Just weeks after voters struck down plans for a new monorail, a design glitch and a communication mishap immobilized the old one. Seattle’s PI reported today. Like conjoined twins, the Red and Blue trains remained frozen on the track above Fifth Avenue and Olive Way after the two sideswiped each […]

The following cautionary tale must surely rate in the top five of “most embarrassing things that can happen to you in public – ever”. According to UK tabloid the Sun, a 33-year-old Welsh housewife ended up in hospital after wearing Ann Summers vibrating Passion Pants to her local Asda supermarket […]

Putawapi Chile. photo by Paul Shoul 

Columnist Neil Steinberg just lived through the ultimate publicity and personal nightmare: He got drunk, slapped his wife, and ended up in jail and in rehab. His Chicago Sun-times come-back column promised he’d pull no punches, sober or not. “Some readers expressed concern that sobriety will wreck my acerbic view […]

Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. He wrote a commentary in the Miami Herald today about the newspaper business and other doomed species. “The Internet does threaten some revenue franchises, especially classifieds. But it also offers a new way to reach audiences by […]

My smiling little grandson Nathan. 

Five years ago, Virginia Metcalf Merida, 51, won the Powerball jackpot lottery. She told the press after she won the $65.4 million prize that she was going to quit her job making corrogated boxes, and buy a house. Her husband, a forklift operator, wanted to quit too, and make a […]

It’s unusual in the history of disaster relief: today NY Times’ Stephanie Strom writes about the surplus facing the NGOs who raised more than $1.3 million after last December’s Tsunami. “From our point of view, this is like dying and going to heaven,” said Charles MacCormack, president of Save the […]