I don’t believe that in the USA anyone is FORCED to do that as part of a job. They generally ask for volunteers.

I am wracked with guilt over my recent marriage, now. I was 53, she was only 49. A gap of over four years! I didn’t realize at the time that by age-gapping, I was depriving some other unfortunate woman of a chance at a happy marriage.

and almost all of the people who got the vaccination can be very sure that they will NOT die of that flu this winter.

Here is why I get the flu shot every year, for at least the last 15 or so:

Each winter, I visit my mother in Florida. She lives in a community with many elderly people. These are the people who are most susceptible to dying from complications of the seasonal flu.

If I were to bring the flu to that community, people could die because of my visit. Don’t I have an obligation as a good Jew and citizen of the world to be vaccinated? Would I want other people visiting that community that houses my mother to have the vaccine: YES.

This year I convince my wife and her mother to get the seasonal flu vaccine, just in case they come with me to Florida.

Unfortunately, we have not yet had the option of getting the H1N1 right now. My doctor only got five doses assigned to her, and she is using them for her most fragile patients, particularly the few who have bone marrow disorders or transplants. We are not in a high risk group, so we can wait until more vaccine is available.

also according to that same ministry, is that some 35 Israelis and one Palestinian have died from the swine flu, already, and it’s just the beginning of the season. That’s, um, 35 more than died from the flu shot.

600Kbear, Reportedly, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon did not randomly match up his mass marriage participants. For one mass marriage involving 35,000 people, he personally made the matches himself over a two month period by scrutinizing the applications and photos of those involved.

His followers believe that he has the ability to correctly match destined mates, sort of like a super-shadchan.

Also, most of those mass-marriage figures were inflated. Many of the participants were already married, and were just renewing their vows.

Also, be sure to use the right fire extinguisher on an electrical or a grease fire. Most fire extinguishers in the US have their category printed somewhere on the fire extinguisher:

*Class A extinguishers are for ordinary combustible materials such as paper, wood, cardboard, and most plastics. The numerical rating on these types of extinguishers indicates the amount of water it holds and the amount of fire it can extinguish. &

*Class B fires involve flammable or combustible liquids such as gasoline, kerosene, grease and oil. The numerical rating for class B extinguishers indicates the approximate number of square feet of fire it can extinguish.

*Class C fires involve electrical equipment, such as appliances, wiring, circuit breakers and outlets. Never use water to extinguish class C fires – the risk of electrical shock is far too great! Class C extinguishers do not have a numerical rating. The C classification means the extinguishing agent is non-conductive.

*Class D fire extinguishers are commonly found in a chemical laboratory. They are for fires that involve combustible metals, such as magnesium, titanium, potassium and sodium. These types of extinguishers also have no numerical rating, nor are they given a multi-purpose rating – they are designed for class D fires only

Using a class A (water) extinguisher on an electrical or grease fire can be life-threatening.

remember the acronym PASS for extinguisher use:

P – Pull the pin.

A – Aim at the BASE of the fire — that is where the fuel for the fire is.

S – Squeeze the lever slowly.

S – Sweep from side-to-side until the fire is out.

I can’t say which, but the man was wearing a colored shirt, and had already been vaccinated against H1N1 flu. He did not own a gun, but had two dogs, one of which was an excellent guard dog. He planned on eating three sufganiyot for Chanukah 5770, and wouldn’t enter a shidduch goral even if it included frozen girls. His shirt smelled slightly of mold, though he had tried everything to get rid of the smell. He addressed his rav thus: “What’s up, Rav?” He wore jeans ever since he was in yeshiva.

What? What? The topic of this thread is “Good Jokes.” Ooops.

A bar walks into a guy. Oops! wrong frame of reference. Sorry.

A guy goes into a bar, orders four shots of the most expensive 30-year-old single-malt Scotch and downs them one after the other. The barkeep says, “You look like you’re in a hurry.” “You would be too if you had what I have,” said the guy. “What have you got?” “Fifty cents.”

A guy walks into a bar with a pair of jumper cables wrapped around his neck and orders a Scotch and soda. The bartender says, “O.K., but don’t start anything.”

shadchansicles?

There are special guns made for women these days.

yes. you get to live in a gated community with 24-hour security. Who wouldn’t want a cell of his own?

similar flus have been horrific in the past. Particularly the 1918 pandemic flu, which was an extremely virulent strain of H1N1 flu. But, no one knows for sure.

The casualty figures for the 1918 swine flu were estimated to be between 50 million and 100 million souls worldwide. That’s about seven times as many people as died in WWI, which had just recently ended, and about 3% of the world population in 1918, and between 10% and 20% of those infected by that flu.

Some communities were almost completely wiped out by that flu. In Samoa, 90% of the population was infected. 30% of the adult men, 22% of the adult women, and 10% of the children died.

That’s bad.

Again, this H1N1 probably won’t be that bad, but it is not possible to know. The problem is that it takes many months to produce and test a specific flu vaccine, and even longer to vaccinate the public. Public Health authorities can’t wait to see what might happen, because then it is already too late to consider vaccination.

We are fortunate to live in an age where vaccines have been perfected to the point where they can wipe out diseases and save much suffering at minimal risk. When was the last time you worried about your children getting Polio or Smallpox, both very deadly diseases?

Even the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine was inocculated into 40 million people. Of those, an infinitessimal number got Guillain-Barre syndrome, somewhere in the range of 4000 – That’s about one illness per MILLION people vaccinated. Of those, only about 25 died from the syndrome.

Compare this to the potential danger of any flu, and especially to the statistics above for the H1N1 epidemic of 1918.

happy anniversary, b.h.

first, you must get 70 laundresses and launders to sign an appeal. They need not all be Chinese.

I joined the Coffee Room when we used to have to read the forums by candlelight. My mother told me of the days when submissions to The Coffee Room had to be etched into cave walls.

reminds me of the American reporter who abandoned all protocol while King Grorge V was visiting the US and shouted, “Hey, King!”

Brighton Ski Resort, near Park City, has billboards that run through March promoting its new four-person chairlifts. The slogan reads: “Wife. Wife. Wife. Husband. High Speed Quads.”

where is the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) Anti-defamation league when we need them?

most schools have anti-bullying education and programs in place these days. Have you contacted the school?

Dear Mezonos Maven – one family was in Massachusetts, one in Arizona.

from my polygamy humor file:

If polygamy is reinstated, think of the merchandising possibilities. In Utah, for the 2002 Olympics, a beer company selling a beer called “Polygamy Porter” put a photo of a six-pack on a billboard and advertised: Take one home for the wives.

The beer’s slogan: Why have just one?

I recall that some christian group evaluated the candidates in the 2008 election, and determined that Mitt Romney and Joe Lieberman were the only two candidates who did more than give lip-service to “chrisitan” family values, they both really lived it. Amid candidates who had dumped former wives, etc., Romney was the only one still married to his first wife, and though Joe Lieberman had been divorced as a young man, he had a longtime wife and appeared to have a real marriage, and of course, those family values.

A prominent Boston radio talk-show host used to greet Mitt Romney with “Hey, Governor, how are the wives.” Mitt Romney would just chuckle gently.

I still like the combination of a dog and a baseball bat. Baseball bats are great for close-up fighting. It’s hard to injure someone in another room. Require little training besides Little League, and there are no licensing requirements anywhere I know of, even NYC.

I would invite President Obama and his family, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu and his family. Maybe I would also invite King Abdullah and Mahmoud Abbas,if they were free. We could have a nice chat over latkes and Macabee beer.

Tzippi, I think boxing is too brutal for modern times, and should be forgotten, but I can not deny that there is beauty, art, great athleticism and skill involved in the movements and tactics in the “Sweet Science.”

Very cool. Boxing was once a jewish sport, but not in the last 40 or 50 years. We had a pretty good Jewish boxer in the Boston area about 10 years ago named Dana Rosenblatt, 37 wins (23 by KO), 1 loss, 2 draw. Not bad.

Every championship boxer should have a good nickname, maybe we can supply it.

Back in the heyday of Jewish boxing, there were some great nicknames, “The Yid Kid”, “The Zion Lion”, Bruce “the Mouse” Strauss, “The Hebrew Hammer,” “The Matchmaker” (he probably belongs in the shidduch thread), Artie “Ring” O’Leary (nee Lieberman), to name a few.

Is it a crisis, though? In any endeavour that involves matching and selection, such as employment (shidduchs between workers and jobs) there is bound to be some transient displacement due to the right job and the right worker just having not found each other yet. The same is true with marriage shidduchim.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics considers about 4% unemployment to be full employment, since that’s about the number of people who are unemployed while waiting for a job to come along, etc.

What percentage of single girls of advanced age, who wish to get married, and have been trying, not found their match? What sort of %ages are we talking about?

Import tall boys from Poland.