Short Takes Short Takes (December 03, 2003)

I'm 99 percent sure that this is correct

The California Highway Patrol has launched a holiday crackdown on people who don't wear their seatbelts. At least, most of them.

"Over 91 percent of Californians wear their safety belts," Cmdr. Fritz Eberly of the CHP Redwood City Command said in a press release. "The other 8 percent should listen up or be prepared to get a citation."

Cmdr. Eberly neglected to mention what is going to happen to the remaining 1 percent of seatbelt scofflaws.

As one Almanac staffer quipped: "Over 92 percent of readers never bother to add up statistics in the newspaper. The other 64 percent, however, might catch mistakes."
Good things come in small packages

Forget Christmas stockings -- these gifts come in shoeboxes.

For the past three years, youngsters at Phillips Brooks School in Menlo Park have taken part in Operation Christmas Child, a program that delivers shoe boxes filled with gifts around the world. Students put together 130 boxes of presents such as school supplies and toys, school officials said.

Boxes go to needy kids in such far-flung places as Africa and Central Asia.
Spam, spam, spam, spam

Help may be on the way for people tired of seeing their e-mail inboxes crammed with spam -- unsolicited advertisements for everything from the prosaic (home mortgages) to the pornographic (live farm girls doing things formerly illegal in the state of Texas).

Legislation, wittily entitled the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, recently passed Congress, and authorizes the creation of a "Do Not Spam" list similar to the one that curbs telemarketers, said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton.

The act also allows fines of up to $2,000 per e-mail for violators.

Based on the number of e-mails that slip through the Almanac's spam filter touting everything from prescription drugs to "male enhancements," the fines could go a long way toward shoring up the federal deficit.
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