As a newspaper person, one of the things I do is read newspapers. But I also look at the Internet, books, television and other sources of information, much of which ends up being filed under "U" for "useless." Of course, there is a wealth of very useful information out there, but at times it is the useless that proves most entertaining.

Some of the stories I find fascinate me. I recently read an article that stated it costs the U.S. Mint two cents to make a penny and 10 cents to make a nickel. How can our government print a coin that costs more to produce than it's worth? Now that's idiotic.

I didn't get an accurate figure on quarters and dimes, but I wonder if any of our bureaucrats ever considered making the coins out of something cheaper, like steel or aluminum?

The penny is not made from copper, as I might have thought, but zinc. If there's a shortage of pennies, why don't they just come by the house and pick up my coin jug? Why, there's probably enough pennies here in Sparta in mason jars to keep the whole state going for the next year or three.

I read today that a South Carolina company charged the military $998,798 to ship two 19-cent washers to a military base in Texas. The owner of the company, a 46-year-old woman, has been arrested and faces spending the rest of her life in prison. Apparently, she billed the military $20.5 million for shipping $68,000 worth of supplies to military units over a period of six years. Many of the shipments were to combat zones and were marked as ‘priority' shipments, which led many of them to receive ‘rubber stamp' approvals. Luckily, at least one of the military's purchasing agents noticed the fraud and shut the scheme down. The fine for bilking our government out of $20.5 million in taxpayer dollars? Try $750,000. I hope she doesn't pay her fine in pennies and nickels or we'll be forced to pay $1.5 million to collect the $750,000.

While so amused, I decided to move forward with my next article ‘du jour.'

It appears that our president's approval rating is hovering at around 35 percent. Now there's something that didn't shock me. However, reading on, I learned that the approval rating for the U.S. Congress was only 25 percent.

That level of unpopularity seems nearly impossible to accomplish. Think about it. You would go to a dinner party and three out of four people wouldn't like you and the one that did probably wouldn't be normal. I'd say I could walk into a room filled with people and not say anything at all and achieve a higher approval rating than that. Perhaps our president and representatives in Congress might be wise to try that approach themselves. Remember: When it comes to politics, less is more.

Other information also comes to me through newspapers, like the fact that a small University in Albany, N.Y. has produced more professional Texas Hold'em players than any other. The State University of New York at Albany has had alumni play their way to the final table in the last two "World Series of Poker" events. "I wonder if I should ask people where they went to school before I offer to play cards with them?" I thought to myself. I have at least three friends from New York and I don't plan on playing Texas Hold'em with any of them, so I don't think I need to worry about it.

I also read another article noting that the CD was invented in 1982 and that its future might be in doubt due to the age of digital downloads. It was hard for me to believe that the seemingly youthful CD is already 25 years old. In technology years, that's something like 108.

It seems like only yesterday I was riding around in my 1970 Dodge pickup listening to the eight-track tape player. I distinctly remember having to try and clip through the tracks at the right time to avoid hearing really bad songs on the way through the OK songs to get to the one really good song on the whole tape.

Billy Joel was the first artist to be released on CD, which may be one of the few footnotes in history he can claim. Well, he did write that "Piano Man" song.

I read in another article that absinthe is making a comeback and will again be available. I can remember my first introduction to the drink came through Russell Greenan's "The Secret Life of Algernon Pendelton." The main character, most likely suffering from severe psychosis already, drinks absinthe, talks to vases and kills his best friend. As for absinthe, it is an alcoholic drink once in fashion in Europe, but it was banned many years ago during the push for prohibition. As I understand it, the stuff was made from wormwood and other such things and was green in color and required water to be filtered into it over a sugar cube in order to be ingested. Wormwood is known as a poison, but small amounts are apparently handy for making various types of booze. As it turns out, vermouth, a popular mixer, has a much higher concentration of wormwood. Interesting. But, since I'm not a drinker, it's little more than another bit of utterly useless knowledge.

I used to have a friend that I would tease about being a repository for useless information. Things like the batting average for Don Mattingly in his third season or the number of touchdowns thrown by Johnny Unitas in 1970 were usually right on the tip of his tongue. Want to know who directed "Casablanca," who produced the "Maltese Falcon" or where the street scene on "It's a Wonderful World" was filmed? He always had the answer. However, I must admit that really never checked to see if he was telling me the truth of not. I really didn't care. If old Don batted a .286 instead of a .400 or if Jimmy Stewart ran down the streets of Bakersfield instead of Philadelphia, does it really matter? That's just an odd thing to spend one's time learning. Sadly, it's really not any more odd than a non-drinker studying which types of alcohol contain the most wormwood. People can find entertainment in the oddest things. I suppose it's the endless quest for knowledge that keeps our minds active and our lives interesting. I don't think I'd ever want to quit finding fascination in unusual places.

In fact, if you've just finished reading this column, you have also been subjected to another week's worth of useless information. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. After all, what else could I do with this sort of stuff?