Friday, June 06, 2003

I wonder when Alan "bad brother" Greenspan will be testifying again.....

Helping Kids Understand Money

It's not every day that Al Broaddus gets introduced as a "cool dude" or Alan Greenspan as a "bad brother." But there they were yesterday, both in standard issue blue suit and tassel loafers, in the library of the District's John Philip Sousa Middle School, riffing about money, careers and life.

Broaddus, president of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank, recalled the snazzy '55 Plymouth Fury he bought for $735 just before it broke down and he had to sell it for scrap at $35.

Fedmeister Greenspan told of his youthful disappointments in coming to the realization that he wasn't going to be a professional baseball player or keep up with his pal, saxophonist Stan Getz, on the clarinet. It turned out, however, Greenspan was pretty good at keeping the books for the jazz band and the rest, as they say, is history.


Read the whole Washington Post article (060603)
Rumors of my disappearance have been (largely) exaggerated-- I've just been insanely busy with work, meetings, job search, very interesting research, and the bizarre chess game that is networking in this fair city.....

My interview went well, though strangely. Will explain later. Thanks to all your encouragement!

The world is also still turning in its furious apathy-- The Pentagon pulling back from the Korean DMZ and being both petulant and heavy-handed in its plans to shift a large portion of its European deployments to bases in the Eastern European countries where they have a huge amount of leverage and away from those pariahs, France and Germany, who had the temerity to question Rumsfeld, W, Wolfowitz and Perle in their headlong and colossally stupid rush to war.

Oh, and rampaging thugs killing and looting throughout Aceh (Indonesia), wholesale slaughter in the villages of the Congo, and the sinister "disappearing" of innocents in Belarus don't even get near the front pages.

We all need a bit of a diversion, like this scintillating piece of news:

Early-morning break-in: An Old Town Alexandria couple was awakened about 2:15 a.m. yesterday in their upstairs bedroom by a man wielding their Calphalon wok. The male resident confronted the intruder and was struck on the head with the pan, which the intruder had taken from the kitchen after breaking into the home on North St. Asaph Street, police said.

The two men continued to fight, and the resident, who managed to gain control of the intruder, walked him out the front door, police said. The suspect fled, but police were alerted and made an arrest nearby. Martin D. Lorton, 39, of the 300 block of Colonial Avenue, was charged with unlawful wounding, burglary and destruction of property. The resident sustained minor injuries but declined treatment.


(Washington Post Metro Section 060503)

The whole thing is absolutely horrible-- I've been attacked myself-- but with a wok?
And he couldn't have just appeared in the second-floor bedroom.... He had to have climbed the stairs with it!

Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Woah!

You are Neo
You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

(Thanks, Tricia)
I also heard a truly great answer to the question "What was the colonial power of Angola?"

Answer: Cuba!!!

Their only downfall was using Ukrainian planes.....

And something to think about when you crazy coffee drinkers make your next cup:

Coffee historians have recounted a story in which coffee was "brought to earth by the Angel Gabriel in order to revive Mohammed's flagging energies. Mohammed himself was suppose to have declared that, when he had drunk this magic potion, he felt strong enough to unhorse forty men and to posses forty women."

(As told by Sir Thomas Herbert in the early 1600s; reprinted in The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug, page 9)

(Blogger hit a strange server error so I couldn't post this until now-- It's actually designed to follow the last post directly)
D'oh! Can we get someone who can identify Al Capone by sight? We (mostly Tim and Edmund) wiped the floor with the other people in pub quiz but for our lousy score of 2 on the picture round.

And damn House Office Building security goons and their inflated egos--

This isn't Amman for heaven's sake!

Journalist With Bomb Sentenced in Jordan


AMMAN, Jordan -- A Japanese photographer was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison after a bomb he took from Iraq as a souvenir exploded and killed an airport security guard in Jordan.

Hiroki Gomi was passing through a security checkpoint at the Amman airport on May 1 when an X-ray machine detected the cluster bomb. The explosive detonated as a guard searched the bag, killing the man and wounding three people.

Gomi, of Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, said he did not know the bomb was live. He was talking on his cell phone several feet away when it exploded.

"We take this verdict seriously and would like to express again our condolences to the relatives of the deceased and our apologies to those who were injured," the newspaper said in a statement.

(World Wire reports in the Washington Post 060203)