Stocks Down on News of Stocks Down

2002-08-02


NEW YORK -- The major stock indexes all finished lower today due to jittery investors' concerns about stocks declining in price.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), NASDAQ, Standard & Poor's (S&P) and other financial measures all dropped 2-to-4 percent on news that stock prognosticators had predicted a 2-to-4 percent slide in stock prices.

Legg Mason's VP of Self-Fulfilling Predictions said he expects the downward slide to continue, and so he recommends that "everyone sell every last share of stock you can."

Also today, journalists at a national conference of major business publications decided the continue referring to a high-volume stock trading day as "a major sell-off". A proposal to start calling it "a major buy-up" was unanimously defeated.

Science Seeks Cure for NPR Nose

2002-07-31

Scientists at the US Nasal Observatory (USNO) say they are hot on the trail of a cure for a condition called "NPR Nose". The syndrome, which affects newscasters from National Public Radio, causes a victim to sound like he has a small mammal jammed in his sinuses. Carl Castle, Mara Liasson, Robert Siegel and Susan Stamberg all display the typical symptoms.

"Listeners have been emailing me for years saying they're praying that I'll get over my cold," said Stamberg, the special correspondant and veteran All Things Considered anchor. "I don't have a cold. And my voice sounds fine to me."

As Stamberg spoke, a flock of geese landed all about her, called in by the sound of her voice piped through her nostils.

Experts at the USNO say Stamberg is in denial, which is typical of NPR Nose patients.

"They can't hear themselves," said Dr. Linus Septum of USNO, "I don't think they realize that normal people don't sound like they just snorted a wool cardigan."

Environmentalists Kill and Eat Beached Whales

2002-07-30

CAPE COD, MA -- After several dozen pilot whales beached themselves near here for the second time in as many days, hundreds of volunteers who had rescued them the first time, suddenly slaughtered and began to eat the highly-social aquatic mammals.

"We suddenly realized that by rescuing the whales we were upsetting the delicate balance of nature," said Kristin Patchett, of the Cape Cod Stranding Network, who led the first rescue effort. "Darwinian natural selection makes sure that evolution moves forward with better and stronger creatures. If we rescue these obvious weaklings, we would throw off the whole random scheme of evolution."

Patchett then returned to her task of tearing away a whale's dorsal fin with her sharp incisors and fingernails. Oily blubber dripped from Patchett's chin as she overlooked the feeding frenzy of fellow environmentalists who were savagely hacking at the still-twitching leviathan carcasses with rude implements like clam shells and broken driftwood.

"It's important that we be intellectually consistent," Patchett added. "I have contacted our friends at Green Peace, who agreed with me, and say they will now use their small boats to track whales and cull the weak and deformed from the pods."

Green Peace spokesbeing E.B.Karing, reached by satellite phone somewhere off the coast of New Zealand, concurred with Patchett.

"It just makes sense, that humans -- the most highly evolved creatures -- should continue to assert our dominance, and destroy species that pose a threat to us. Whales do, after all, have larger brains than we do. Can you imagine what will happen when they evolve some opposable thumbs? We'd be done for."