the past decade, the pace here has not been as dramatic as elsewhere in the country.” The relatively low skill requirements and relatively high pay (Chicago average: $10/hour) make these jobs the city would like to keep.
