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Nice try: Laura and Edmund Gerstein, keen to save their beloved grapefruit tree from Florida's citrus canker eradication program, claimed immunity for the tree under the 1949 Geneva Conventions (the paragraph on protecting crops needed for civilians' survival during wartime, in that, said Edmund, ''As I understand it, [the U.S.] is in a state of war''). Responded a state Department of Agriculture spokesman, ''That tree will be coming down.''
Who needs business school? When a Japanese art collector had to choose between Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses for a big sale and quixotically asked the two to play Rock-Paper-Scissors for the privilege, Sotheby's chose Paper and lost out on the eventual $2.3 million commission. (A Christie's executive had taken the advice of one of his 11-year-old daughters, who said, ''Everybody knows you always start with Scissors.'')
- Compiled
by Chuck Shepherd
