Example shell scripts don't run properly on Ubuntu

There is some funkiness on Ubuntu when running example/bin/ shell scripts such as classify-newsgroups.sh. It has to do w/ the use of /bin/sh at the top you get odd syntax errors:

./classify-20newsgroups.sh: 35: Syntax error: "(" unexpected (expecting "fi")

If you switch it to /bin/bash or invoke it as "bash classify-newsgroups.sh" then it all works.

I assume we can make the assumption that bash exists everywhere this is going to run?