* Low Key advisor fitted for the seat

By David Streitfeld and James F. Peltz Times Staff Writers Tue Oct 25, 7:55 AM ET Ben Shalom Bernanke's first venture onto the national stage ended abruptly. He choked on the word "edelweiss" in the 1965 National Spelling Bee. The alpine flower was featured in the then-current hit "The Sound of Music," but the hamlet of Dillon, S.C., had no movie theater. Young Ben had to settle for the rank of No. 26 and forfeit any hope of the winner's true reward: appearing on "The Ed Sullivan Show," the most prominent television variety program of the era. Bernanke, 51, doesn't seem to have experienced much failure since. On Monday, he was poised to become one of the world's most powerful men when President Bush appointed him to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The summa cum laude graduate of Harvard, former chairman of Princeton's economics department, former Fed governor and current head of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors was lauded by colleagues and others as a low-key, self-made, independent, extremely smart fellow who surprisingly made it to the top anyway. "This is the closest you can come to pure meritocracy," said Adam Posen, a scholar at the Institute for International Economics and Bernanke's coauthor on the book "Inflation Targeting: Lessons From the International Experience." The most outlandish thing about Bernanke that anyone could come up with Monday was his funky taste — at least by starched Washington standards — in attire. It's a point Bernanke himself readily acknowledges. In a speech in January to the American Economic Assn., he said the biggest downside of being a Fed governor was having to wear a suit to work. His proposal that Fed governors start wearing Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts had gone nowhere, he complained. That's typical of Bernanke's wry sense of humor and affable manner. Those homespun qualities should assist him in achieving his long-held goal of demystifying the nation's central bank. They could also aid his survival in political Washington, a place where the Fed's role can often become contentious. "He's very easygoing and friendly, someone you would like immediately," said Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University. "He knows how to explain to the public what's going on without making it unintelligible." One small example is Bernanke's explanation of the difficult nature of economics. He compares it to learning how to repair a car while it is still running. "This is not somebody who is full of himself or has to show he's the smartest guy in the room," said Columbia University Business School economist Frederic Mishkin, who has known Bernanke for nearly 30 years and collaborated with him on a book and several articles. Bernanke's apolitical nature is an asset, the professor said. "There is always the fear [Fed chiefs] might do the White House's bidding" because they were appointed by the president. But with Bernanke, "it's not Republican economics or Democratic economics, it's just good economics," Mishkin said. Until three years ago, when he was appointed to fill a Fed governor's unexpired term, Bernanke's entire adult life has been spent in academia. In the American Economic Assn. speech, he said that "the sum of my political experience" consisted of two terms on the Montgomery Township, N.J., school board, near his post at Princeton. Education was a matter of deep concern: His wife, Anna, was a middle-school Spanish teacher, and their two children attended local schools. Bernanke recalled that he and his fellow board members were "trashed alternately by angry parents and angry taxpayers." On a nine-member board, his was the swing vote. "When he came on board, there were four people who voted against everything, no matter what it was," said Linda Romano, board president in that era. Bernanke's faction pushed successfully for the building of new schools. Despite the emotions engendered on all sides, Romano said, "he wasn't in your face, he didn't push things on you or say, 'I know what I'm talking about, listen to me.' But you knew he was right." Another board member, Reginald Luke, said that "no issue was too small for him." Even so, Luke said he and other school officials couldn't help teasing the brainy economist from the Ivy League school. "We always kind of made fun of him, with his tweed coat with the arm patches and no tie," Luke said. "Typical Princeton." In his American Economic Assn. speech, Bernanke also described his administrative skills: "I served seven years as the chair of the Princeton economics department, where I had responsibility for major policy decisions such as whether to serve bagels or doughnuts at the department coffee hour." At Princeton, one of his hiring coups was Paul Krugman. Now an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Krugman is one of Bush's most prominent and savage critics among economists. This does not seem to have counted against Bernanke. Krugman didn't return a call for comment. Much of Bernanke's academic life has been devoted to exploring the origins of the Great Depression — "a situation," he explained to U.S. News & World Report in 2003, "where bad economic thinking had very large and direct effects on human welfare, including being a major cause of World War II." His 2000 book, "Essays on the Great Depression," got enthusiastic if limited reviews. His new prominence is attracting some of the readers the book missed the first time around: The book's sales ranking on Amazon.com soared from 260,054 on Sunday to 468 on Monday evening. It, and his copious other writings, including two standard economics textbooks, will be scoured for clues to his actions as Fed chairman. His parents — Philip was a druggist and Edna a homemaker — say they don't have any idea what powers him, but it began early. Bernanke got 1590 out of 1600 on his SAT. His school didn't offer calculus, which he needed to get into Harvard, so he taught himself. He played saxophone in the school marching band. He worked in his father's drugstore ("He checked in the comic books, and read them all," Philip Bernanke said). He was valedictorian. He spent one summer as a waiter at South of the Border, a mammoth pit stop on Interstate 95. During another he helped build a hospital. "He would come home for lunch, covered with concrete dust," his father remembered Monday. "Other teenagers worked there too. It was too hot and hard for them. They quit. But Ben wouldn't give up. That's his way." Philip Bernanke added another thought: "He likes problems, the more the better." As Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke will have no end of those. But on one hot-button issue — whether anything needs to be done to prick what some say is a housing bubble — he seems to have made up his mind. During a talk at Stanford University this year, Bernanke reminisced about moving to Silicon Valley in 1979 as an assistant professor of economics in the university's graduate school of business. "We were hesitant to buy a house since I was certain that prices could never stay as high as they were at that time," he said to an audience composed of people who knew perfectly well that any home in the area had easily tripled or quadrupled in the last 25 years. "Since then I've developed a view that central bankers should not try to determine fundamental values of assets." Or as Bernanke put it more formally in an interview published by the Minneapolis Fed last year: "If a bubble does exist, there is no guarantee that an attempt to 'pop' it won't lead to violent and undesired adjustments in both markets and the economy." *

Infastructure problems delay power restoration

Posted on Tue, Oct. 25, 2005 Massive infrastructure problems will delay power restoration, FPL says...BY JOHN DORSCHNER jdorschner@herald.com Massive infrastructure problems will delay power restoration, FPL says Because of complicated problems rebuilding its infrastructure, Florida Power & Light executives said it may take up to two weeks for the majority of its powerless customers to get electricity back. It could be three weeks for 95 percent get power, said FPL President Armando Olivera. ''These estimates are based on a really incomplete assessment,'' said Olivera, because less than 24 hours had passed since winds cleared the area. County estimates may be expected tomorrow, said FPL Vice President Geisha Williams. The central problem is that 200 substations were knocked out by Hurricane Wilma, and it is complicated to bring them back on line. The utility said it expected to have Port Everglades back on power by the end of Tuesday -- a crucial move because much of the gasoline necessary for the region's cars comes through the port.

Massive power outages and curfews slowing looting

MIAMI, United States (AFP) - Massive power outages and curfews to prevent looting slowed recovery efforts along the path of deadly Hurricane Wilma, which blasted through Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, Cuba and Florida with intense winds and rains over the last five days. The Mexican government flew soldiers and federal police into the resort city of Cancun to bolster local police overwhelmed by the devastation and the crime wave Wilma left in its wake. As tens of thousands of foreign tourists and local Mexicans scrambled to leave the city, its airport reopened Tuesday only for emergency aid flights and to ferry out tourists and people with serious injuries. A French tour operator, Nouvelles Frontieres, said in Paris Tuesday it had chartered aircraft to bring home hundreds of French, British and Belgian tourists stuck in Mexico. In Cuba, where injury and damage reports remained sparse, authorities said they were beginning to send back some of the nearly 800,000 residents evacuated from the west end of the island in advance of the storm. In southern Florida some three million clients remained without electric power and several cities and counties declared curfews to prevent any outbreak of looting. At least 18 people were reported dead in the storm's violent passage from the Yucatan to Florida before it headed north, away from land, over the Atlantic Ocean. Four were killed in Florida, according to the Miami Herald, including two men killed by falling trees, one woman by flying debris and another man by a collapsing roof. Another four people, including three foreign tourists, were reported dead in Cuba in a bus accident as they evacuated Friday before the storm slammed the island. Ten others were killed in various incidents in Mexico, where Wilma hovered almost motionless for 36 hours, blasting winds of 160 kilometers (100 miles) an hour through the world-famous resorts of the so-called Mexican Riviera. Electricity and telephone services were partially restored in areas of the premier resort of Cancun Tuesday, where looters had brazenly walked into shops and homes on Sunday and Monday to carry off everything of value. On Tuesday Cancun's mayor ordered people to stay at home after 7 pm local time while federal police and soldiers beefed up street patrols. A curfew was also ordered on Cozumel, the resort island off the Cancun coast. "The situation is now under control," said Ruben Aguilar, spokesman for Mexican president Vicente Fox' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Vicente Fox. "The city police were overwhelmed," he said. However, the city and surrounding area remained wrecked by the storm, with 260 high-tension power line towers toppled and more than 10,000 smaller electric poles blown down, said Aguilar. In a normal hurricane in the region, he said, only ten of the high-tension towers would be felled. Yucatan area hoteliers called for heavy federal aid to restore operations for the all-important winter season. Aguilar said aid of some 500 million dollars had been requested to get them back into business quickly. Jesus Almaguer, head of the Quintana Roo hotelier association, predicted it would take three to four months to get back to normal after the storm left 95 percent of the hotels uninhabitable, due mainly to downed infrastructure. But Wilma also wiped out 28 kilometers (17 miles) of the region's gleaming sandy beaches, officials said. "Now the only thing left is the sun; it is a destination of sun and stones," city councilman Alain Serrat told the Reformation newspaper. In Havana, several main roads remained closed as the country began counting the costs Tuesday of a storm which flooded parts of the city after bursting over levees. Along the coast walls of buildings had crumbled into the ocean, the massive waves and storm surge shifting even huge blocks, weighing several tonnes each, of the retaining wall at Havana's legendary Malecon seafront. According to civil defense officials, in Santa Fe west of the capital, 2,000 homes were submerged by the flooding and another 2,000 were damaged. In Florida, the acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management 8----> News News Photos Images Web' 8-----> Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Paulison, urged tens of thousands of people who evacuated to wait until authorities give the green light to go home. "Please, please don't go back until the local emergency managers tell you it's safe to go back," Paulison said in a news conference. Florida and federal authorities launched a massive aid effort to supply food, ice and other necessities to those affected by the storm as President George W. Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' 8-----> President George W. Bush declared a major disaster in the southeastern US state. "We have prepositioned food, medicine, communications equipment (and) urban search-and-rescue teams," the president said Monday.

Wilma still throwing rocks at doors

By ALLEN BREED, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Repair crews across Florida struggled Tuesday to restore electricity to up to 6 million people, reopen the region's airports and replace countless windows blown out of downtown high-rises during Hurricane Wilma's ruinous dash across the state. Officials said it could take weeks for Florida's most heavily populated region — the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach area — to return to normal. Water and gas became precious commodities, and people waited for hours for free water, ice and food. Lines stretched for blocks at the few gas stations with the electricity needed to pump fuel, and arguments broke out when motorists tried to cut in line. More than 500 people waited outside one store for cleanup supplies. But barely 24 hours after the Category 3 storm struck, there were signs of recovery. "We have power! We have power!" several residents of Miami Lakes chanted as they ran out their back doors when the lights came on. The quantity of debris was daunting: Pieces of roofs, trees, signs, awnings, fences, billboards and pool screens were scattered across several counties. Damage estimates ranged up to $10 billion. "Tomorrow's going to be better than today," Gov. Jeb Bush' 8----->News News Photos Images Web' 8-----> Jeb Bush said. Some of the worst damage was in downtown Fort Lauderdale, where Wilma was the strongest hurricane to strike since 1950. Winds of more than 100 mph blew out windows in high-rises, many built before Florida enacted tougher construction codes following Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The school district's 14-story headquarters — known as the "Crystal Palace" — was stripped of nearly its entire glass facade on one side. "We're going to have to fix it in a way that is stronger," schools superintendent Frank Till said. Government officials and business executives scrambled to repair buildings and find other places to work. Broward County court officials were trying to determine whether sessions could be held at the damaged courthouse in coming days. Some schools and courts closed for the week. Orders to boil water were issued in many locations. Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties imposed overnight curfews. Miami International Airport, the busiest U.S. hub for Latin American travel, scheduled its first flight since Wilma for late Tuesday afternoon. The Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach airports remained closed. At least 2,000 domestic and international flights were disrupted, affecting hundreds of thousands of fliers, when Wilma knocked out electricity and damaged roofs, towers, fences and other equipment. Agriculture officials said damage to their industry would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The greatest losses was believed to be to the winter vegetable crop, which provides more than half of the nation's supply from November to February. Also hurt were sugar cane fields and ornamental-plant nurseries. The 21st storm in the worst Atlantic hurricane season on record, Wilma was blamed for at least five deaths statewide. "It will be days or weeks before we are back to normal," Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez said. In the wake of complaints over the way the government dealt with Hurricane Katrina, the governor praised the early response to Wilma. At Dania Beach City Hall, however, more than 100 people waited in line for ice and water that was supposed to arrive at 9 a.m. but never came. At the Orange Bowl' 8-----> News Photos Images Web' 8------> Orange Bowl in Miami, storm victims were frustrated to find limited supplies of relief items. "Waiting six hours to get one bag of ice and six bottles of water is not a good thing," Alberto Martinez said. Distribution went more smoothly elsewhere. At Key West High School, the food even included Key lime pie. And many storm-savvy Floridians coped with good humor, their mood lifted in part by spectacular weather in the wake of Wilma: cloudless skies and unseasonably low temperatures that dropped into the 50s about dawn Tuesday and were in the mid-70s during the day. "This weather is a blessing," said Agnes Howard, who found her home without air conditioning following a hurricane for the second time in two months. "The heat in the aftermath of the last storm was insufferable," said her husband, John Terrill, referring to August's Katrina. "Nobody slept for days. At least we got a good night's sleep last night." Wilma knocked out power for hundreds of miles, cutting off electricity to a staggering one out of three Florida residents. Florida Power & Light, the state' biggest utility, said Wilma affected more of its 4.3 million customers than any other natural disaster in the company's history. In heavily populated areas such as Miami-Dade County, as many as 98 percent of its customers lost power. At the Who's on 1st Deli in Fort Lauderdale, Maria Salvo and her daughters melted ice for coffee and made egg, cheese and sausage sandwiches on gas burners. "We're selling whatever we have," she said as people waited in line with insulated cups. Nearby, the steeple of the First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale was stripped bare, and the sanctuary lost much of its roof. Maintenance worker Don Anderson walked around the grounds with a chain saw, cutting up some of the 100 or so damaged trees. Anderson said it was a blessing that the cold front that steered Wilma also brought cool weather. "It'll keep the tensions down," he said. "The hotter it is, the worse they feel. But we'll survive long enough to come together. In fact, this is sometimes what we need. The people of America pull together in times of disaster." ___ Associated Press writers David Royse in Key West and Ron Word, Tim Reynolds and Adrian Sainz in Miami contributed to this report.

WLWT Channel Cincinnati via Yahoo!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005 1:15 PM PDT Pepper, Mallory Debate On News 5 Tonight WLWT Channel http://Cincinnati.com via Yahoo! News Tue, 25 Oct 2005 9:15 AM PDTNews 5 is giving Cincinnati voters their best chance to size up the two candidates for mayor in the Nov. 8 election. To Publicize Its Good News, Newark Makes Deal With a Newspaper New York Times Mon, 24 Oct 2005 9:04 PM PDT Mayor Sharpe James and the City Council of Newark have devised a way to get their message across: paying a paper $100,000 to print "good news" about themselves and their city. Newark Pays Paper to Print Only Good News AP via Yahoo! News Mon, 24 Oct 2005 8:20 PM PDT Call it pay for praise, greenbacks for good news, bucks for beneficial publicity. The Newark City Council has awarded the Newark Weekly News a $100,000 no-bid contract to publish positive news about the city. Fox News Journalists Safe After Bombing Near Hotel in Baghdad TV Week Tue, 25 Oct 2005 10:10 AM PDT A Fox News Channel contingent of approximately 10 people staying at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad were reported safe after three large vehicle bombs exploded Monday near the hotel at which many Western journalists stay. Bringing Out the Absurdity of the News New York Times Mon, 24 Oct 2005 4:19 PM PDT With the success of "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show," humor has moved away from skits and impersonations to jujitsu satire of television news. Weird News AberdeenNews.com Tue, 25 Oct 2005 10:37 AM PDT OSLO, Norway - A Norwegian researcher is starting a study to find out whether feeding prisoners a diet heavy on fish is a good way to fight crime, the ANB news agency reported Friday. Reg Technologies, Inc. Announces the REGI U.S., Inc. Rand Cam(TM) Technology Video News Release Produced by TVA The Auto Channel Tue, 25 Oct 2005 7:10 AM PDT VANCOUVER, British Columbia--Oct. 2, 20055, 2005--Reg Technologies, Inc. (TSX VENTURE:RRE) (OTCBB:REGRF) is pleased to announce that its U.S. subsidiary REGI U.S., Inc. has completed and approved the final version of the Rand Cam(TM) technology video news release. ABC News: Sawyer won't replace Jennings USA Today Mon, 24 Oct 2005 1:28 PM PDT ABC News hasn't named a permanent replacement for the late Peter Jennings at World News Tonight, but did say Monday who it won't be Diane Sawyer. Newark paying newspaper to print only good news about city http://phillyburbs.com Tue, 25 Oct 2005 9:23 AM PDTNEWARK, N.J. - Call it pay for praise, greenbacks for good news, bucks for beneficial publicity. Canadians offered $50 by Buffalo businesses if they stay overnight to shop (The Buffalo News, N.Y.) Hotel Online Tue, 25 Oct 2005 11:10 AM PDT By Michelle Kearns, The Buffalo News, N.Y. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News Oct. 21--A new regional collaboration of hotels and shops will give away $50 shopping certificates to encourage more Canadians to come spend the night and spend more of their increasingly valuable dollars on this side of the border.

Dilbert Newsletter 61.0

Dilbert Newsletter 61.0 "A Little Ray of Bitter Sunshine" October 2005 Click this link to see the newsletter in all of its majestic HTML beauty on the Web: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/html/newsletter61.html DNRC UPDATE =========== Dogbert’s New Ruling Class boasts 475,000 members. Each of you is so intelligently designed that you can survive a Category 5 hurricane via a process known as running away. I’LL HAVE THE GOUT, PLEASE ========================== It’s only natural to feel competitive with your siblings. I recall all of those Christmas mornings, as my brother and sister and I compared gifts to figure out which one of us was the least beloved. This was important information because we adjusted our levels of misbehavior to match the rewards. There’s no point in being extra good if the presents are just okay. Mealtime was competitive too. The winner was the one who moved the greatest percentage of my father’s income through his or her digestive system. I was in my thirties before someone told me that eating is not a speed sport. Now my siblings and I live in different parts of the country. Our competition hasn’t diminished. It just changed to a new category: health calamities. To win the competition, you need to boast the most painful and debilitating ailments, short of actual death, which would be considered unsportsmanlike. When one of us inherits a health problem from a parent it’s worth bonus points under the theory that you “got screwed on that one.” So far, my brother is winning with the most imaginative set of maladies. If I open a round of complaining by ranting about my allergies, he tops me with his gout. If my sister has foot surgery, my brother experiences some form of temporary blindness. The majority of our health problems are inherited. That makes the competition more interesting because every time one of our parents sees a doctor about a mysterious lump, we offspring know that one of us will be visited by a similar lump. For some mysterious and cosmic reason, the genetic defects are evenly distributed across siblings. We each get a third. But the distribution is not weighted by severity. A minor problem counts as much as a major one. That means that when one of my parents gets a relatively treatable health problem, say shingles, I find myself hoping I get it too. The theory is that if I get the kind of problem that hurts like crazy but goes away after a while, it decreases my odds of getting one of the permanent ones. But it’s a mixed emotion because I also want to win the pain competition. So I practice in advance how I will announce it to the family via e-mail: “Dear Family, AAAAGH!!! AAAAAGH!!! I want to die!!!” Before you correct me, I know that shingles isn’t hereditary, but I’m highly suggestive, so it is for me. MY OWN DILBERT BLOG =================== When I see news stories about people all over the world who are experiencing hardships, I worry about them, and I rack my brain wondering how I can make a difference. So I decided to start my own blog. That way I won’t have time to think about other people. People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this: 1. The world sure needs more of ME. 2. Maybe I’ll shout more often so that people nearby can experience the joy of knowing my thoughts. 3. No, wait, shouting looks too crazy. 4. I know – I’ll write down my daily thoughts and badger people to read them. 5. If only there was a description for this process that doesn’t involve the words egomaniac or unnecessary. 6. What? It’s called a blog? I’m there! The blogger’s philosophy goes something like this: Everything that I think about is more fascinating than the crap in your head. The beauty of blogging, as compared to writing a book, is that no editor will be interfering with my random spelling and grammar, my complete disregard for the facts, and my wandering sentences that seem to go on and on and never end so that you feel like you need to take a breath and clear your head before you can even consider making it to the end of the sentence that probably didn’t need to be written anyhoo. If that doesn’t inspire you to read my blog, I don’t know what will. You can find the Dilbert Blog at http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/ WEASEL POLL 2005 ================ It’s time to vote for your favorite weasels of 2005. And when I say favorite, I mean the ones you would like to beat senseless with another weasel. To vote, go to www.Dilbert.com. And by vote, I mean increase the odds that this unscientific poll will end up embarrassing the weasels you dislike the most. INDUHVIDUAL QUOTES ================== Here now, some quotes from Induhviduals, submitted by DNRC field operatives. Apparently the most confusing concepts for Induhviduals are anything involving body parts, beverages, food, or animals. "It's so cold I'm getting goose nipples!" “I'm as full of vinegar as a Christmas turkey.” “You can stop kicking this dead whale down the beach and find another hobby horse to beat to death.” "One man's trash is another man's garbage." “I think I was speaking to Tom, and if it wasn't Tom I'm sure it was someone else.” "Check the pulse on the temperature." "He's making a mole hill out of an issue." "Don't look at me in that tone of voice!" "I home school three children and am expecting a forth!" "This is the worst headache I've ever had in the history of my head." "Imitation is the sincerest form of mockery." "The squeaky wheel gets the worm." "You're not the smartest peanut in the turd." "I'd give an arm to be ambidextrous!" LATEST DILBERT BOOK =================== If you haven’t read the latest Dilbert compilation – THE FLUORESCENT LIGHT GLISTENS OFF YOUR HEAD – then you can’t claim to have done it all. That might not matter to you now, but someday, on your deathbed, you’ll wish you had spent less time with the family and more time reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?path=ASIN/0740751131&amp;link_code=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=unitedmedia&amp;creative=9325 UNFIT ===== Several months ago I recommended a comic called UNFIT. New comics often take a year or more to find their voice. For example, you probably won’t see reruns of the first season of the Simpsons because it started out so primitively compared to what it evolved into. Dilbert didn’t crack more than a few dozen newspapers in its first year. Now it’s in over 2,000. I found my voice in the third year, thanks to lots of reader feedback. Pearls Before Swine started out three years ago as angry stick figures, essentially. Recently a critic compared it to Krazy Kat, one of the all-time greats in both art and writing. I agree completely. Peanuts and The Far Side also started slowly. There are exceptions, of course. Calvin and Hobbes, and more recently Get Fuzzy took off quickly. Great artwork made those two features immediately popular. The writer-oriented comics take longer to get under your skin. If you looked at UNFIT when I first recommended it, but not since then, take a look at the most recent month of strips at http://comics.com/comics/unfit/index.html. I think he’s starting to find his voice. It’s fun to watch these things develop. And if you haven’t seen Pearls Before Swine lately, you’re missing out. http://comics.com/comics/pearls/index.html TRUE TALES OF INDUHVIDUALS ========================== Here are some more true tales of Induhviduals, as reported by vigilant DNRC operatives in the field. = Our college just completed a new three-story building. While walking down a hall on the 2nd floor, I overheard two students say, “I really like the skylights on the 3rd floor.” “Me too,” remarked the second student. “I don’t know why they didn’t just put some on the 2nd floor too.” = My fiddle teacher was teaching a large group class. She showed them her violin and said, "This violin was made in the early 1800s." Someone in the audience raised their hand and asked, "So you got it used?" = A few years back, I was in high school and we were celebrating Holy Week (the week before Easter) and we were watching a presentation on the last few days of Jesus. The teacher used a clip from the movie "Jesus of Nazareth" to make his point. As we were watching Jesus carry his cross, a girl in my class asked, "Is this live footage?” = I work as a computer technician for a large retail chain, servicing customer’s computers. One day I answer the phone, and the Induhvidual asks, “Do you guys sell Ethernet cables?” I said that we do, and he asks, “How much is it?” I asked, “How long do you want it?” He responded, “Um, a while I guess. I want to buy it.” I said, “No, I mean how long as in the length of the cable.” This elicited total silence on his end, so I informed him that we sell a 7-foot cable for $24.99. He asked, “When do I have to return it?” I told him to keep it as long as he likes. = My Kentuckian sister-in-law's young daughter recently married a Mexican immigrant. They promptly had their first child. Sometime after the birth, a doctor walked into the recovering mom's hospital room and mentioned that the baby's white blood cell count was high. My sister-in-law asked, "Does that mean she will be more white than Mexican?" This is a true story. = While waiting in line at the Delta Gate to get my seat assignment, I overheard an elderly lady in front of me trying to get a seat assignment. When the clerk asked if she wanted a window or aisle seat the old lady exclaimed "OH! Please don't put me by the window! I just had my hair done!" = While visiting relatives in Oregon I commented to my cousin how much later sunset was compared to my home in California. She said she was surprised, since we both lived the same distance from the ocean. I asked her what the distance from the ocean had to do with it. She said it was because that's where the sun sets. = My teacher was having a discussion with our class about what we did for Christmas. One guy said he got himself a deer when he went hunting. My teacher, the clever punster, said that he got a "dear" too, only this was the kind with TWO legs. The class laughed. Then one moron in back raised her hand and asked, "Did you shoot it anyway?" = A newly hired manager confessed that he was considering getting a second job in order to pay off his wife's huge cell phone bill. When asked why she went so far over her monthly time allocation, his response was that when she bought her cell phone, they told her that weekends and evening time was free. Since she works an odd schedule -- Sunday through Thursday -- she assumed that Fridays counted as her “weekend day.” So she used the phone the entire time as she drove to and from Las Vegas. (4 hours, each direction, at 45 cents per minute). == My husband is a police officer and was training some of his guys at the shooting range. They were hanging the paper targets when one guy said, "Hey, why don't we hang 3 at a time and just tear the top one off each time, that way we don't have to keep hanging them." Ask Dogbert ============ Dogbert answers tough questions with tough love. Dear Dogbert, Every time I get a girlfriend she dumps me and dates one of my friends. Should I blame her, or my friends, or myself? Sam Dear Slime, I recommend getting some friends who are even bigger losers than you. In your case, it means finding friends who routinely lose their girlfriends to telemarketers. Sincerely, Dogbert == Dear Dogbert I tend to spit at random times while talking. Because of this I have very few friends what should I do? Lydia Dear Spitia, Try talking to people who are on fire. They probably won’t notice the spitting so much, and if they do, they might appreciate it. Sincerely Dogbert == Dear Dogbert I am going to write a song about not writing a song. Can you give me a couple of ideas on what to write? Jonathan Dear Telethon, You should write about what you know. That means your song will be an instrumental, assuming you know someone who can do that part for you. Sincerely, Dogbert == Dear Dogbert, Do you just randomly create questions and names so you can make jokes that you wouldn't normally have the opportunity to use? Zach Dear Placque, Do I come to your workplace and accuse you of sweeping up French fries that aren’t really there? Sincerely, Dogbert == Dear Dogbert, I think Scott Adams bares a striking resemblance to actor Ed Harris. How would I go about either killing one of them or fusing them together so that only one person in this world would look like that? Sammy Dear Spammy, I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked that question. Every year Scott Adams and Ed Harris attend a convention of People With Skull-looking Heads. This year, Jeff Garcia will be the keynote speaker. Maybe you could kill a few of them, just to thin the herd, but you’d never get them all. I recommend learning to love that look. Sincerely, Dogbert == Dear Dogbert, I need to find a girlfriend, but I am very ugly. How can I find a girl that doesn't care how I look? Ethan Dear Heathen, There are plenty of girls who value character above looks. They are called blind girls. And as Ed Harris well knows, it also helps to be rich. Sincerely, Dogbert == Do you have questions about office politics, meeting etiquette, romancing your boss, the meaning of life, or anything else? Send your questions to scottadams@aol.com and Dogbert will provide answers in the next Dilbert Newsletter. Dilbert Fodder --------------- What's bugging you about your job? Let me know and you might see it in a Dilbert comic or newsletter. The best comic fodder involves workplace peeves, devious strategies, frustrations of dealing with others, conflicting objectives, unintended management consequences, and of course my favorite - idiot bosses. And I love True Tales of Induhviduals and true quotes. And if you're seeing any new management trends that need to be mocked, I can help. Send your (brief) suggestions to me at: scottadams@aol.com. IMPORTANT: Put "Dilbert" at the end of your subject line so my spam filter won't bounce it back. How to Subscribe to the Dilbert Newsletter ------------------------------------------ You can request a new subscription to the Dilbert Newsletter by entering your e-mail address at: <https://members.comics.com/members/registration/showDilbertLogin.do?aid=1> Unsubscribing ------------- To unsubscribe, enter your e-mail address at: <https://members.comics.com/members/registration/unsubLegacyUser.do> Problems With the Web Subscribe/Unsubscribe Forms ------------------------------------------------------ If the automated method doesn't work for you, simply send a message to newsletter@unitedmedia.com, specifying whether you want to subscribe or unsubscribe, and your request will be processed manually. This method is much slower than the automated method so please be patient. Scott Adams scottadams@aol.com All submissions to Scott Adams and/or Dilbert.com shall become the exclusive property of United Media and Scott Adams, and they will have the right to use them free of charge, in any manner and in any medium, forever and throughout the world. Please do not reply to the address the newsletter is mailed from.

March 29 2005 Don't believe the hype We decided to make 'Loft' our destination for tonight. From reading the reviews you would think this is the prime destination in the King West Village. It is advertised as a lounge, and an upper class one at that. They do have couches, two of them by the door when you walk in. The rest of the place is populated by regular tables. I made a reservation earlier in the day, and they did have a table waiting for us when we got there. The wine list was mediocre, but they did have two different Australian Shiraz', which is OK in my books. The service was good, but the appetizer portion of calamari was acceptable by sports bar standards only. I cannot however complain about the Martinis. I was very impressed with the Dirty, Vodka Martini I had. It stood up to the litmus test held against the best of Martini bars. I guess when it comes down to it, it is all about company. I had a great time with Dave, Lina, and especially Anna. But, we had just as good a time back at the apartment over a bottle of Merlot and some acid jazz pumping out of the stereo. By stereo, I mean iPod ;) Overall, if you are looking for a quality lounge in downtown Toronto, Loft isn't it. I will give it another try in the summer when they have an outdoor patio, though. But that's only because it is one block away from my apartment. Posted by mike at March 6, 2005 03:42 AM

007 MM TOLD DAN: DON'T ACT

25 October 2005 007 MM TOLD DAN: DON'T ACT THE mum of James Bond star Daniel Craig told yesterday how she tried to get him to forget acting. Carol Blond, 61, said emergency family talks were held when Craig, then 16, revealed he wanted to drop his A-Levels. Starry-eyed Craig aimed to quit Calday Grange Grammar School in Liverpool and head for London after telling his mum all he wanted to do was act. Carol said: "I said if he wasn't going to university, he must promise to get into a top drama school - or go back to school." After two years Craig, 37, was accepted by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Carol, from Hoylake, Cheshire, said: "To be one of 25 selected out of tens of thousands proved he had talent. "It was the start of a very successful career."

Ukrainian Telepathy Test Fails Miserably

Mon Oct 24, 8:13 AM ET At 11 a.m. on Oct. 24, officials at the Ukrainian State Property Fund in Kiev will open three envelopes to decide the winning bidder for a 93% stake in Kryvorizhstal, the largest steel plant in the country. The sale is a key test of President Viktor Yushchenko's resolve to clean up Ukraine's murky business practices and open the country to much-needed foreign investment. With annual production of 7 million tons of crude steel -- 20% of all Ukrainian steel production -- and 2004 earnings of $400 million, Kryvorizhstal is one of the largest and most profitable enterprises in the country. And the steel mill has become an important political symbol: A transparent privatization was a key election pledge made by Yushchenko during last year's turbulent election campaign. OBVIOUSLY RIGGED. Kryvorizhstal became notorious because of the way in which it was first privatized in June of last year. Two local tycoons, Viktor Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, acquired the plant for $800 million -- a sum much lower than potential bids from well-known international companies participating in the tender. The largest offer, by LNM Holdings and US Steel (NYSE:X - News), came to $1.5 billion. Yet all the foreign bidders were disqualified on an absurd technicality, sparking an uproar. The tender had obviously been rigged to exclude foreigners and favor local businesspeople allied to then-President Leonid Kuchma. In February, following Yushchenko's election, a Ukrainian court annulled the original deal, paving the way for a second one this year. This time, Yushchenko has promised no monkey business. The starting price is $2 billion, and analysts believe the plant may go for close to $3 billion. GOOD PRICE.That will make the sale of Kryvorizhstal the largest privatization ever seen in the former Soviet Union in terms of cash raised -- a stark contrast to the days when valuable state assets in Ukraine typically went for a song in dubious insider deals (see BW, 11/8/2004, "Will the Boom Last in Ukraine?"). Another crucial difference this time is that the bidding is open to foreign investors. The three final bidders include the world's largest steelmaker, Rotterdam-based Mittal Steel (NYSE:MT - News); the largest European steelmaker, Arcelor, based in France (bidding in conjunction with Ukraine's Industrial Union of Donbas); and Smart Group, a Ukrainian company representing Russian interests (see BW, 3/7/05, "Steel: The Mergers Aren't Over Yet"). The suitors should be happy to fork out a good price. "It's one of the last big steel mills to go for sale in Central and Eastern Europe, and it would be a strategic acquisition for any of them," says Andriy Dmitrenko, an analyst at Kiev brokerage Dragon Capital. NO EASY MATTER. Rob Edwards, a metals analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, also says the plant is a good buy: "Ukraine has inherently low costs, so for that reason it's attractive for a major. And it's well-positioned for exports to the Commonwealth of Independent States (most nations of the former Soviet Union) and Middle East markets". Analysts tip Arcelor as the favorite to win, though Mittal is also expected to bid high. Whoever wins, a fair sale to a foreign investor will be a coup for Yushchenko in his efforts to attract investment. The money raised will be as much as all the rest of Ukraine's foreign direct investment put together. And getting this far has been no easy matter. Even after Yushchenko's election last December, the reprivatization of Kryvorizhstal has been fraught with difficulties. The existing owners have lobbied hard to keep their property and tried to halt the sale with lawsuits. Opposition to a new deal has also come from left-wingers, who oppose privatization in principle. LOST LUSTER. Just a few days before the auction, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a resolution calling for it to be halted. The resolution is nonbinding, however, and Yushchenko has in any case vowed to use his presidential powers to make sure the deal goes ahead as planned. A successful sale will be important, because it comes at a time when Yushchenko's Orange Revolution has lost much of its luster. Last month the President sacked his Prime Minister and former close ally, Yulia Tymoshenko, dramatically exposing political tensions which explain why reform progress has been much slower than many had hoped (see BW, 9/9/05, T"In the Ukraine, Freedom's Bitter Fruit."). "It's going to be the first test of the government's determination to plow through all the political noise and come out with a result that's obviously positive for the investment climate," says Edwards from Renaissance Capital. That's why when Kryvorizhstal goes under the hammer for the second time, it's not just Ukrainians who will be eagerly watching the result.

Edmonton Judge applys for class action lawsuit

Mon Oct 24, 8:19 PM ET EDMONTON (CP) - A judge has begun hearing an application for a class action lawsuit on behalf of dozens of people who allege that the Alberta government failed to protect them against abuse as children and then denied them legal services so they could sue those responsible. The case involves more than 140 people who were once under the supervision of Alberta's child welfare department. Their lawyers are arguing that since their cases are similar, they should be heard as a group under a new Alberta law that allows class actions lawsuits. The lead plaintiff, a Calgary woman now in her 30s, said she hopes the action will help others avoid the kind of childhood she had. The woman, known as T.L., told reporters outside court that she was physically and sexually abused by her stepfather from the age of seven. Her eyes filled with tears as she described a nightmarish existence of beatings, forced sex and fear, which ended only when she ran away from home at 15. Police were called to the home repeatedly, she said, and her many scars testified to her suffering. The abuse also extended to her sister. Over all that time, child welfare workers dealt with the family regularly. "They knew about all of it, and they never tried to remove us from the home," she said. After she left home, T.L. laid a criminal sexual assault charge against her stepfather. He was sentenced to six months less a day in jail. If she had known she could make a civil claim against the child welfare department or its staff, she said she might have been able to pay for more of the psychological counselling she so desperately needed. The case is being pressed by a team of lawyers including Robert Lee of Edmonton and David Klein, a class action specialist from Vancouver. They argue that Child Welfare was duty bound to take reasonable steps to obtain compensation for any of its clients who had suffered harm, or at least advise them when they turned 18 that they could seek such compensation. "Child Welfare is aware that they have and had a legal obligation as a guardian of a child to sue for children in their care," says the statement of claim. "Child Welfare is intentionally using their decision-making authority over the provision of legal services to children in care to deny the legal services to children in care as a defence tactic in the lawsuit." It's not yet known how many defendants might be involved should the case be certified as a class action. If it is, the lawyers plan to seek out people who might have similar claims, and Lee has estimated they could number in the thousands. Arguments in the case are expected to take three days.

Lethbridge olderwoman Dar Heatherington continues to suffer public indignation

Mon Oct 24, 7:43 PM ET CALGARY (CP) - Former Lethbridge alderwoman Dar Heatherington has suffered enough public humiliation during her salacious mischief trial to qualify for a reduced sentence, her lawyer told the Court of Appeal on Monday. "She suffered scorn and condemnation because of the proceedings," defence lawyer Balfour Der told the three-judge panel, arguing that the 20-month conditional sentence was too harsh for Heatherington's crime of fabricating a stalker. The tribunal reserved its decision. Outside court, Der told reporters that Heatherington's eight months of house arrest and the curfew that continues until her sentence expires in August 2006 is too much. "Our pitch to the court is that the time she's already served under house arrest is more than sufficient enough, so let's call it a day," said Der. "She wasn't even allowed to go to Edmonton for Thanksgiving with her family." Heatherington was convicted of public mischief after a judge ruled she wrote a series of sexually explicit letters to herself when she was a civic official, claiming they were from a stalker. Police spent months trying to trace the author of the lurid letters before focusing their attention on the rookie alderwoman. Crown prosecutor Goran Tomljanovic says Heatherington chose to go forward with a trial and can't now ask for a break because it was embarrassing. "Our position all along was that this deserved a jail sentence," said Tomljanovic, noting that the investigation went on over a six-month period and wasted a significant amount of police resources trying to track down a phantom. The Crown also noted Heatherington has never admitted to the crime and said the public may never know why she wrote the letters. "This is a lady who doesn't want to admit she's done something wrong and will go out of her way to (avoid) the consequences," Tomljanovic said, noting that the trial judge ruled Heatherington could not be trusted after repeatedly lying to police. "It doesn't send a good message to the public to give her a break because she's found the whole process arduous," he said. Heatherington made international headlines in May 2003 when she disappeared while on a business trip to Great Falls, Mont. She showed up three days later in Las Vegas, saying she had been abducted and sexually assaulted, but later recanted her story. The twisted legal saga kept Heatherington and the community of Lethbridge under a media glare for more than two years. In August, Heatherington abandoned an appeal of her conviction, saying legal bills have left her family bankrupt and unable to proceed. Heatherington, who has always maintained her innocence, arrived in court Monday with her husband, Dave, who has stood by her throughout the case. During the trial, the defence said Dave Heatherington could have been the stalker, noting that his career was faltering as his wife was in the public spotlight as an alderwoman. The trial judge dismissed the allegation, noting there was no evidence Heatherington was anything but supportive in his wife's ordeal.

Bird Flu is it just a nice way of saying Tax Shelter?

Tue Oct 25,12:27 AM ET OTTAWA (Reuters) - Fears of a bird flu pandemic among people has seriously hampered efforts to prevent the spread of an outbreak among birds because not enough money is being spent on prevention and surveillance, two leading food health officials said on Monday. Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, said many people seemed more focused on a possible human pandemic than on containing the outbreak among domestic poultry, which started almost two years ago in South-East Asia. Diouf said the FAO had first raised the alarm about bird flu in late 2003 when the disease was limited to China, Vietnam and Thailand. Since then it has killed around 60 people in the region but has moved, likely via wild birds, to parts of Europe, triggering fears it could mutate and then start spreading rapidly from person to person, killing millions. "Certainly too much time has gone by and even now we seem to focus more on addressing a possible pandemic which is spread from human to human," Diouf said in an interview with Reuters and Reuters Television. "It's normal to do that and it's good to be ready should this happen. But for the time being we have 140 million birds killed or dying or have died because of avian influenza, with $10 billion of costs ... and it is still there (in Asia) that we are having contamination to human beings." Diouf was in Ottawa for the start of a two day conference of health ministers and officials from 30 countries to discuss how ready the world is to fight a human influenza pandemic. Alejandro Thiermann of the World Organization for Animal Health later backed Diouf, saying the first line of defense had to be dealing with the outbreak among poultry. Many of the countries most affected are poor and lack the money either for proper surveillance or to pay farmers compensation for animals that need to be culled, he said. "Much more medium- and long-term strategic and material input is required for countries and regions to be in a sufficiently strong position to avert further damage to industry and global human health," he said. Another region in European Russia confirmed an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus on Monday and Croatia said it would cull more poultry after finding two dead wild swans. "If, as we think, migratory birds will be one of the ways by which avian influenza is spreading around the world, we can expect ... the problem in the Near East, in East and West Africa and naturally in North America and South America," said Diouf. The head of the World Health Organization' 8----->News News Photos Images Web' 8-----> World Health Organization repeated his gloomy message that it was only a matter of time before the world was struck by a major flu pandemic. "We currently do not have a vaccine that we know will be fully effective. Nor is there sufficient manufacturing capacity at present," Lee Jong-wook told the Ottawa meeting. "The world will need to produce billions of doses of a safe vaccine when the time comes. This is a huge challenge ... there are no easy and immediate solutions to these issues." Diouf said the FAO and the World Organization for Animal Health had developed a detailed $175 million strategy for controlling avian flu in birds. So far the two bodies have only received pledges of aid totaling about $30 million and donors have not yet handed over a single cent. "It is our opinion that the international community has drastically underinvested in the veterinary infrastructure required to support this vitally important program," said Thiermann.

Carefull they trade Loaded......