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Show Page to Mi mm The National Enterprise, twenty-tw- o I Open Account June 8, 1977 The Prince Column by Chuck Akerlow BY John Prince Congress -- Ail talk Some of the best sellers are so Why didnt we think of it? Book of Worlds Records. And now simple. Like the Guiness we have The Book of Lists. but little action Congress has been in session almost six months now and little, if anything, has come from the millions of dollars we taxpayers have spent supporting it. Last November, the election campaign made it sound as if the country was about to fall to pieces and only a Democrat Congress and a Democrat President could rise to the occasion. Well, we got both. And so far, nothing of substance relating to the national economy has passed Congress and gone to the White House except the jobs bill. Yet the economy has shown some stability and growth and the dire predictions by the Democrats in November havent proven out. But, then, that doesnt matter. The democrats werent really interested in describing things as they really were. They were only interested in winning. So Congress has debated and nitpicked, written bills and rewritten them and to date we have nothing except a jobs bill which hasn't yet gone into effect. But the economy appears strong. Unemployment Four hundred thousand new jobs were Concreated last month. sumer prices have plateaued and things in the auto industry couldnt have gotten better if Charlie Wilson had written the script himself. has dipped. have to ask. why do we need Or better still, Congress? isnt Congress as an institution about as antiquated an institution as one can find? I economic and personal af- fairs. Even if it cost the same, I would vote to send Congress Give them a home. now. vacation for the rest of the year. Keep them from any further interference in our lives and let the free economic system and free marketplace resolve our problems. The Sixties and the Seventies should have taught us that the government is probably in the worst position to solve probIt is too slow, too lems. unw ieldly. too liberal to be of any important impact on the rapid press of events in the nation and the world. You may or may not have seen it yet but there is a pretty good chance you will get it on Fathers Day or on your birthday or next Christmas or sometime. A book of about 500 lists and the kind of trivia that will make you the smack hit at your next cocktail party. For example, did you know that Patrick Henry who said Give me liberty or give me death owned 65 slaves? Or that Isaac Newton, Immanual Kant and John Rushen all died virgins? I have no idea how we know this but Im willing to accept it if you are. An evening with the Book of Lists will leave you knowing that a herring once lived to be 19 years old, Anne Boleyn had three breasts, President Kennedy smoked marijuana in the White House, and that Aristotle, who has a decent reputation in the scientific world, apparently believed that insects could be created spontaneously from mud. -- According to the Book of Lists, the most dangerous airline in the world in 1976 was Alia (Royal Jordanian). The next four are Viasa (Venezuelan); Egyptian; Tarom (Romanian); and Turkish shudder to think w hat might be the case in the economy had Congress passed everything it said was necessary to Todays good economic news airlines. No American carriers show up in the 15 most dangerous list and to my surprise Aeroflot (Soviet Union) doesnt make it either. federal deficits and consistent federal meddling in all of our marketplace and the conservative policies of the previous administrations and has little to do with the promises of today's ruling democrats in Congress. I say lets send Congress home. I put the economy back on course. Thank goodness it didn't and thank goodness the free enterprise system worked well enough to rescue an economy burdened by huge is due to the efforts of the free Quoting the Handbook on Hanging (a publication that had escaped my attention) the Book of Lists tells us the proper drop heights for persons of average build with no unusual physical problems. For example, if you want to hang a person who weighs 168 pounds you should plan on a drop of 8 feet 8 inches. This of course is assuming that you want to do the job correctly. If the person is dropped too far the head comes off. If they don't drop far enough they are forced to die by strangulation. THE NATIONAL Someone took the time to program a computer to determine the overall probability of landing on each square in Monopoly. So, according to The Book of Lists you are likely to spend the most time on Illinois Avenue followed by Go, B&O Railroad, Free Parking and Tennessee Avenue. I also now know that the Golden Gate is the most popular attraction in the United States, that there are more Navajo Indians than any other tribe, that Great Falls, Montana is the windiest city in the United States and that the Grand Canyon is the most popular natural attraction in this country. man-mad- e According to the Book of Lists, Ogden, Utah is the 6th best city to live in (of less than 200,000) in our nation. The worst motor vehicle accident was in 1965 in Sotouboua, Togo. More than 125 people died when two trucks crashed into a crowd of dancers on a congested street during a festival. Of the nine dogs that bite the most, we are surprised not to find the dobermans. The next time you see a German police dog or a chow or a poodle dont try to pet it. The five most commonly used words in written English are The, Of. And, A and To. And, the toughest tongue twister comes from South Africa and goes something like this: Lqaqa laziqlkaqika kwaze kwaqha-wak- a ughoghoqha. Roughly translated it means the skunk rolled down and ruptured its larynx. Anyway, the whole thing is a good deal of fun, and Im grateful to my neighbor Bill Boynton who gave me a copy for mv birthday. As I roll into the second half of my 30's, I'm encouraged to read that I ve already outlived the oldest tapeworm on record and will soon pass the boa constrictor. If I can hold on for 115 years more, sturgeon. Ill outdo every lake I ve also set some sort of record for plagiarizing in a column. "Jimmy jes couldn't make it. Ahm sure yall wont mind- - J tnsbee. Making love uses up less calories than throwing a |