Volume 2 Issue 129
September 2, 2003
The Post Labor Day Back to Work and School Edition
More on Wal-Mart's America, strange going ons in the cosmos, and beating up the cable guy
Fun title, huh? It has absolutely nothing to do with what's below. But anyway...
Wal-Mart's America: Last week, an article noted that Las Vegas was one of the only places in America where blue-collar workers could still get ahead. On Sunday, the Washington Post had an excellent piece on the dark side of the boom in Vegas, where many people have arrived searching for a promised land, and ended up in dire straits -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3873-2003Aug30.html
Iraqi violence: A car bomb was detonated today near Iraqi police headquarters. The bomb was somewhat misplaced, and only one was killed -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13241-2003Sep2.html
While most of the focus recently has been on US troops deaths, the number of casualties are actually much higher than is clear at first. Medical advances have helped save wounded troops lives, but the number of wounded is climbing even quicker than the fatality rate, and it now is almost 3 times the wounded rate from the first Gulf War -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12096-2003Sep1.html
Back to School: As schools start throughout the nation today, a reminder of the poor state of many schools, and the lack of funding promised by the Bush Administration. In Nashville, things were so bad at one school the principal smashed all the windows so they would be replaced -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5680-2003Aug30.html
Look Who's Running for President: John Kerry officially announced his candidacy for President today. He did have a good appearance on Meet the Press Sunday, so perhaps this is the beginning of a resurgence among some of the Democratic candidates -
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-2004-Kerry.html?hp
Heads Up: A new asteroid threat has been spotted, one that has a slight chance of hitting Earth in 2014 -
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/09/02/asteroid.reut/index .html
There is in fact a threat scale for asteroids. This one ranks a 1 on the 1-10 scale (10 being the destruction of Earth). But it as 99% of objects are 0's...a 1 is notable -
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/torino_scale.html
Strange Crime: The FBI and local police in Erie, PA are having trouble figuring out what happened last week when a pizza man died after a bomb he was wearing blew up. The man had just robbed a bank, but it appears that he was forced to do so. Officials have termed the case a homicide -
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/09/01/bank.explosion/in dex.html
Fighting Crime: In Baltimore, a new pr slogan is being employed to help reduce crime. While there has been some progress, there have been many setbacks as well -
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/national/02BALT.html?hp=&a mp;pagewanted=all&position
Incomprehensible Cosmology Article of the Month: Yes, the New York Times has run their monthly article on the cosmos, this time dealing with the theory of everything, the 10 dimensional universe, and the concept of millions of parallel universes -
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/science/space/02STRI.html? 8hpib=&pagewanted=all&position
Trolling for Money: Hard up for additional funds, Washington's subway system, Metro, is considering putting ads in subway tunnels that would look like a movie to those in the train -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5355-2003Aug30.html
Lost at Sea: A boatload of rubber duckies that went off a freighter in the Pacific about 10 years ago are beginning to show up in the Atlantic, teaching us a bit about ocean currents, and what people will do for trash -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5445-2003Aug30.html
Pennant Race time: With the advent of the wild-card, September has become baseball's crazy time -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12066-2003Sep1.html
And is Washington really missing much by not having a team? One author says yes after a week on the road checking out other teams -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56139-2003Aug27.html
and finally...
Take that Cable Guy! During the blackouts last week in the DC area caused by massive thunderstorms and an inept power company, residents of one town were shocked to see a Comcast truck installing a generator to power one cable connection so the cable would stay on for others that had power. So they revolted, and it wasn't pretty -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5543-2003Aug30.html
