YES, COURT REALLY IS LIKE THIS ...

LAWYER:  Is  your  appearance  here  this  morning  pursuant  to  a  subpoena  which  was  served  on  you?

WITNESS:  No.  I  dress  like  this  every  day.



LAWYER:  As  county  coroner,  how  many  autopsies  have  you  performed  on  dead  people?

WITNESS:  All  of  them.



In  an  action  for  divorce  for  adultery,   the  "corespondent"  (1  "r")   is  the  legal  term  for  "the  other  woman"  [or  man]  forced  to  testify ...

LAWYER:  Did  you  make  love  with  him  in  New  York?

CORESPONDENT:  I  refuse  to  answer  that  question.

LAWYER:  Did  you  make  love  with  him  in  Chicago?

CORESPONDENT:  I  refuse  to  answer  that  question.

LAWYER:  Did  you  make  love  with  him  in  Miami?

CORESPONDENT:  No.



LAWYER:  Were  you  at  home  that  day?

WITNESS:  [Shakes  head.]

LAWYER:  No,  ma'am!    All  of  your  answers  must  be  oral!

WITNESS:  Oral.

LAWYER:  Yes,  that  is  correct.   So,  tell  the  Court  if  you  were  at  home  that  day.

WITNESS:  Oral.



WITNESS:  Oh,  it  was  a  terrible  barroom  brawl,  with   punching,  yelling,    wrestling,  shooting!  It  was  a  mess!

LAWYER:  And  you  were  shot  in  the  middle  of  the  fracas?

WITNESS:  No,  no,  no.  My  fracas  is  fine.  The  bullet  went-in  midway  between  my  fracas  and  my  navel.



LAWYER:  Do  you  happen  to  know  your  IQ,  sir?

WITNESS:   I  suspect  it's  pretty  good.    I've  never  needed  glasses.



LAWYER:   When  the  tree  surgeon sawed  the  branch  off  the  tree,  and  it  fell  and  hit  you  in  the  head,    how  did  it  affect  you?

WITNESS:   Well,  it  really  affected  my  memory.  I  keep  forgetting  things.

LAWYER:  Would  you  please  list  for  the  Court  some  of  the  things  which  you  have  forgotten?



LAWYER:  So,  ma'am,  you  happen  to  know  the  exact  date  of  conception  of  the  child.

WITNESS:  Yes.  On  September  8  of  last  year.

LAWYER:  And  what  were  you  doing  at  the  time?



LAWYER:  And  how  was  your  first  marriage  terminated,  ma'am?

WITNESS:  By  death.

LAWYER:  And  by  whose  death  was  it  terminated?



Full-fledged  divorce  cases  are  rare.    Because  the  results  are  normally  the  same  despite  bad  behavior  by  one  or  both  spouses,  usually  the  divorce  itself  is  awarded   with  only  one  party  appearing  in  court,    to  put  the  facts  underlying  the  party's  entitlement  to  a  divorce  on  the  record;  and  then  there  is  a  separate  trial   on  equitable  distribution  --  on  the  money.  However,  occasionally,    where  the  aggrieved  party  feels  that  the  "bad"  spouse's  bad  behavior  will  impact  how  equitable  distribution  is  awarded,   there  is  a  trial  on  the  "juicy"  part  of  break-up,  to  drag  the  other  spouse  "through  the  mud" ...

LAWYER  FOR  THE  HUSBAND  [anxious  to  make  his  client  look  decent]:   And  when  did  this  feeling  you   had,  that  there  was  something  wrong  with  your  marriage,  start  growing  on  you?

WIFE:  I  was  in  bed  with  my  husband.   I  was  under  the  sheets  on  my  side  of  the  bed,  turned  away  from  him.    When  my  husband  awakened,  he  started  lovingly  running  his  hand  over  my  body  through  the  sheets,  and  he  whispered,  "Katherine,  you're  so  beautiful!"  That  was  very  disturbing.

LAWYER  FOR  THE  HUSBAND:   What???  You  found  that  'disturbing'???!!!

WIFE:  My  name  is  Susan.



LAWYER:   You  say  that  there  was  a  doorway  in  the  kitchen  that  led  to  stairs?

WITNESS:  Yes.

LAWYER:  And  where  did  the  stairs  lead  to?

WITNESS:  They  went  down  to  the  basement.

LAWYER:  Did  the  stairs  also  go  up?

COULD WE FIT THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE WORLD INTO THE STATE OF DELAWARE?

For  those  of  you  laying  awake  in  bed  at  night  worrying  that  guys  with  guns  might  break  into  your  home  to  herd  literally  everyone  into  the  State  of  Delaware,  and  then  actually  join  them  there,  this  is  an  extremely  important  question!   So,  let's  deal  with  it.

First,  how  many  people  are  there?

Well,  those  babies  keep  poppin'  out.   The  world  population  keeps  going  up,  up,  up ...

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/


I'll  round  the  number  off  upwards  to  7.33  billion,  to  keep  this  article  relevant  for  a  few  weeks.   That's   seven  billion  330  million   (7,330,000,000)  people.

Next,    how  big  is  the  State  of  Delaware?

That  turns  out  to  be  an  extremely  difficult  question  to  answer.

Google  itself  will  tell  you  that  Delaware  is  2,489  square  miles  in  size.  Wikipedia's  estimate  of  the  total  area  is  about  one-quarter  of  a  square  mile  less.

But,  that  number  is  shrinking  every  year.    Why?  Global  warming  is  now  increasing  ocean  depth  about  1/32  of  an  inch  per  year,  at  our  latitude.    That  translates  out  to  a  surprising  loss  of  land   each  year,  for  the  State  of  Delaware.

Delaware  has  a  "mean  elevation"  (an  "average  elevation"  above  sea  level)  of  60  feet.  Since  the  entire  east  coast  of  Delaware  is  on  tidal  water  --  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  Delaware  Bay  --  we  can  assume  with  relative  statistical  accuracy  that  Delaware  slopes  upward  from  the  east  coast   westward  to  the  western  boundary,    which  is  120  feet  above  sea  level   (since  60  feet  is  an  average,  right?).  Since  the  state  is  96  miles  long,  and  since  2489  square  miles  / 96  miles  long  =  25.93  miles  wide,  we'll  use  that  as  the  base  of  our  average  slope  running  from  Delaware's  coast  inland  to  the  Western  Boundary.   25.93  miles  =  136,910  feet.   If  we  do  a  rise-over-the-run  slope  calculation  --  remember  Algebra,  which  your  teacher  said  would  save  your  life  someday?  --  we  get  1 / 1,141.   So,  for  every  1/32d   of  an  inch  UP  the  ocean  depth  increases  each  year,    the  water  comes  IN  1,141  1/32d's   of  an  inch,  or  rough  44  inches.   Let's  say  the  length  of  the  coast  is  exactly  equal  to  the  State's  length.  (Coves  and  estuaries  make  the  coast  effectively  much,  much  longer,    but  I'd  blow  a  cork  if  I  tried  to  calculate  the  "true"  coastline  of  Delaware,  taking  those  things  into  account.)   So,   let's  say  we  have  a  rectangle   96  miles  long  and  44  inches  wide.  That's  how  much  land  Delaware  loses  each  year  to  global  warming   --   at  least!  96  miles  x  5280  feet / mile  x  12  inches  =  6,082,560  inches  in  length.  If  we  multiply  that  by  44  inches  of  rectangular  width,  we  get  267,632,640  square  inches  of  land  lost  every  year  to  global  warming.   That  comes  out  to  1,858,560  square  feet.  If  we  divide  that  by  27,878,400  square  feet  per  square  mile,  we  discover  that  Delaware  is  losing  about  .0666666666666666666666666  square  miles  per  year  to  global  warming.     Hey,  man,  that's  like,   uh,  a  really  eschatological   number,  man!  It  scares  me!

Back  to  "reality" ...

So,  how  accurate  that  number  describing  Delaware's  total  area  is  depends  on  how  old  it  is.  It's  going  down  about  7%  of  a  square  mile  each  year.  (Actually,  way  more,  because  of  the  true-length-of-coastline  business,  above.)

Presumably,    none  of  our  guests  to  Delaware  --  all  of  mankind,  remember   --  wants  to  stand  in  a  lake  (although  to  tell  the  truth  they  might  be  the  lucky  ones  in  our  hypothetical).  So,  we  have  to  back  Delaware's  540.18  square  miles  of  water  out  of  the  equation.     That  leaves  1,948.82  square  miles  of  standing  space  in  Delaware.

Now,  literally  speaking,  that  changes  more-or-less  constantly  --  with  the  tide!  As  the  tide  comes  IN,  the  number  of  square  miles  SHRINKS!     As  the  tide  goes  OUT,  the  number  of  square  miles  GROWS,  right?   Also,    local  and  not-so-local  storm  surges  --  special  tides  generated  by  low  pressure  weather  systems  which  generate   sometimes  pretty  visible  mountains  of  water  in  the  oceans,  bays   and  estuaries  --  vastly  affect  tides,  and  therefore  the  number  of  square  miles  of  Delaware  unencumbered  by  the  seas.

Since  knowing  what's  happening  in  the  tide  department   is  just  too  complex  to  guess  at,    we'll  just  assume   that   guests  standing  on  Delaware's  coasts  will  be  standing  midway  down  the  beaches  between  the  high  point  and  low  points  of  the  tides,  and  that  they  don 't  mind  getting  their  footsies  wet  when  the  tide  comes  in,  and  that  that  achieves  1,948.82  square  miles  of  area.

There's  another  calculation  problem   --  ups  and  downs  in  the  terrain.

It  is  said  that  if  one  got  an  enormous  clothes  iron  and  used  it  to  flatten-out  mountainous  Colorado,  it  would  have  more  surface  area  than  any  other  state  of  the  Union.

Perhaps  so.

Well,  Delaware  would  also  get  slightly  larger,  if  ironed-out.    In  other  words,   1,948.82  square  miles  is  actually  a  "projection"  --  the  area  you  would  see  from  space,  looking  down,  which  doesn't  account  for  additional  area  from  Delaware's  relatively  few  hills.

We'll  ignore  that  factor,  also,  and  assume  that  1,948.82  square  miles  is  perfectly  flat.

There's  one  last  problem  to  consider.

If  you  look  on  any  good  map  of  the  Delaware  Bay,    you  will  see  that  the  boundary  of  all  of  Newcastle  County,  Delaware  runs  clear  across  the  Delaware  River  over  to  the  coast  of  New  Jersey.  I  used  to  think   that  there  were  only  two  points  where  the  Army  Corps  of  Engineers  dumped  dredge  spoil  dredged  off  the  bottom  of  the  Delaware  to  make  way  for  larger  ships,  onto  the  coast  of  new  Jersey,  so  that,  because  they  were  on  the  Delaware  side  of  the  border,  they  were  actually  additions  to  the  territory  of  Delaware,  though  the  new  acreage  is  attached  to  New  Jersey,  not  Delaware.  In  fact,  it  turns  out  that  Google  Maps  portrays  almost  the  entire  coast  of  New  Jersey  along  the  Delaware  River  up  to  the  latitude  of  northernmost  Delaware,  where  the  famous  Twelve  Mile  Circle  crosses  the  Delaware  River  into  New  Jersey,   as  belonging  to  Delaware,  apparently  due  to  alluvial  accretions  over  the  centuries,  implicitly  pre-empting  the  Rule  of  Alluvial  Accretions  (which  says  that  alluvial  accretions  increase  the  riparian  lands  of  the  abutting  owner).  Though,  technically,  doing  this  is  probably  correct,  since  Interstate  Compacts (one  of  which  created  the  Delaware/New  Jersey  border)   are  generally  viewed  as  being  above  state  law  (which  would  include  the  common  law  Rule  of  Alluvial  Accretions)  but  inferior  to  federal  law,  God  knows  what  the   United  States  Supreme  Court  would  say,  since  we  all  know  that  NOTHING  binds  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  right?  (In  reality,  they're  autocratic  kings,  right?)

In  any  event,  that's  another   variable  we  will  ignore,  because  it's  just  too  complex.  Delaware  refuses  to  cross  the  river  and  police  it,  anyway  (with  the  consequence,   according  to  one  urban  legend,  that  for  years  the  Mafia  buried  their  victims  in  Finn's  Point,  the  largest  tract  of  Delaware  land  on  the  Jersey  side  of  the  Delaware,  so  that  neither  state  would  bother  looking  there  for  grizzly  evidence.)  (And  here's  a  good  argument,  this  time  for  Pennsville  Township  Municipal  Court:  Suppose   a  really  old  geezer  who  has  trouble  holding  his  water  goes  for  a  walk  on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware  in  Pennsville  Township  between  Finns  Point  and  the  Delaware  Memorial  Bridge   --  the  famous  "Twin  Bridges."  He  walks  out  onto  the  spit  of  land   at  the  end  of  Ferry  Road,    drops  his  pants,   and  pees  in  broad  daylight,  in  view  of  all  of  the  neighbors.   Technically,  he  perpetrated  that  heinous  act  100%  in  the  State  of  Delaware  [unless  he  aimed  east,  not  west].  Is  he  prosecutable  in  Pennsville  Township  Municipal  Court?  Do  Pennsville  Township  Police  have  to  extradite  him  to  New  Jersey  to  process  him  in  to  the  system?)

At  any  rate,   back  to  "reality"  and  the  main  problem,  again:    Fitting  the  entire  world's  population  in  Delaware:  Can  it  be  done?

From  here  on  end,  it's  a  simple  fraction:   7,330,000,000 people / 1,948.82 square  miles  =  roughly  3,761,250  people  per  square  mile.  Since  each  square  mile  has  27,878,400  square  feet,    each  person  would  have  27,878,400 / 3,761,250  square  feet,  or  7.41  square  feet,  to  dwell  in.

That  seems  doable  --  so  long  as  nobody  lays  down,    and  that  old  geezer  from  Pennsville  Township  doesn't  cause  problems.

HELLO, AND THANK YOU FOR CALLING THE STATE MENTAL HOSPITAL

Hello,  and  thank  you  for  calling  the  State  Mental  Hospital.   Please  select  one  of  the  following  options.

If  you  are  obsessive-compulsive,  press  1  repeatedly.

If  you  are  co-dependent,   please  ask  someone  else  to  press  2  for  you.

If  you  have  Multiple  Personality  Disorder,   you  press  3;  you  press  4;  you  press  5  and  you  press  6.

If  you  are  paranoid,   we  know  who  you  are  and  what  you  want;    please  stay  on  the  line  so  that  we  can  trace  your  call.

If  you  are  delusional,  press  7  and  your  call  will  be  forwarded  to  the  mother  ship.

If  you  are  schizophrenic,  listen  carefully  and  the  voice  will  tell  you  which  number  to  press.

If  you  are  severely  depressed,   it  doesn't  matter  which  number  you  press.  Nothing  will  make  you  happy  anyway.

If  you  are  dyslexic,  press  9696969696969696.

If  you  are  bipolar,  please  leave  a  message  after  before  after  before  the beep.   Please  wait  for  the  beep.

If  you  have  severe  short  term  memory  loss,  press  9.  If  you  have  severe  short  term  memory  loss,  press  9.  If  you  have  severe  short  term  memory  loss,  press  9.  

If  you  have  extreme  low  self-esteem,  hang  up.  Our  operators  are  too  busy  to  talk  to  you.

If  you  are  menopausal,  put  the  gun  down,  hang  up,    lie  down  and  have  a  good  cry.   You  won't  be  crazy  forever.

If  you  are  a  blonde,   don't  press  any  buttons.  You'll  just  mess  up.

This  coming  week  is  National  Mental  Health  Week.    You  can  do  your  part  by  talking  to  at  least  one  unstable  person  to  show  that  you  care.

I've  done  my  bit.  Your  turn. 

DEDICATED TO SONS, NIECES AND NEPHEWS WITH THE AGATES TO DEDICATE TIME TO MUSIC!

Here  is  the  finest  piece  of  instrumental  hard  rock  ever  composed ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BcNy3oe1QU

Two Strange Ways Our Father Served His Country During WWII

Our  Dad  passed  away  at  age  89  from  carotid  artery  blockage.   My  memory  of  him  is  a  vast  array  of  stories  and  episodes.  Here,  briefly,  are  two  of  his  stories  about  how  he  served  his  country  in  the  ROTC  Program  during  World  War  II.

At  one  point,   the  Navy  was  interested   in  how  well  mini-greenhouses  could  keep  American  soldiers  warm  in  frigid  lands.

So,  in  his  classes  in  Dartmouth  College,    Dad  and  his  classmates  built  a  person-size  greenhouse,     and  they  took  turns  sitting  in  their  bathing  suits  inside  the  person-size  greenhouse   on  Dartmouth's  front  lawn   in  the  middle  of  New  England  blizzards,  recording  data  and  waving  to  their  laughing  classmates.

At  another  point,   someone  in  the  Navy  had  heard  that  when  a  person  eats   ice  cream,  his  or  her  body  responds  by  warming-up.  And  so  the  Navy  wondered  if  eating  ice  cream  might  abet  survival  in  frigid  latitudes.

As  a  result,  Dad  and  his  classmates  built  3-sided   lean-tos  (to  keep  off  the  wind)    and   got  into  their  bathing  suits  again   and  went  outside  into  their  lean-tos  in  the  middle  of New  England   winter  blizzards   and  spent  their  classes   sitting  outdoors  in  bathing  suits  eating  ice  cream!

DNA Doesn't Lie

After  I  signed-on  with  Ancestry.com,  and  started  developing  a  pretty  good  Pedigree  Chart  showing  the  ancestors  of  my  family  many  generations  back,   I  took  the  DNA  test.  

So  far,   about  1,950   other  people  who  took  the  Ancestry.com  DNA  test  have  turned  out  to  be  8th  cousins  or  closer.  That  includes  several  African  Americans  resulting  from  sex  between   slaves  and  their  owners,  in  the  Old  South.

The  more  closely-related  to  you  someone  is,  in  the  results,  the  more  unambiguous  the  results  are,  within  the  computer  program  employed  by  the  lab  testing  us.

In  about  1.5%  of  the  cases  --  for  me  that currently  comes  out  to  30  people  --  the  results  are  dramatically  clear  --  in  effect,  "The  DNA  makes  it  very,  very  clear  that  these  folks  are  pretty  darn  closely  related  to  you."  I  refer  to  those  people  as  "98%ers."

A  respectable  proportion  of  the  98%ers  have  worked-out  their  ancestry  the  same  way  I  did  --  they  pulled  together  mountains  of  evidence  from  a  variety  of  sources  to  verify  their  ancestry  many  generations  back.

The  problem  with  those  98%ers  is  that,  except  for  3  Ancestry.com  members,  none  of  the  surnames  in  my  ancestry  appear  in  the  surname  chains  in  their  pedigree  charts.

I  thought  about  this  for  a  year  or  so.

And  then  it  dawned  on  me.

Adultery.

Some  of  the  ladies  among  my  ancestors  [at  least  on  the  Eitelman  side,  right,  Eitelman  family  members? ;-)],  or  among  the  98%ers'  ancestors,  were  fibbing  when  they  told  their  hubbies   that  the  Fuller  Brush  man  only  left  a  few  new  brooms  behind.     And  their  hubbies  weren't  quite  as  prolific  as  they  thought.

An Accidental Witness to an Enormous Illegal Drug Transaction

Somebody  over  in  Facebook  reminded  my  of  the  following.

About  20  years  ago,  I  was  an  accidental  witness  to  one  of  the  world's  larger  illegal  drug  transactions.

One  of  my  Hispanic  in-laws  asked  if  I  would  drive  her  and  her  four  little  children  from  a  residence  in  Cherry  Hill,  New  Jersey  to  their  home  off  5th  Street  near  Lehigh  Avenue  in  Philadelphia.  I  hated  the  house  where  that  kid and  her  children  lived,  because  it  literally  rained  roaches  at  night  in  all  of  the  rooms,  so  that  it  gave  me  the  creeps  just  to  walk  into  it.  But,  the  girl  was  a  courageous  little  soldier,  a  loyal  mother   to  her  4  little  kids,  all  of  whom  she  had  borne  out  of  wedlock  to  worthless  Hispanic  suitors.

I  loaded  the  kids  into  the  back.  Their  mom  drove  in  the  passenger  seat  next  to  me.

We  crossed  the  Ben  Franklin  Bridge  over  to  Philadelphia,  then  went  north  up  95  to  Lehigh  Avenue.  I  drove  up  Lehigh  to  6th  Street,  I  think,  and  then  turned  left  onto  6th  and  proceeded  south.  I  believe  at  6th  and  York  Streets,   I  came  to  a  red  light  and  stopped.

There,  on  the  cross  street  in  front  of  us,  were  two  brand  new  white,  windowless  Ford  Econoline  vans.  One  was  parked  on  each  side  of  the  intersection,   backs  pointed  toward  the  intersection,  back  doors  opened.  It  was  about  5:00  p.m.    There,  right  in  front  of  us,  two  Hispanic  guys  came  out  of  the  back  of  the  van  on  the  right,    each  with  a  Kalishnakov 

 slung  over  his  right  shoulder,  carrying  a  large,  heavy  bale  of  white  powder  wrapped  in  clear  plastic ...

The  two  Hispanic  guys  looked  up  at  me,  through  my  windshield  with  alarm.

All  of  a  sudden,  the  reality  of  my  current  situation  came  crashing  down  upon  my  psyche.

(1)  I  had  accidentally  stopped  in  front  of  one  of  the  larger  illegal  drug  transactions  in  American  history.    These  Hispanic  guys  were  cartel  "soldiers"  with  the  job  of  killing  any  witnesses.

(2)  There  would  be  no  police  around.  They  had  been  paid  off.  Otherwise,  these  guys  wouldn't  be  doing  the  transaction  in  broad  daylight.

(3)  I  had  a  car  with  a  girl  and  her  4  helpless  Hispanic  children  in  it,   and  we  were  all  about  to  die.

As  one  of  the  "soldiers"  began  to  unsling  his  AK  while  he  held  the  bale  with  his  left  arm,  to  machine  gun  my  car,   I  realized  that  I  suddenly  had  the  most  important  job  in  the  world  in  front  of  me  --  keeping  the  girl  and  her  kids  in  my  car  alive.

I  quickly  rolled  down  the  window  on  the  driver  side  door,    and  grabbed  the  shoulder  of  the  Hispanic  mom  next  to  me,   and  yelled,  with  as  much  emotion  as  I  could  find  with  the  purpose  of  making  my  words  sound  like  begging,  "NINITA !!!  NINITA !!!"   ["Little  girl !!!  Little  girl !!!"]  I  grabbed  the  shoulder  of  my  Hispanic  in-law  next  to  me.  I  figured  that  they  couldn't  see  the  four  male  children  in  the  back.

What  is  odd  about  my  use  of  that  word  is  that  earlier   that  day,  at  the  Magnolia,  New  Jersey  post  office,   as  I  was  dropping  off  some  mail  for  my  law  practice,   an  Hispanic  dad  had  told  me  how  to  say  the  word  for  "little  girl"   in  Spanish  --  as  though  God  were  preparing  me  for  that  evening.

The  Hispanic  guy  who  wasn't  unslinging  his  AK  clearly  understood  my  point  --  "I've  got  a  car  full  of  little  folks  whom  you  don't  want  to  shoot !"  --  and  looked  crestfallen.

The  other  one  continued  unslinging  his  AK,    and  he  was  in  the  process  of  leveling  it  at  the  car  as  I  began  to  drive  through  the  red  light,  past  them,   south  down  6th  Street  toward  the  kids'  home.

Deep  in  my  soul,  I prayed  a  prayer  that  the  soldier who understood my  point  would  tell  the  other  to  stand  down.

No  bullets  followed  us.  We  made  it.
_________________

I,  Peter  J.  Dawson,  of  full  age,    hereby  certify  that  the  preceding  allegations  or  fact  are  true  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge,  information  and  belief.  I  am  aware  that  if  any  are  knowingly  falsely  made,  then  I  am  subject  to  punishment.