The Jaffe Briefing - January 9, 2020

BAYONNE – No one likes those long lines at the Motor Vehicle Commission. And one Jersey City woman has done what we’ve all, at least once, dreamed about: smashing computers, kicking the security guard and shoving the manager. The 28-year-old woman went berserk over the ridiculous length of the line and was booted from the MVC office at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, NJ.com reports. She returned nearly two hours later, pushing the manager and breaking about $23,000 worth of computers. Both the manager and the security guard tried to wrestle her out, which just made her madder. She kept punching them both. Then, the Bayonne cops arrived and joined in the tussle. She started kicking them, as they tried to cuff her. Finally, this crazed MVC customer was subdued and hauled away, likely without her license renewal. Cops found her with an acid-laced marijuana cigarette, but perhaps that was just to melt away the time on the MVC line.

IN THE CLASSROOM – Dissecting icky, slimy, smelly, formaldehyde-soaked frogs has made high school kids choke back breakfast for generations. Heck, it’s become a teenage rite of passage. Now, a private laboratory wants to change all that, introducing anatomically-correct synthetic frogs, ready-made for classroom dissection. These rubber frogs are now getting field tested in high school biology classes in Florida and could find their way to a New Jersey bio lab near you. This touchy-feely firm’s CEO tells the Sun-Sentinel his fake frogs would spare three million real ones from getting killed annually just to satisfy some sadistic biology teachers who are furious that baby deer didn't make the budget. And, if all goes well, the company also wants to make authentic rubber rats and fetal pigs available for more classroom cut-ups. Here's a fun fact: Real dead frogs cost $10 apiece; syntha-frogs each sell for $150. Yet, even for that price, they can't be enjoyed over and over.

TRENTON – Watching large swathes of Australia literally go up in smoke, it’s hard to imagine that New Jersey can relate. True, drought-driven climate change hasn’t reduced the Pinelands to kindling ready to flare up from a tossed cigarette butt. And we’re not suffering through weeks of temperature topping out at 110 degrees. But we are seeing warmer and wetter winters, longer springs, and hotter summers — all of which make for a longer fire season. And New Jersey’s densely packed population means many people are living in or near areas such as the Pinelands that are susceptible to wildfires, a situation similar to Australia’s. We can’t afford to ignore the lessons Australia can teach about catastrophic fires. NJSpotlight reports on what needs to be done.

BRIEFING BREATHER: A sneeze travels out of your mouth at over 100 miles per hour.

LINDEN – In another sign of the times, school officials will be rifling through the belongings of students this month in the city’s middle and high schools. There will now be random searches of backpacks for contraband, as the district is implementing its ongoing “search and seizure policy,” the Home News Tribune reports. Classrooms will be randomly picked for these searches, as “trained school personnel” will use those metal wands. Lockers, which are school property, will also be searched. Sure, it’s all intrusive of a student’s personal space. But it’s nothing like the personal freedoms we sacrifice trying to get through the humorless TSA in Newark.

MIDDLETOWN – Those instantly recognizable packages of Girl Scout cookies are getting just a bit more recognizable with a local 8-year-old Scout now featured on boxes of Thanks-A-Lot cookies. The third-grader at Bayview Elementary School was picked from among thousands of youngsters across the U.S. to have her photo on the fudge-dipped shortbread cookie. Her mom tells Patch.com that she signed up her daughter for the national competition two years ago and was pleasantly surprised to finally hear from the Girl Scouts national headquarters last summer. Bet we see S’more Garden State scouts on other cookie boxes, as we perhaps, maybe, will just eat one more.

IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS

UGANDA – Bet you didn’t know that some cosmetics in Uganda are “illegal.” And that is why a local woman went as far as to package banned cosmetics as a baby and try to sneak them past Uganda custom officials. She tried to cross into Uganda from the Congo via a shallow river, with a package dressed up like a baby in pajamas. The Uganda Revenue Authority – which has seen this scheme before – was quick to notice the baby was headless, prompting further investigation. These types of smuggled cosmetics are made with hydroquinone and mercury, which have no place in Uganda (or smeared anywhere on your body.) Cops tweeted a photo of the woman and her seized headless baby. 

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

It was this day in 1920 that “The Human Fly” tried to climb to the top of the 57-floor Woolworth Building in New York. The fly, George Polley, got to the 30^th floor before cops finally nabbed him.

WORD OF THE DAY

WIT OF THE DAY

TODAY'S TRUMPISM

WEATHER IN A WORD

Dry

THE NEW 60
A Jaffe Briefing Exclusive
by Andy Landorf & John Colquhoun