The Wage Gap

Women’s pay as a percentage of men’s:

  • 1951: 63.9%
  • 1960: 60.7%
  • 1970: 59.4%
  • 1980: 60.2%
  • 1990: 71.6%
  • 2000: 73.3%

In sales jobs, women still earn only 59.9% of men’s wages.

| Society

Jerimoth Hill

If you’re visiting Rhode Island, you might be excused for wanting to visit Jerimoth Hill: It’s the highest point in the state.

Unfortunately, you’d be taking your life in your hands. Jerimoth is private property, and it’s owned by a singularly cranky 77-year-old named Henry Richardson, who monitors the trail with motion sensors. Here’s how he’s greeted other visitors:

  • Assaulted them verbally (“Shoot all the damn highpointers!” “Get the hell off my property!”)
  • Threatened to break cameras
  • Started fistfights
  • Let the air out of their car tires
  • Shot them with rock salt
  • Chased them through three states by car

Under pressure, Richardson’s son agreed in 1998 to let hikers visit the highpoint on national holidays. Before that, the 812-foot rise “was considered less accessable than Mt. McKinley.”

| Oddities

Six Stick Shifts Stuck Shut

Dangerous tongue twisters:

I am not the pheasant plucker,
I’m the pheasant plucker’s mate.
I am only plucking pheasants
Because the pheasant plucker’s late.

I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit;
and on the slitted sheet I sit.

I’m not the fig plucker,
Nor the fig pluckers’ son,
But I’ll pluck figs
Till the fig plucker comes.

| Language

Anagrams

Anagrams:

  • DEBIT CARD = BAD CREDIT
  • MOTHER-IN-LAW = WOMAN HITLER
  • SLOT MACHINES = CASH LOST IN ‘EM
  • DESPERATION = A ROPE ENDS IT
  • ASTRONOMER = MOON STARER
  • ELECTION RESULTS = LIES — LET’S RECOUNT

And SNOOZE ALARMS = ALAS! NO MORE Z’S.

| Language

Smile!

Supermodels speak:

  • “They were doing a full back shot of me in a swimsuit and I thought, Oh my God, I have to be so brave. See, every woman hates herself from behind.” — Cindy Crawford
  • “I think, If my butt’s not too big for them to be photographing it, then it shouldn’t be too big for me.” — Christy Turlington
  • “I wish my butt did not go sideways, but I guess I have to face that.” — Christie Brinkley
  • “Everywhere I went, my cleavage followed. But I learned I am not my cleavage.” — Carole Mallory
  • “Because modeling is lucrative, I’m able to save up and be more particular about the acting roles I take.” — Kathy Ireland, star of Alien From L.A. and Danger Island
  • “I haven’t seen the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre. I haven’t seen anything. I don’t really care.” — Tyra Banks
  • “My husband was just OK looking. I was in labor and I said to him, ‘What if she’s ugly? You’re ugly.'” — Beverly Johnson
  • “I don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day.” — Linda Evangelista

Evangelista also said, “I can do anything you want me to do so long as I don’t have to speak.”

| Quotations