I'm taking off to visit the family for a belated Christmas gathering, which means I won't be near a computer again until late Thursday. My dad and my sister live in Vermont, about half-an-hour north of St. Johnsbury. Yes, the same St. J. that posted a record low temperature Saturday of 27 below. My brother-in-law is a very nice guy, but if my sister had married someone from, say, Florida instead, I might be looking forward to this trip a... Read more
Wednesday before work I hear this report from NPR's Daniel Zwerdling on "All Things Considered" (link is audio only). Zwerdling talks about how little is heard about those wounded in Iraq and does a series of MOTS interviews where passersby consistently underestimate the number of troops injured. Zwerdling estimates the number at around 9,000. He repeats this figure several times — 9,000 — and explains how he arrived at it. Most of the piece is about the difficulty he has... Read more
"Boost Those 401(k) Contributions" advises Albert B. Crenshaw in a Washington Post article that my paper will be running on Sunday: Millions of workers around the nation can sock away bigger nest eggs in their 401(k) and similar retirement savings plans in 2004, thanks to tax-law changes of recent years. And workers 50 and older can put away even more. The 2001 tax cut loosened the restrictions on 401(k) plans, allowing many workers to boost contributions sharply, and easing the... Read more
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band pulled in $115.9 million with their 47-concert tour in 2003. It was the second most lucrative concert tour ever, behind only the Rolling Stones' 1994 outing, which took in $121.2 million. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, touring separately and generally playing much smaller venues than Springsteen, raked in $130.8 million last year: President Bush, with no challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, begins the 2004 election year with a record $99 million... Read more
I didn't post anything about this story when it first occurred because others had covered it pretty thoroughly, and because I at first didn't recognize its significance: The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning. In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs "to assist with... Read more
"For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them." — George W. Bush, May 30, 2003. That was President Bush's statement touting what he said were two mobile "weapons labs" discovered by U.S. troops in Iraq. Subsequent reports — none of which received a fraction of the attention of the initial "discovery" — found that the two trailers were almost certainly for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, used... Read more
1. Don Sellar, ombudsman for The Toronto Star, reminds journalists of one of the questions they seem to have given up asking: "Who forged the Niger uranium papers?" Good question. I have my own question for the online editors of The Star: Haven't you noticed that spaces between paragraphs make online text much more readable? 2. This New York Times article, by Katie Zezima, provides a good excuse for another shameless plug for Equal Exchange and their wonderful fair-trade coffees.... Read more
I haven't read former ambassador Mark Palmer's new book, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025, which has the two-edged honor of being touted by U.S. Department of State. Ousting dictators is, of course, a Good Thing. Palmer's reference to the "world's last dictators," however, seems a bit grandiosely ambitious. On the other hand, Palmer's book — from a simple, demographic standpoint — may not be ambitious enough. Consider the respective ages... Read more
Reinhold Niebuhr is considered one of the greatest theologians and moral philosophers of the 20th century. In other words, nobody pays him any attention any more. That's a shame, since much of his writing remains uncannily timely — particularly Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Nature and Destiny of Man, and The Irony of American History. Niebuhr's most remembered contribution is a little prayer that few realize he wrote: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot... Read more
That's the headline for the featured article on the featured house in this week's Sunday real estate section of my newspaper: The location is ideal. The home sits on a lovely sloping corner lot, boasting lush landscaping and truly stunning views of the verdant landscape and the idyllic pond for which Broad Run and Broad Run Ridge are known. The home defines curb appeal. Its architectural style embraces the natural beauty of the lush, wooded lot. Two walkways, one brick... Read more
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