An elderly man walks into a confessional.

Man: ‘I am 92 years old, have a wonderful wife of 70
years, many children, grandchildren, and great
grandchildren. Yesterday, I picked up two college girls,
hitchhiking. We went to a motel, where I had sex with
each of them three times.’

Priest: ‘Are you sorry for your sins?’

Man: ‘What sins?’

Priest: ‘What kind of a Catholic are you?’

Man: ‘I’m Jewish.’

Priest: ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

Man: ‘I’m 92 years old … I’m telling everybody.’

What wrong with the old patriotism?

DENVER — Warning to Southern delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver this August: it will be a no-fry zone.

As part of the effort to make the August 25-28 convention the greenest ever, the Democrats' guidelines for food catering include one that strikes at the heart of Southern cuisine: no fried food.

No fried chicken. No fried catfish. No fried green tomatoes. No fried okra. No fried anything.

In promoting healthy eating habits, the Democratic guidelines say every meal should be nutritious and include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, purple/blue and white."

"It's the new patriotism," says Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, the driving force

In related Nanny State news from across the pond. London city council will make available public paid for redesigned salt shakers to chip shops and other fast food establishments. The new shakers will have five holes instead of the traditional 17 holes to reduce British salt intake.

They decided that the five-hole pots would reduce the amount of salt being used by more than 60 per cent yet give a ‘visually acceptable sprinkling’ that would satisfy the customer.

Back in the day when birth control and abortion weren’t readily available to high-school kids, fathers were pretty good deterrents to pregnancy. Boys knew they’d have kneecap problems if they got daddy’s little girl pregnant. If they were lucky, they’d be married by the morning after.

Baseball is different from any other sport; very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs.

In most sports the ball or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he's out; sometimes unintentionally, he's out.

Also: In football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score withthe ball, and without the ball you can't score. In baseball, the ball prevents you from scoring.

In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager; and only in baseball does the manager (or coach) wear the same clothing as the players do. If you had ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders football uniform, you would know the reason for this custom.

Now I've mentioned football. Baseball and football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And, as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values. And maybe how those values have changed over the last 150 years. For those reasons I enjoy comparing baseball and football:

And finally, the objectives of the the two games are completely different:

A Swedish firm has worked out how to make money running free schools

BIG-STATE, social-democratic Sweden seems an odd place to look for a free-market revolution. Yet that is what is under way in the country's schools. Reforms that came into force in 1994 allow pretty much anyone who satisfies basic standards to open a new school and take in children at the state's expense. The local municipality must pay the school what it would have spent educating each child itself—a sum of SKr48,000-70,000 ($8,000-12,000) a year, depending on the child's age and the school's location. Children must be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis—there must be no religious requirements or entrance exams. Nothing extra can be charged for, but making a profit is fine.

Students in the D.C. school voucher program, the first federal initiative to spend taxpayer dollars on private school tuition, generally did no better on reading and math tests after two years than public school peers, a U.S. Education Department report said yesterday.

Reading Ahead -

Though not conclusive, promising new data are reason enough to keep D.C.'s vouchers program going.

The report released yesterday by the U.S. Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences covered only 19 months of students' participation in the program. Accordingly, it found no statistically significant difference in test scores overall between students who were offered a scholarship and students who were not. But researchers reported an encouraging trend. Specifically, 88 percent of participating students are reading two to four months ahead of children who did not receive a scholarship. It is hard, as institute director Grover J. Whitehurst noted, to positively drive reading results, so the findings are significant.

It is the latest idea in medicine aimed at soothing children's minor aches and pains.

A sugary, chewable pill which has no effect whatsoever.

Manufacturers of Obecalp - placebo spelled backwards - claim that it works by convincing youngsters that they have taken real medicine so they must be feeling better.

They say it offers comfort without the need to resort to drugs with potentially harmful side-effects.

For example, if your e-mail address is john.doe@gmail.com, and you want to register at the New York Times, you could submit on their web form, "john.doe+NYT@gmail.com". Later, when you start getting spam addressed to "john.doe+NYT@gmail.com" it will at least allow you to know who can't be trusted.