Next week we’ll do one million. Lorraine V. Forte in Catalyst (May): “Second-grade teacher Barbara Bibbs [of Medgar Evers School, 9811 S. Lowe] introduced her students to the concept of 1,000 by dumping 1,000 popsicle sticks on the floor. The youngsters then picked up the sticks and bundled them into groups of 10. Next they bundled the groups of 10 into groups of 100. Finally, 10 students were chosen to stand up and hold the bundles of 100 sticks in front of the class. ‘It took a long time, but it was really something that sank in with them, more than if I just said to them or wrote down that a 1,000 is 10 groups of 100,’ said Bibbs.”
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Revenge. “All across the Great Lakes, commuters shivering through January’s arctic winds… pass giant billboards of glorious Sun Belt beaches and sunsets…So, how about some big billboards alongside southern California’s freeways, showing people luxuriating in our vast, fresh sweetwater seas? Better yet, maybe some television commercials aimed at [California] homeowners facing bans on lawn sprinkling: don’t worry about finding enough water to fill the pool, come to the Great Lakes and go swimming every day from June to September!” (From the Great Lakes Reporter, March/April.)
Sorry, bub, we’re pulling you over for a random testosterone check. Epilife (Spring) reports on a New England Journal of Medicine study of four years of traffic accidents (5,665 of them) in and around Marshfield, Wisconsin. The study suggests that “1,586 accidents would have been avoided if men had the same risk as women.”
Don’t close the books on the Gulf War until 2117. From Harper’s “Index” (May): “Number of Americans who received veterans’ benefits last year for a relative’s service in the Civil War: 51.”
