Arakawa and Madeline Gins screwed by Madoff - a destiny that may not be all that reversible.

ARAKAWA AND MADELINE GINS HAVE LET IT BE KNOWN THAT THEY HAVE DECIDED NOT TO DIE.

Anyway, that's what it says on their website - Reversible Destiny. They may not have updated that website, however, since they learned that they were scammed by Bernie Madoff.

Because I am a fairly rational and ordinary person who has not decided not to die - mostly because, quite practically, I really don't think that, in the end, I'm not really going to have all that much choice. Still, I'm marginally open to what these two have to say.

Arakawa and Gins ask us this question:

What lengths would you be willing to go to, or how much inconvenience would you be willing to put up with, in order to counteract the usual human destiny of having to die?

Although I have not decided not to die, this is a topic I find of the utmost interest - largely because I think that my generation, the love-'em-or-hate-'em Baby Boomers, is not going to exit stage left with any grace whatsoever. Indeed, I fear that, for the most part, we will be kicking, screaming, sucking up resources, and - as centarians - beating younger folks (those in their 70's and 80's) over the head with our canes to make sure we're first in-line for whatever life-extending potions, gizmos, or bio-engineered subcutaneous inserts are available that can extend our lives by a nano-second.

But it hadn't occurred to me that those life-extenders might be architecture. Architecture that can "can help you determine the nature and extent of interactions between you and the universe." What type of architecture may that be, you might ask yourself.

Well, it's procedural architecture:

...an architecture of precision and unending invention. Works of procedural architecture function as well-tooled works of equipment that help the body organize its thoughts and actions to a greater degree than had previously been thought possible.  Set up to put fruitfully into question all that goes on within them, (works of procedural architecture) steer their residents to examine minutely the actions they take and to reconsider and, as it were, recalibrate their equanimity and self-possession, causing them to doubt themselves long enough to find a way to reinvent themselves.

I actually don't have the imagination to fully translate this into living forever,  but here's an example of what an interior designed by Arakawa and Gins looks like. Live forever? Take it from someone who broke her should tripping over the corner of a rug, this has got death trap written all over it. Wake up in the middle of the night to pee and stroll through this living room....if you don't whack yourself on the noggin on one of those polls, you're apt to trip on that wavy-gravy and nubby flooring and trip, stumble, and fall your way into that pit.

But while I might not have the capacity and wit to figure out that procedural architecture means never having to say (or sing) "your sister Rose is dead," the  Wall Street Journal comes to my rescue! (Note: access to this content may require a subscription, and I assure you that access to this content is worth every penny of that subscription.) I guess they found the part of the website that state's outright: Arakawa and Gins want to use their architecture to "counteract the usual human destiny of having to die."

WSJ is interested in Arakawa and Gins because they are on the long and groaning list of those who made the very unfruitful decision to invest with Bernie Madoff, all of whom are now, no doubt, minutely examining the actions they took and reconsidering them. And talk about recalibrating your equanimity. When Elie Wiesel tells us that he doesn't have it within himself to forgive and forget, well, that's some recalibration. As for recalibrating self-possession, Madoff's victims are probably focusing more on re-possession of whatever watches, cufflinks, mansions, and yachts that Bernie and Ruthie have laying around.

Anyway, as the Journal tells us:

The pair's work, based loosely on a movement known as "transhumanism," is premised on the idea that people degenerate and die in part because they live in spaces that are too comfortable. The artists' solution: construct abodes that leave people disoriented, challenged and feeling anything but comfortable.They build buildings with no doors inside. They place rooms far apart. They put windows near the ceiling or near the floor. Between rooms are sloping, bumpy moonscape-like floors designed to throw occupants off balance. These features, they argue, stimulate the body and mind, thus prolonging life. "You become like a baby," says Mr. Arakawa.

Well, I don't see how "become like a baby" translates precisely into not dying. Haven't they heard of crib death? And their cribs look to me like an environment that it would be pretty easy to fall to your death in. Although, I will admit that from the outside, this design looks kind of cool.

Anyway, this couple - who were, no surprise, have been an important part of the conceptual art movement - have been able to do their work because of income from their investment Chez Bernie.

Their work, which has been exhibited at the Guggenheim, includes a number of "reversible destiny" lofts in Japan.

A typical apartment has three or four rooms in the shapes of either a cylinder, a cube, or a sphere. Rooms surround a kitchen-living room combination with bumpy, undulating floors and floor-to-ceiling ladders and poles. Dozens of colors, from school-bus yellow to sky blue, cover the walls, ceilings and other surfaces.

One tenant claims that he feels a bit rejuvenated by living in one of the lofts. His wife, however, hates that she keeps bumping her head on the ground level window when she crawls through it to hang out the wash.

("That's one of the exercises," says Ms. Gins.)

Over time, the couple had put several million into their account with Madoff.

We all know how that went.

Now, they're trying to sell

...their seminal work, the "Mechanism of Meaning," a series of 84 8-foot-tall panels that took them 10 years to complete, for about $17 million.

Unfortunately, with the depressed economy the few museums who would be interested in the work may not have that kind of scratch these days - although there may be some weird cachet to the artists having been duped into Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

Barring a sell-off of their collection, the couple fear they won't realize their dream of building a "reversible destiny" village with homes and parks that would combine their theories of life into one community.

It's one thing to learn that the Shapiro Foundation won't be able to fund as many hospital wings and university buildings. But this! What an outrage!

Frankly, I'm unclear about whether Arakawa and Madeline Gins really believe in "reversible destiny" in a literal sense, or in a mere metaphorical sense. But one thing that has become clear to me. Bernie Madoff may not have been a scam artist after all. Maybe he was a conceptual artist all along, and he's going to let us in on the high concept any day now.

'Live Free or Die' - so let them live free AND die, already....

It seems that our neighbors to the north, the good people of New Hampshire - or at least their state legislators - are considering a law that would make the use of seat-belts mandatory. (Source: Wall Street Journal. Access may require a subscription.)

Some folks take that license plate motto "Live Free or Die" pretty seriously, and they're doing some heavy lobbying against passage of the law. They fear the nanny state - or worse.

Bob Hull, a computer technician dressed in camouflage hunting gear, came to say that "the state is moving toward, basically, communism." Ivy Walker, a local restaurant owner, grew teary-eyed. "What's next?" she asked. "Will they mandate that I can't have more than three cheeseburgers next week at McDonald's?"

I hadn't been aware of the connection between communism and seat-belts, but perhaps this is the slippery slope we hear so much about. Today, seat belts. Tomorrow collective farms, comrade.

In any case, New Hampshire is the only state in the US that doesn't legally require that adults buckle up. They've been standing alone since Maine buckled under in 1995.

Much of this is being blamed on the influx of liberal, Massachusetts Democrats who have moved across the border for less costly housing and no state income taxes. This has been going on for years, and has even gone so far as to turn New Hampshire into - if not a completely and reliably blue state, at least into a swing state.

Since the Mass invasion, New Hampshire has okayed civil unions, banned smoking in restaurants, and is even considering a state income tax. (Seems like all those folks from Massachusetts want state services that somewhat resemble what they had in the place from whence they fled.)

Well, I'm one Mass-hole who actually doesn't believe that wearing a seat belt (or a motorcycle helmet, a perennial hot button issue in this state) should be required by law, other than for children.

Personally, I wouldn't drive ten feet without buckling up, but if someone wants to go without, well....

This is not to say that I don't think there should be widespread education on why wearing a seat belt is a good idea, including mandatory screenings to drivers-ed classes of macabre videos showing the bodies of dead teenagers who died as a result of not wearing a seat belt.

As it happens, the proportion of people who do wear seat belts in New Hampshire - 69% - is not any different than that of many other states (all of which have seat belt laws). So it's not clear that actually having a law would increase the proportion, or save any lives. New Hampshire also has an overall automobile fatality rate that's well below the national average. (Obviously, this has nothing to do with their lack of a seat belt law, but it's interesting nonetheless.)

But back to my personal belief on seat belt laws: why not do away with something that's largely unenforceable to begin with - those kids who are flung to their death because they're not wearing seatbelts are unlikely to have been stopped and ticketed, or to have been convinced to buckle up, based on a law.  Instead, focus efforts on education: graphic videos in school, public service announcements, big signs in the state liquor stores that all seem to be located right off the highway. And let the market do the rest.

How about: if you're in an accident and not wearing a seat belt, your health insurance doesn't cover your injuries. Or you end with a big-time deductible  - say $10K or $20K. Sure, if you're the one who's brain-injured because you weren't wearing a seat belt, someone else may be stuck with paying that deductible. But wouldn't the pressure - parents to children, husbands to wives, children to parents - to use the damned seat belt result in more people using the damned seat belt.

Same goes for motorcyclist who want that Easy Rider feel of the wind in their hair as the gun along the highway.

No helmet, no brain injury coverage - or a big, whopping premium to pay. Your choice.

You get to live free. And you might get to die because of it. But you're free to choose.

Of course, New Hampshire isn't exactly free to choose. There's a cost associated with their holding out on a seat belt law. And that cost is the $3.7M in federal funds they won't receive if they don't pass a law.

The law has gotten by its first hurdle, but there's another one to come.

And that $3.7M is looking mighty good these days.

But, frankly, I'll be a tiny bit disappointed if our neighbors to the north give in and vote for mandatory seat belts.

Naked Came the Hiker

Well, now that spring has sprung, it's time to start thinking about shedding some of those winter garments, isn't it?

Personally, I can't wait to swap out those wool sweaters for cotton. To put away all those bulky scarves the length of a MiniCooper. To banish everything - well, almost everything: this is New England - made of polar fleece. And to start showing a bit o' flesh.

In my case, once I dig out my tee-shirts and bermuda shorts, that flesh extends from elbow and knee down. And, now that the weather is pleasant enough to allow me to permanently unwind that loonnnnggg scarf, and doff my North Face chapeau, without risking hypothermia and frostbite, from the neck up.

The only circumstances under which more of me is exposed are the trips to Cahoon Hollow Beach or Long Pond that I make when I'm at my sister Kath's on The Cape. Then I will be wearing an age- and flab-appropriate LL Bean swimsuit.

Having long ago reached the tipping point where you look better clothed than naked, that LL Bean swimsuit is about as close as I'm going to come to indecent exposure.

But, then again, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a naturist - even though the thought of roaming around in nature, au naturel, is kind of appealing. As long as the weather is pluperfect, the bug equivalent of St. Patrick has driven all the insects out of the country (except for butterflies), and there is not another sighted person within, say, 10 miles.

But, weather-schmeather. Modesty, schmodesty.

Nude hiking is "in" in Switzerland.

Okay, before you shake your image of the button-downed, button-upped, rectitudinous Swiss, not everyone in Canton Helvetia is doing it, doing it. And not everyone there is liking it, liking it.

Still, there are, as The New York Times reported last week, enough nude hikers out there to make their existence news fit to print.

In recent years, it has become fashionable for a growing number of Swiss and some foreigners to wander in the Alps clad in little more than hiking shoes and sun screen. Last summer, the number of nude hikers increased to such an extent that the hills often seemed alive with the sound of everything but the swish of trousers.

This is disturbing the peace of some Swiss, and deeply concerning the elected worthies of the Alpine town of Appenzell, who are "worried that the town might become a Mecca for the unclad."

Appenzell is an unlikely Mecca for nude hikers. The town is so conservative that it didn't grant women suffrage until 1990. (Yes, you read that right: 1990. Perhaps they feared that wanton women would vote in nudity.) So they're a bit alarmed that their town is popping up as the place to be in blogs and chat rooms frequented by nude hikers.

Nude hikers maintain that the folks they run into on the trail aren't bothered, although the one interviewed did admit that in winter he is often asked whether he's cold. Myself, if I came across someone in the freezing cold wearing nothing other than his birthday suit, boots, hat, and gloves my first thought might be "is he crazy?" rather than "isn't he cold?"

Local governments have been stymied by the fact that Switzerland, in 1991, took a law off its books that banned public nudity. (1991? The year after the women of Appenzell got the right to vote? Is there, indeed, a connection here? Probably not. I'm guessing that more men than women would be in favor of nude hiking. Just a guess.)

Appenzellers will be voting to outlaw - or at least fine - nude hikers, at the annual Swiss version of the town meeting: the outdoor, public assembly of the people. This is scheduled for late April.

Personally, I'm not planning on any nude hiking, in Appenzell or anywhere else.

Last summer, I took a dusk hike in the P-town dunes with my brother-in-law and nieces.

It was warm, and the girls and I had on shorts. Prudently, my brother-in-law had on long pants. Imprudently, we hadn't taken any bug spray.

While the hike was magnificent - the area is completely unspoiled, and we were rewarded for our calf-stretching efforts when we spotted dozens of seals frolicking just off the beach - the mosquitoes were out in full force.

Bitten alive!

Bad enough when it happens on your legs and ankles. I shudder to imagine if we'd been hiking in the altogether.

Make that a gallon of calamine lotion to go, please.

I spy with my little eye: Rob Spence's eye-witness documentary approach

There's being handed lemons and making lemonade. And then there's being blind in one eye and turning that eye into a camera. Talk about 'I Am a Camera' - Christopher Isherwood had nothing on Rob Spence.

Spence is a Canadian documentary filmmaker who is working on a project on "the global spread of surveillance cameras." For the project, he'll be recording the people he's interviewing with a camera hidden in his prosthetic eye. (This story was reported in an AP article reprinted in The Boston Globe.) With his camera, Spence:

...plans to become a "human surveillance machine" to explore privacy issues and whether people are "sleepwalking into an Orwellian society."

Spence, who was blinded in a childhood firearms accident, came up with the idea for the camera when he came to the realization that he could fit something the size of a cell phone camera into his eye socket. People would quite naturally be freaked out to see a camera where someone's baby blue should be, so Spence's will be hidden in his prosthetic (which, for the record, is light hazel).

Spence does not plan on telling people about the camera before he interviews them, but will be letting them know after the fact, when he goes after their permission to use them in his film.

Spence is working  on his weird and wonderful camera with weird and wonderful engineers like Steve Mann, formerly of MIT's wearable computer research team, and now at the University of Toronto.

The camera itself comes from OmniVision, maker of the mini-cams used in cell phones, laptops, and.... colonoscopy equipment.

Spence has both hopes for and questions about his Eyeborg (Spence's word).

"As a documentary maker, you're trying to make a connection with a person," he says, "and the best way to make a connection is through eye contact."

But Spence also acknowledged privacy concerns.

"The closer I get to putting this camera eye in, the more freaked out people are about me," he said, adding people aren't sure they want to hang around someone who might be filming them at any time."

Spence is in an awkward position here. If he let the people he's interviewing know about his device prior to a conversation they would, quite naturally, be inclined to act a bit unnaturally. And you can see that people might be a bit ticked off and feeling a bit duped when they learned about the magic eye after the fact.

Still, Spence's use is largely for a good and reasonably benevolent purpose.  Not to mention extremely interesting, giving that his topic is Orwellian surveillance.

And, other than in a James Bond movie, no one is likely to deliberately gouge his eye out so that he - and, yes, it would most likely be a he - can put a camera in it. But cameras will be getting more and more (or is it less and less) miniaturized. And wearable computers will be getting a lot more wearable than the ones that Steve Mann sports. This can only mean that there will be all kinds of new and improved invasions on our privacy - ones that make the old cell-phone-under-the-toilet-stall look like nothing.

One moment, you're "Swiss of the Year," the next thing you know you're Swiss steak

Who doesn't love baby animals?

Apparently not the Swiss, who chose Farasi, a teensy-tiny baby hippo born on November 6, 2008 at the Basel Zoo, as "Swiss of the Year" for 2008. Farasi (the name means horse in Swahili) managed to beat out tennis ace Roger Federer.

But Federer likely has more staying power.

As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, poor Farasi is more likely to end up on somebody's plate this year - and the plate won't be of the souvenir variety. (Note: access to the WSJ article may require a subscription.)

It seems that, while Farsi's safe as long as he's - by hippo standards - a babe in arms, once he has grown to man's estate, he'll have to go. The Basel Zoo isn't big enough to support two adult male hippos.

And in Europe, a homeless hippo is a dead hippo.

Unlike American zoos, zoos in Europe apparently don't believe in birth control. Instead, they practice a "birds do it, bees do it" approach that nets them too many zoo babies. When zookeepers can't find a place for their bonus babies, they put them down, using the carcasses for research or food.

In the U.S., says Steve Feldman of the U.S. Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Farasi wouldn't have been born unless a home had been lined up for him. "We never put down a healthy animal." European zoos say sex, pregnancy and parenting are fundamental needs. "A chimpanzee spends 24 hours a day with its young for four years," says Robert Zingg, chief curator of Zurich Zoo, which works closely with Basel Zoo. "How do you replace that?" European zoos even sometimes euthanize surplus chimps, he says.

(Gosh! How'd you like to be a more or less sentient four year old chimp about to be euthanized? So long, Mom. It's been a swell four years!)

So little Farasi may well get "thrown to the lions."

Amid the joy of Farasi's birth, zoo spokeswoman Tanja Dietrich said he'd be put up for adoption. Or else? Zoo policy, she said, is to "put down excess animals and feed them to carnivores."

One does have to admire the matter-of-fact, no BS truth-telling here - can you imagine a US zoo giving the press this little morsel. No wonder we practice animal birth control here - it's far more palatable than euthanasia. Still, it's hard not to lament the possible fate of Farasi.

The Basel Zoo's policy has jolted the Swiss, captured the headlines of their tabloid newspapers, and prompted a soft-hearted Zurich resident, Andrea Dindo, to start up a "save Farasi club". Her Facebook group has 15,000 members.

Ms. Dindo is doing more than just friending. Her group has written to a number of zoos looking for a new home for Farasi. So far, they've had no luck.

One reason that the Dindo and so many other Swiss are so up in virtual arms over this is that they are a genuinely animal-loving nation.

Last September, Switzerland passed an animal bill of rights that says that pet guinea pigs, for instance, should be kept in pairs to avoid loneliness. Swiss have to mercifully knock out their goldfish before flushing them down the toilet.

(I wonder who polices those regulations? "Ma'am, we're here to make sure that you still have both the guinea pigs you bought last month. You say that you know have 12 guinea pigs? That's interesting, the report from the pet shop says that they sold you two males.")

Back to the Save Farasi campaign:

Zoo professionals cock an eyebrow at the activists. "Animals die in nature," says Gerald Dick, director of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums in Bern. If they die in captivity, "it would be crazy to throw away the meat."

Farasi has the rest of the year to enjoy himself, but his time is ticking away. By the age of one, he will be seen as a threat to his father. And with good reason.

In nature, the young sexually mount their mothers if they can.

But finding a home for a hippo is hard, especially for a male, since you can only have one per zoo. And they live pretty long, too - into their 50's - so there's not a lot of turnover. If you're the lucky male, you're more or less a pig in clover. If you're not the lucky one, you're more or less bacon.

The Swiss national circus has offered to take Farasi, but the zoo wants him in a real (zoo) home, not wearing a tutu and dancing on his hind legs, or whatever circus hippos do. (I may be thinking of the hippos in Fantasia here.)

The Basel Zoo will keep looking for a home for Farasi, but alas,

..says Ms. Dietrich: "Euthanasia is the final option after all else has failed."

As the woman with the rabbit hutch in Michael Moore's Roger & Me had it, it all comes down to "Pets or Meat."

Saya: No more pencils, no more books. No more robot's dirty looks.

Well, I had quite a range of teachers over the years, but I can't honestly say I ever had one who was robotic.

Japanese schoolchildren may not be able to make this claim.

Japan, it seems, is deploying the robot Saya on a trial basis at a primary school in Tokyo. (Source: UK Telegraph.)

In this picture, Saya looks pretty impassive and dummy-like as she monitors her charges, but don't be fooled. She is multi-lingual, can conduct roll call and assign tasks, and make facial expressions.

The humanoid was originally developed to replace a variety of workers, including secretaries, in a bid to allow firms to cut costs while still retaining some kind of human interaction.

Okay, I just flat out don't get Japan.

Much as I can see that robots can be used for certain types of work, I don't see why they should be in human form. Why not C3PO or R2D2 - you know, robot-robots. I do see how a robot could cut costs, but I just don't see how putting a pliable latex face on a robot lets you "retain" any "kind of human interaction." (The one place I can maybe see where this might work is in dealing with the autistic, the severely depressed, et al. who may respond better to communications in non-human but vaguely human like format. In fact, a humanoid is being designed as a companion for those with Alzheimer's.)

Other uses already deployed for the humanoid - which was created by University of Tokyo professor Hiroshi Kobayashi - are traffic directing, acting as a receptionist, and "luring university graduates to sign up to courses."

Other than signing up for a course in robotics, I can't imagine what kinds of courses that an object that's just a layer of latex and a wink-and-a-nod removed from a crash test dummy could lure a grad student into.

Again, I so don't get Japan.

According to the article, the Japanese government wants a robot in every home by 2015. To what end, the article doesn't say. Perhaps to tend to Japan's elderly - and getting older - population. Robots that can open a soup can, take out the trash, and figure out how to work multiple remote controls would be useful to me now, let alone in a year or two when I become elderly.  But I really don't want a humanoid robot - although, come to think of it, having a robot that looked like George Clooney would be kind of fun. Mostly, if I do get a robot, I want it to look like a retro-1950's robot. I prefer my humans to be human, thank you.

Professor Kobayashi, by the way, "believes that within a few years robots with the physical and mental skills of a two-year old child will be available. "

Yikes! Just what the elderly need racing around: grown-up sized robots with the physical and mental skills of a two-year old.

The Boston Globe picked up on Saya last week, and there I learned that Saya "can express six basic emotions -- surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, sadness."

Call me a literalist, or call me old-fashioned, but Saya is really not expressing human emotions. She - I mean it - is demonstrating the robotic equivalent of showing emotion.

Professor Kobayashi says that young children and old folks respond best to humanoid robots.

"Children even start crying when they are scolded."

But Kobayashi doesn't see Saya replacing human teachers anytime soon. Pretty much all she can do is call the roll and holler orders, like "Be quiet." It is, he admits, "Just a tool."

The kids in the test-drive classroom - fifth and sixth graders - did get a kick out of their temporary teacher, however.

Still, I'm relieved to see that some scientists have reservations about surrendering care of the young and the old to robots. Georgia Tech's Ronald Arkin is one.

"Simply turning our grandparents over to teams of robots abrogates our society's responsibility to each other, and encourages a loss of touch with reality for this already mentally and physically challenged population," he said.

And as for robot teachers, if I'd had them, I'd have missed out on an awful lot.

Could a robot have grabbed Michael Mahoney's soda can and swung it back and forth as she ranted about "a seventh grader who doesn't know how to use a can opener" - only to have the can explode on Sister Florence as she demonstrated her can-opening prowess? (This was just prior to the introduction of flip-top cans.)

Would a robot have ever had the knowledge and outright generosity of spirit to explain to a bunch of nine year olds that a school fire in Chicago that killed a hundred kids was actually intended for Our Lady of the Angels in Worcester, and not Our Lady of Angeles in Chicago, with the result of God's one mistake being that good and innocent children died while bad and guilty children lived?

Could a robot have had the presence of mind to rearrange the class seating arrangement on a moment's notice so that we could win the contest highlighted in the December St. Dominic Savio Club Newsletter, a contest offering a prize to a classroom if someone with the initials "MC" (for Merry Christmas) was seated in the second row, fifth seat? What a coincidence that Sister Saint Whilhelmina put Michael Curran in that seat! Unfortunately, plenty of other non-robot nuns must have come up with the same amazing coincidence, because we won nothing. (It was probably just a bunch of Dominic Savio holy cards, anyway, and I already had one.)

I really don't need to supply any more reasons to make my case.

No robot could ever have replaced the teachers I had.

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I will say that I did have plenty of rational and excellent teachers. It's just that the loonies are much more interesting to think about.

Irish eyes: not so smiling, these days

My husband and I had been talking about a trip to Northern Ireland next September.

Although we've been to Ireland a dozen or so times, most recently in 2006, we've never been to the North - largely because I've been reluctant to travel to any "I" country - Ireland, Israel, India, Iran, Iraq - where we could get our heads blown off.

But the peace initiative seemed to have been working, and The Troubles seemed to have been a thing o' the past. And we'd been reading good things about Belfast and Derry - enough to make a trip there seem worthwhile.

Then two British soldiers were killed by members of a renegade, splinter group of the IRA, a group which styles itself as the Real IRA. The soldiers were at the gates of their army base, meeting a pizza delivery man.

A few days later a police officer - a Catholic, by the way - was gunned down, with the glory claimed by another IRA splinter organization.

(The actual IRA is now a respectable political party.)

In February, a bomb was found near a primary school - reportedly destined not for the primary school, but for a British army base.

Over the weekend, there were riots in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, after police arrest several men in the murder of the soldiers

The good news is that the violence seems to have united many (though clearly not all) the citizens of Northern Ireland, with Protestants and Catholics, unionists and "one Ireland" uniters alike, joining together in large protests against the Ireland.

Still, we are putting off any plans to visit Northern Ireland until we're sure that things have calmed down.

Meanwhile, to the south, the economy of the Republic of Ireland - which has been roaring over the past decade or so - seems to have fallen off the Cliffs of Moher: unemployment is nearing 10%, the construction boom has completely fizzled, and the Irish banks are in complete disarray. The big joke is "What's the difference between Iceland and Ireland? One letter." But nobody's laughing.

And Ireland, which had become home to a raft of Eastern Europeans - last time we were there, most of the waiters and bartenders we spoke with were Polish or Czech - is experiencing out-migration of its EU workers. I don't know about the other migrant groups: last trip, we went through a town outside Galway with a population that was one-quarter Brazilian. And in Galway itself there were many Africans.

Nothing new about out-migration from Ireland, of course. For generations, Ireland's greatest export was its young. But the fact that Ireland had become a destination for immigrants was a matter of no small pride. (It was also a matter of some concern with respect to the decline of their culture, to a non-trivial suspicion of "outsiders" taking jobs and soaking up welfare, and all the old familiar notions associated with immigrants. Nothing new for us, but something out of the ordinary for the Irish.)

The Irish can be a pessimistic lot, so the implosion of their economy will come as no small surprise to many, as they'd never trusted it at all, at all to begin with. And for the Irish of a certain age - probably anyone over thirty-five or so - well, they were used to having a lot less. In fact, they were used to having to leave their own country if they wanted a lot  - or even a little - more than what they could find for themselves at home.

One of the most depressing scenes I ever witnessed took place on the boat from Dun Laoghaire, outside Dublin, over to Holyhead in Wales. This was the pre-Ryanair way that the Irish got over to England. The time was the early seventies, and I was on my first trip to Ireland, which was an early stop on an extended European adventure with my college roommate.

While we were waiting for the boat to leave the dock, we watched as a middle aged woman, wearing an armband identifying her has a social worker, went around interviewing all of the young people on the boat to determine if they were leaving Ireland, and why. The "why", of course, was that the economic opportunities in Manchester, Birmingham, and London were a lot better than they were in Dublin, Cork, and Galway.

The social worker didn't bother with us: we were obviously American, with our nice new backpacks and parkas. She did speak to a fellow we'd been hanging out with. He wasn't Irish - he was from New Foundland - but his parents had immigrated to Canada from Ireland, and he had more or less gone native during his time in Ireland. Rick was the one who told us what the woman doing the interviewing was after.

Fast forward a dozen years, and I remember being saddened by the job boards at Trinity College and University College Galway - all bursting with jobs somewhere else.

And then, miraculously, the Irish economy turned around: high tech, call centers, EU money, whatever. Suddenly there were Benetton shops around every corner, SUV's clogging the newly constructed highways, and suburban malls replacing the town-center shops.

Who was an American to complain about Ireland on the Move?

I remember a cab driving proudly pointing out a new mall going up outside town, and me thinking 'be careful what you wish for.'

As I said, Irish folks of a certain age are used to economic struggle, to doing without, to making do, in a way that few Americans are. Nonetheless, I'm sure that their current troubles are no more welcome as the flowers in May than our economic turmoil is to us.

Still, it's St. Patrick's Day, and we should all be doing a bit of  the old celebrating.

So Happy St. Paddy's Day to all. (As we used to say - and actually believed - growing up in Worcester: there are only two kinds of people on God's green earth: those who are Irish, and those who wish they were.)

Here's to a great day for the Irish, even if it isn't much of a year.

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St. Patrick's Day - 2008

St. Patrick's Day - 2007

Would you buy a used car from the Scottsbluff Three? Answer: not anymore.

What with Bernie Madoff and Sir Allen Stanford to buzz about, it's good to keep in mind that the little guys are still at it, chiseling away.

Last month, it was Michigan's embezzling hockey mom, and just last week there was the delighted story of a trio from a Scottsbluff, Nebraska car dealership who allegedly tried to make off with 81 cars that they were trying to resell.

Actually, with all the Ponzi scheme, dollar based shucking-and-jiving scandals, it's kind of refreshing to read about someone trying to make off with something tangible.

Of course, given that the tangible assets were cars, it does leave me kind of scratching my head. What I know about the auto dealership industry could fit quite nicely in a MiniCooper's glove compartment, but there are things like titles and VIN numbers that, if seems to me, would make it somewhat difficult to move merchandise that was heading somewhere other than the chop-shop.

But what do I know?

The owner of Legacy Auto Sales, Allen Patch, has been in the business a long time, and he seemed to think he could get away with it.

Here's the story.

Path and two colleagues, Rachel Fait and Rick Covello - hilariously (given that the name is so closely and currently associated with The Big Three) called "auto execs" in the headline of the Scottsbluff Star Herald article I saw - were no-shows at work one day last week. Their desks were cleaned out, their computers were gone - and so were 81 cars - worth $2.5M. And once the police started poking around, the trio's homes had been emptied out, as well.

By the time the cops caught up with the crew, a bunch of the cars - all owned by Toyota Financing, and not by the dealership itself - had already been sold at auction in Utah. Although Patch et al. didn't actually own the cars, they did have temporary title to them, which enabled them to sell them to the auction house for cash. How they got title will be part of the mystery to be cleared up - at least for me. Folks who know all about things like VIN numbers and the Manheim Auction probably know all this stuff already.

Anyway, most of the auctioned cars have been recovered, as well as a few others, including one found in a WalMart parking lot in Wyoming and an unknown quantity located in Las Vegas. (In this case, what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas.) One car was being driven by Covello when he turned himself in to Scottsbluff police. Fait and Patch were arrested in Tooele, Utah.

Motivation for the theft is thought  to be the financial problems that Patch's Legacy dealerships had gotten themselves into. A local bank has been overseeing operations for the past several months - apparently not so closely that they knew about the ill-gotten titles, or the cars that had been hauled off in the dead of night.

Dealership employees have also told the police that Fait, who was the dealership's controller:

...had been embezzling money from the company. One said Fait had taken over $46,000 from the business and kept a large backpack with cash inside of it.

This, of course, makes it sound like fellow employees might have known that something was amiss - but how does this become common knowledge without getting acted on? I guess the d'uh answer is: if you report something to the boss and he's in cahoots with the embezzler....

Anyway, it's fun to imagine the water cooler gossip about the light-fingered controller.

"Oh, that Rachel, she's always got her hand in the till."

"And you know that big old backpack she lugs around? She opened it up the other day. I thought she was going to take out her running shoes or something, but she just grabbed a big wad of cash."

One of the Utah dealers that Patch was dealing with is sticking by Patch and Fait, who are well known in the Tooele area, where Patch once owned a number of dealerships, and where Fait grew up. Doug Bergener manages Bargain Buggy's.

“I don’t think anyone can prove anything’s illegal at this point,’’ he said. “We’ve known Allen for 15 years and never knew him to do anything underhanded. There’s been no reason not to trust him. He’s always been honest. It’ll all come out in the wash.’’

Those Tooele Bargain Buggy folks are a loyal lot.

In an article, again from the Scottsbluff paper, on the possibility of federal charges against the Scottsbluff Three, Bargain Buggy's President Mike Garrard, who used to work for Patch:

...believes the charges are a result of a giant misunderstanding.

“From everybody I know in this part of the country, there are not too many bad things ever said about Allen Patch,” Garrard said Thursday evening. “He’s a lot smarter than to pawn 81 vehicles and just try to run,” Garrard said. “I just hope people don’t hang him yet. Remember, presumed innocent until found guilty.”

Yessiree, Bob. One of the great things about this country is that your are innocent until found guilty.

But it's also not exactly news that "smart" and "honest" people can go plenty wrong when $$$$$ is concerned.

As Doug Bergener said, "It'll all come out in the wash."

I can hardly wait.

This is really far easier to wrap your head around than the missing billions of Madoff and Stanford.

Grand theft auto, on a really grand scale.

Putting off the Ritz: Goldman Sachs is finding room at a downmarket inn

There's not all that much to laugh about these days, but yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a cheery little article on Goldman Sachs' new corporate travel policy. Out with the Plaza Athenee, the Frette linens, and "$11 Irish oatmeal brûlée with berries compote". In with the Battery Park Embassy Suites, which Goldman owns and which its out of town employees - from the highest muckety-mucks to the lowliest grunt - are now directed to lodge when they're visiting HQ or clients in The City. Which means cotton-poly sheets with a thread count so low it might as well be burlap, views of Jersey City, and a pretzel-and-Bud happy hour instead of $14 signature martinis.

Goldman, which last fall posted its first quarterly loss since going public a decade ago, is watching its expenses, and one of the victims is luxury hotel nights. For Goldman, the going rack rate is now $250 - not the $795 that their folks were racking up at the Plaza Athenee back in the day, or the more modest $495 at he Ritz.

Some of the bankers aren't happy with the switch. "No one's supposed to complain out loud, but, let's face it, we're spoiled," says one Goldman employee. "They turned us into hotel snobs."

Well, I'm sure that the bankers could pay out of pocket for an upgrade if they wanted, but maybe those Frette sheets just aren't worth it if you actually have to pay for them yourself.

If you're wondering why Goldman owns this property to begin with, they're building a new HQ in Battery Park City and purchased the hotel with the intention of turning it into a "dorm" for visiting Goldman execs. (Hmmmm. I'm guessing that a "dorm' for Goldman execs will not feature cement block walls, 2 inch thick mattresses with Indian print bedspreads, and shared showers. Just guessing.)

Ever mindful of shareholder value - and shareholder perception - Goldman has put other cost cutting measures into effect:

Goldman people working late can only put in for $20 in dinner costs; the old limit was $25. If Goldman employees want to take a hired car home, they have to wait until 10 p.m., an hour later than before. The firm recently slashed the number of computer printers at its New York headquarters, frustrating employees who now have farther to walk in order to retrieve pitchbooks.

Having worked at Wang when they were in expense slash and burn mode, I have a couple of other expense cutting tips for Goldman:

• Unscrew 2/3's of the hall lightbulbs, and 1/3 of the work area lights.
• Only pick up the trash in the cubicles and public areas a couple of times a week.
• Enforce a "cheapest flight" policy that may send Chicago employees to New York via Houston and Seattle, but will, indeed, save money. (And with smart phones, laptops, and wifi, all that time doesn't have to be wasted, either. Win-win!)

Thinking about the poor Goldies put me in absolute mind of some of the more wonderful hotels I've stayed in while on business -most of which came at the hands of Wang, which had the ugliest travel policies in the world. We used to joke about being issued packing boxes and a list of the heating grates in a city.

On one Wang jaunt, I stayed at a hotel with mouse droppings and broken glass in the closet. I know, I know, mouse droppings can drop anywhere. And if you're not stomping around the closet barefoot, what harm's a little broken glass? Since there were no hangers in the closet, anyway, there was very little reason to use the closet to begin with. So Wang was right to put us up there.

Another Wang stop was a "theme motel" in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where I participated in some Wang user conference or another. I got there too late for one of the theme rooms, but one of my colleagues got the jungle room and another one got medieval manor. While my room lacked a theme, it did have a floor show. When, on return from a conference session, I opened the door, I found that the hall and the bathroom were entirely filled with pink bubbly foam that had backed up from the nearby laundry, through my toilet. Alas, there was no other room at the inn, but they did come in and hoover up the foam for me.

In Chicago one time, I stayed at a hotel that had two cement block buildings, only one of which had a front desk that was manned. The other just had a locked outside door. Naturally, I was placed in Building Two, which you reached by crossing through a quasi-lit parking lot. The parking lot was probably safe enough. In any case, it was surrounded by a chain link fence topped by coils of razor wire - sort of like a medium security lock-up.

So the Goldman folks really have nothing to complain about, do they now? They have jobs. Goldman's doing better than most. And the Embassy Suites has no theme rooms - other than the apparent general theme of complain, complain, complain.

By the way, Goldman did take some of the federal lifetime - not much, just $10B  - and we the people don't want to see that money going to muddled cucumber martinis and 400 thread-count sheets. (Speaking of which, I can't remember which of our darling financial services firms it was, but on the news the other night, some exec was complaining that the money being used for some corporate junket or bonus pay out wasn't coming from TARP dollars. Quick: name something that's more fungible than money...)

The best part of the article on Goldman's Embassy Suites slumming was the comment from a Jasper, Alabama school teacher who was in town or a conference.

Holly Jaye, who "had never heard of Goldman Sachs", had this to say:

"Where I come from, this would be considered a luxury hotel."

And you wonder why people are growing tired of Wall Street attitude.

He's got the way to move tickets, ch-er-ry

Just last May I was blog-moaning the fact that I was unable to get tickets to see Neil Diamond's August show at Fenway Park.

Try as I could, I couldn't get cheap seats - although jacked up versions of the cheap seats were instantly available on Ticket Master's legal scalping site. Now, thanks to The Wall Street Journal, I know why. (Note: access to source story may require a subscription.)

It seems that Neil Diamond - and plenty of other singers - withhold bunches of seats from initial public distribution, and make them available at a hefty multiple of face value on Ticket Master's "premium" site, TicketExchange.

Selling premium-priced tickets on TicketExchange, priced and presented as resales by fans, is a practice used by many other top performers, according to people in the industry. Joseph Freeman, Ticketmaster's senior vice president for legal affairs, says that the company's "Marketplace" pages only rarely list tickets offered by fans.

The thinking behind this is to take the profit out of the hands of scalpers - or fans trying to make a buck - and making sure it stays in the pocket of the artiste.

Fair enough: it must be really galling for concert performers and athletic teams to see someone else extract revenue that they consider theirs. But, wait, aren't most secondary market ticket sellers - like StubHub and Ace - already in cahoots with concert performers and athletic teams?  How would they get their money grubbing hands on so many tickets to begin with? Obviously, it's in the interest of the performers and teams to let someone else assume the risk of not selling out. Fair enough.

So what must be really galling is seeing Joe Blow who lucked into a couple of tickets, out there on Craig's List trying to score.

However ticked off I can get about scalping, legal or otherwise, I'm enough of a free marketer to be okay with it. (Old lefty that I am, however, I'd rather see individual scalpers profiting than I would corporate scalp jobs, with the caveat that I'm talking about "honest" scalpers, not those selling counterfeits.)

But the artistes aren't the only ones galled by scalping.

I'm pretty galled myself about Neil Diamond et al. (where al. includes Billy Joel and Elton John, by the way) "pretending" that these tickets are fan re-sells, sold on the soi-disant "fan to fan" TicketExchange. Of course, I'm sure that Neil Diamond is his own biggest fan, so there may be some Clintonian truth to his selling bulked-up tickets to his own concerts as fan to fan.

Virtually every major concert tour today involves some official tickets that are priced and sold as if they were offered for resale by fans or brokers, but that are set aside by the artists and promoters, according to a number of people involved in the sales.

Impossibly, even Britney Spears is involved in this. (Say it isn't so!)  Some of the $125 seats for her upcoming concert in Pittsburgh are available in the "TicketExchange Marketplace" for nearly an order of magnitude more than face value. (Note to Britney fans: an order of magnitude more means ten times more. In other words, a lot.)

Apparently, now that the WSJ's been poking around, TicketExchange has expunged the "tickets posted by fans" note from their site.

So, is it too much to ask for a bit of transparency here?

Naturally, the artistes don't want to appear to be sticking it to their most devoted fans. But think of how ticked off those devotees are when they find out they've been played? Why not just list the tickets as at "market price", kind of like the lobster at Legal Seafood. State outright that you set aside a certain percentage of tickets so that the most loyal, extravagant, besotted fans can pay through the nose for them, pointing out that the money goes to the object of their affection, not some rotten scalper.

Not all performers do this sort of ticket finagling, by the way.

Bruce Springsteen's policy is not to play in the secondary ticket market.

Way to go, Boss. (And I'm sure that your August concert at Gillette Stadium, which I saw, was an order of magnitude better than Neil Diamond's outing at Fenway Park, anyway. In fact, if you'd just sung Sweet Caroline, it would have been perfect.)

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In tribute to this revelation about Diamond's ticket mastery, I've played around a bit with his classic Play Me, written from a fan's perspective.

You are the star
I am the fan
You have the tickets
I am your lamb
Play me

Or, alternatively:

I am the star
You are the fan
I have the tickets
You are my lamb
Pay me

Vaxed Beans: The Victory Garden Makes a Comeback

Chalk it up to city girl-ism, but I've never been much of a gardener.

Still, I was interested to see  an article in The Economist about how Victory Gardens are back in vogue, both as a way of coping with the recession and as a way of being a bit greener about the food we eat. If the food's coming from your Victory Garden, it's being transported from garden to table in a trug, not a fuel guzzling, pollution spewing, blow-out creating truck. And what with the poison peanut, death-by-spinach, and other food recalls of recent years, safety's another factor promoting the return to growing your own.

According to the article I read, there is a grassroots movement to have the Obamas follow in Eleanor Roosevelt's footsteps and plant a garden on the White House lawn. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is doing a reverse Joni Mitchell, unpaving the parking lot next to the Ag Department HQ, and putting up the paradise of "The People's Garden." Sounds a tad USSR, but the idea is interesting.

Arkansas is something of an epicenter for Victory Gardening, which:

...are springing up in backyards, school grounds and even on front lawns in posh neighbourhoods. Many gardeners are focusing on “heirloom” plants—rare varieties from earlier times that do not appeal to agribusiness.

Classes are being offered on canning vegetables and raising chickens.

Somehow, I don't see chickens taking off around here. It makes sense in Arkansas, where it's probably pretty easy to find chickens who've flown the Tyson's coop scratching around looking for a home where they don't have to wear blinders and sit in tiny cage all day sucking down growth hormones.

There are programs in Little Rock for gardening next to schools, so that "inner-city students [get] to taste fresh-grown fruit and vegetables, sometimes for the first time in their lives," which seems like a good idea. There's also a project focusing on getting inner-city families to start gardens.

As with chickens, this probably makes more sense in Little Rock, which has a somewhat longer growing season than Boston does.

But certainly people with backyard space in these parts can and do grow their own veggies.

As I said, I don't see myself as much of a gardener, victory or otherwise.

My mother - raised on Chicago, but born on the farm - had a green thumb, but she turned it to house plants and flowers, not veggies. One spring, the Big Three (i.e., the three oldest kids) each planted something or other. My choice was Scarlet Runner Beans, which no doubt chose because I had had scarlet fever over the winter. They had kind of a pretty flower, and the beans looked cool. As far as I was concerned, they weren't edible.

I can't remember what my sister Kath planted, but I know that my brother Tom did carrots.

Farmer Tom did a fine job cultivating them. Once the green sprouts appeared above ground, he took to digging them up every day to see how they'd grown.

As I said, city kids.

There are Victory Gardens in the Fens section of Boston, leftovers from WWII, and I've always enjoyed walking through them, but have never had the urge to actually apply for a plot of my own - which I probably wouldn't qualify for anyway, since I don't live in that neighborhood/neighbourhood.

I do plant tulips and crocuses out front of our condo building each year, but the area's very shady once the dogwood tree in there pops, so the only thing that grows there once June rolls around are impatiens. Besides, I don't imagine the neighbors would like to see tomato plants out front of our house. The back "yard" is sunny enough, but it's all concrete. I suppose I could grow tomatoes in buckets, but I suspect that the rats would get them.

Rats!

I will never be a victory gardener.

My Chicago grandmother, however, did grow vegetables at The Lake, our name for her summer house on the aptly named Sand Lake, which was out in The Country, up near the Wisconsin border. When we were kids, this truly was The Country; now it's a suburb.

I don't really recall everything that Grandma grew, but what sticks in my mind (as well as in the craw of my memory) was her waxed beans. Or, as she pronounced it, vaxed beans.

As far as I could tell, they really were made of vax.

If the strategy of hiding them under potato skin failed, there was only one way to eat them, or, rather gag them down.

You had to take a big mouthful of milk, pop in a vaxed bean or two, and let the milk with floating bean pass down your gullet in one big swallow. No need to chew, no need to taste. The trick was not having the bean actually touch any part of your mouth or throat. And not to see if any of your siblings or cousins were having a hard time getting them down. One gagging kid was all it would take to start a chain reaction of yelling mothers and milk streaming down all those nostrils.

Although I retain my aversion to vaxed beans - my gut is churning a bit as I type - I'm generally a fresh veggie type of gal these days. I suppose if someone actually put a vaxed bean in front of me, I would enjoy them

Still, if I had a victory garden, the vaxed bean would be one of the last things I'd plant in it. But tomatoes, scallions, lettuce, green beans, peas....even Scarlet Runner Beans. Yum!

Igor Panarin's Doomsky and Gloomevitch

I will admit that, every once in a while, I do take a moment to imagine what it would be like if these United States became not so united. My separation anxiety usually has the Red States going in one direction, and the Blue States going in the other. While I would miss my friends and family in Red States, I reconcile myself to the fact that the Blue States get the better of it - the majority of the ocean front  and intellectual property; cultural and financial institutions; technological, scientific, and artistic communities; and MLB teams. Then I remember that those financial institutions haven't exactly been proving their mettle these days. And that, what with climate change, that ocean front property will be starting on the shores of Worcester, or Syracuse, even. And that the Red States have the majority of the military installations - not to mention spring training cites. (Gulp!)

And then I take a deep breath and remember that, even in the Bluest of Blue states, there are plenty of Red voters. And the same goes for the Reddest of the Red.

But things do happen, and it is conceivable, even likely that, at some point, our country will look plenty different than it does now.

Sometimes, if I listen just the right way to Rush Limbaugh, I think that this will be sooner, and that the ditto-heads will rise up, grab their rifles, hop in their NASCARs, and rev up to Boston to personally shoot me in my big mouth, or my fast-as-lightning typing hands.

Most of the time, I think that the dissolution of the United States will be later, as the world makes whatever adjustments it's going to make to population growth, climate change, use of resources, technology, and everything else there is to worry about.

But Igor Panarin, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry diplomatic academy, thinks different.

He's predicting martial law this year, and the dissolution of the US into six "rump states" before 2011. (Source: Huffington Post - an AP article, I think.)

And who will rise to the top of the new world order?

Why those twin demons of the Cold War: Russia and China.

Panarin, who is also a TV pundit in Russia - well known for its free and open fourth estate - recently gave a lecture in which he said:

"There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010."

(Panarin's negative views are apparently shared by Vlad the Putin, as well.)

Panarin has been predicting this for a decade or so - what's a schtick unless you stick with it? - but he's now seeing signs that The End is Near. Signs include the prison population and the number of gay men.

Things are certainly bad here. While, personally, I don't feel we have enough gay men, we do have a tremendous prison population. But I do find it a bit hard to believe that the United States will completely collapse while Russia rises to the fore. Not that we're perfect, but doesn't Russia have a shrinking population? Doesn't Russia have a more or less third world life expectancy? (Even lower for opposition journalists.) Doesn't Russia have some pretty thuggish folks in high places in their oligarchy? And a pretty darned rotten economy of their own? Sure, they have natural resources, but what else have they got?

Last time I looked, we're still a country that people want to live in, and, although many immigrants (illegal and otherwise) are returning home to wait out the recession, we've still got a waiting list for citizenship.

Last time I looked, other than for Lee Harvey Oswald, the last time that there was migration from the US to Russia was when some idealistic crack-pots went over to live under the glorious Stalin regime. How'd they like what they found? Can't complain!

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In case you're wondering how the break up of the United States breaks out, there was an article on Panarin in The Wall Street Journal a while back that included a handy map.)

Looks like New England more or less lucks out. Sure, we get stuck with South Carolina, but we get to be part of the EU.  The Midwest gets lucky, too - they get to be part of Canada.

I feel the worst for the South, which Panarin has under Mexico, which, I understand, is in present danger of becoming a failed narco-state. So, that won't be fun for anyone.

And don't tell Governor Palin, but Seward's Folly reverts back to Russia.

 

 

 

Novelty Cuisine at the Modern Toilet

Well, how often do you get to see the words "cuisine" and "toilet" used in the same sentence?

Not that often, I'm guessing.

But I couldn't pass up commenting on a Time Magazine article that was making the rounds online last week that "reviewed" (sort of) a Taiwanese restaurant chain called the Modern Toilet. Modern Toilet features desserts with such savory names as "diarrhea with dried droppings," "bloody poop," and "green dysentery," served under on "toilet-shaped plates" under "poop-shaped lights."

For the life of me, I can't see how this gets carried off "tastefully," which is how one person eating at the Modern characterized the restaurant:

As Jennifer Finch, an American who was dining there, described it, "They do it tastefully. It's all very clean."

Clean, perhaps. But tasteful. (Green dysentery for dessert. Yum!)

A local diner called the place "progressive and irreverent."

If this be progress....

Anyway, my first question on learning about the Modern Toilet was, where did a bunch of 9 year old boys get the capital to open a restaurant chain.

But, no, there are actual grown-ups behind Modern Toilet, who describe themselves as "a group of 'muckrakers' following our dreams."

Who am I to criticize folks for following their dreams, but dreaming about "poop-shaped lights" and a dessert called "green dysentery"? These are the types of dreams I try to shake off first thing in the morning, not follow.

Not that I would be completely grossed out by it. Sure, drinking from a hospital urine bottle might give me some pause - I would inevitably and involuntarily wonder whether it had been used - but sitting on a seat shaped like a toilet and eating from a plate shaped like a toilet wouldn't bother me in the least. (As long as I wasn't eating any of that green dysentery.)

I have a strong stomach, and did spend my college years in a place where the dining service featured items called Hoof, Puck, Scum, and Abortion. (These were, of course, the unofficial names.)

The Modern Toilet, however, just isn't an experience I'd go out of my way for - or, frankly, want to have even if I didn't have to go out of the way for it.

I'm just not that big on theme restaurants to begin with. I can't imagine why anyone would eat at a Rain Forest Cafe twice. And,thus, I can't imagine that the Modern Toilet gets much repeat business. I would think that the novelty of sitting on a "stylish acrylic toilet" would wear off pretty fast.

But others may disagree, and this is not, as the MT's web site tells us, "a 'me-too' brand".

In an age where creative marketing is king, product differentiation = competitiveness.

Yeah, but, as I've learned through a long and dogged career in marketing: meaningless and stupid product differentiation does not equal competitiveness in the long run. It just equals meaningless and stupid product differentiation.

For those who disagree, there are franchising opportunities. The MT folks believe that the moment has passed for boring, pedestrian pizza and donut franchises, so:

If you are still looking for an opportunity to start your business, talk to us! We can help make your dream come true!

Unlike some franchises, there seems to be fairly wide latitude on restaurant decor.  Apparently, as long as you stick to the tagline Go To Toilet/Deliver UR Shit, you're within bounds. (Hmmm. I wonder what that "UR" is supposed to mean. Is it "your" or "you are"? Either way, just what I want to be told when I pick up a restaurant menu.)

The Ponzi Widow's Mite

Honestly, I'm not following the Bernie Madoff scandal all that obsessively. Still, just when I think there'll be nothing to say until we get the final accounting on where the $50B actually went, another golden nugget emerges.

This week it's Ruth Madoff's claim that her assets are her very own - "unrelated" to the Ponzi scheme - and are thus off-limits to those trying to freeze the Madoff assets.

Only Ruth, we are told, holds "beneficial ownership" of a Manhattan apartment. I have no idea what "beneficial ownership" means, and I'm too darned lazy to look it up. But if the Manhattan apartment is the one that Bernie's under house arrest in, I'd maintain that he's getting something beneficial out of day to day living that would be largely absent at Riker's Island.

Mrs. Madoff - a Ponzi widow, as it were, in the sense that one can be a golf or tennis or video game widow - contends that $45 million in munis, and $17M in cash have no relation to the Ponzi scheme.

Now Ruthie hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing at this point, but what's a suspicious mind to make of the fact that:

Cohmad Securities, where Ruth Madoff says her account holds municipal bonds, had an office in Madoff’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan. The firm was part-owned by Bernard Madoff and has been alleged by the Massachusetts Securities Division to be a “feeder fund” to his investment firm.

Last month, Massachusetts regulators said Ruth Madoff withdrew $15.5 million from Cohmad Securities in November and December, including $10 million on the eve of her husband’s arrest for securities fraud.

And if the money isn't related to the Ponzi shcme, then what, pray tell, is it related to?

Was Ruthie a good little saver? Did she clip coupons from the Sunday inserts and zero out her weekly grocery tab at Key Foods? Was this the sugar bowl accumulation of a long marriage?

Or did she have some fab career of her own that we don't know about? Did she manage to make a tidy little bundle during it? Maybe "her" money is not anything in the $50B magnitude, but there'd sure be a smile on my face if I had even one of the following -  $8M Manhattan apartment; $45M in munis; and $17M in cash - to show for my long career in largely failed high tech companies. Hell, there'd be a smile on my face if I had a dollar for every option I was granted over the years.  (At least I was smart enough not to exercise any of those little underwater babies.)

But from what I gather, most of Ruth Madoff's career was in support of her husband's company.

That is, when she wasn't "authoring" a cookbook - sales of which I'm pretty sure didn't clear her a fortune.

The 1996 cookbook was “The Great Chefs of America Cook Kosher". A NY Times article on the work noted:

In the cookbook’s biographical section, Mrs. Madoff referred to herself as “director of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.” She used the same title two years later in a 1998 roster of trustees at the Queens College Foundation.

So, before Ruth Madoff is allowed to keep "her" mite, I'm sure that the powers that be will want to know  exactly what the Ponzi widow knew and when she knew it.

Hey, if it turns out that Mrs. Madoff was completely conned by her husband, and had no involvement whatsoever in the scheme, I will have some sympathy for her.  Here she is, in her late 60's, and her life is in shambles. And those shambles include most if not all of her friends, family, social acquaintances, and fellow philanthropists having been screwed over by her husband. I don't imagine there are a lot of her old crowd taking her phone call or meeting her eye these days.

And I'm guessing there'll be even fewer now.

Even the most sympathetic screwee might be a tad resentful that Ruth Madoff will have $70M when they are, if not exactly beggared, have perhaps lost more than that at Bernie's hands.

There's forgiveness and then there's forgiveness.

Someone might forgive her claiming a lesser amount in pin money, but this widow's mite is a pretty big widow's bite to be taking.

But I guess you don't get to accrue $70M without having at least a little bit of brass in you.

Brand-Yourself (before someone else does it for you)

A year or so ago, I was having lunch with a former colleague, and the topic turned to having NetGen-ers working for you. She's the VP of Marketing for a company aimed at this slice of the demographic, and most of the folks working for her fall into it. She mentioned that she was in hiring-mode for two positions, but had not made offers to two promising candidates based of what she'd seen about them online.

By most standards, the "problems" this hiring manager found weren't all that major: no felony conviction; no membership in the American Nazi Party; no shoving-the-hyper-kitty-cat-in-the-bong video. Just a couple of personal blog posts that made making an offer slightly problematic for her.

In one, a young woman who was applying for a job that involved budgeting wrote about her inability to keep her personal financial life in order - credit card balances, bounced checks, Mommy-Daddy bailouts. No doubt typical blogosphere histrionics and humor. Yet enough to push my friend to make the offer to an equally qualified candidate who wasn't caught laughing about her lack of financial acumen in public.

The other rejected candidates had a couple of posts about getting hammered and missing work. Again, the posts may well have been complete exaggerations. But do you want to take a chance on hiring someone who might not show up for work on Fridays and Mondays? My friend didn't.

I don't know whether she ever let these two know why they didn't get the job. It certainly would have been a useful service if she had. At least the two would have known to delete troubling posts - or maybe to start blogging anonymously.

Whether my friend provided useful service or not, there is an outfit that provides what I think is providing an absolutely essential service in this arena.

Brand-Yourself, the brainchild of three Syracuse University students - Pete Kistler, RJ Sherman, and Trace Cohen - is a resource for helping people create and maintain an online identity that's positive. Brand-Yourself does this by helping you figure out what's the value/merit of what's out there to begin with; making recommendations for improving your web presence; keeping tabs on it (think: Michael Phelps); and creating a site of your own that let's you control your image.

In the process of establishing a web presence - or re-establishing your web presence - you'll be making sure that the recruiters and hiring managers who (guaranteed!) are googling you will find the good stuff - and not your true confessions, which with any luck will now be relegated to the nether pages pulled up by a search engine. (You'd have to one hell of an obsessive-compulsive to look beyond page one.  And speaking of page one, while I come up first when I google Maureen Rogers, the equine consultant and herbalist Maureen Rogerses aren't far behind. And there, on the bottom of page one, I also see that Maureen Rogers died in Waterford, Ireland, last January 25th which - eerily - was the 38th anniversary of my father's death. Queue celestial choir music.)

Personally, this Maureen Rogers is not a huge fan of the notion of "Brand You". When I hear the term, by unbranded little brain starts thinking of hundreds of millions of self-absorbed narcissists trying to position themselves against hundreds of millions of other self-absorbed narcissists. And then my unbranded little brain goes numb. (Perhaps this because I came of age when Tide and Kellogg's were brands, and what people knew and thought about you was called "reputation," a concept that now seems quaint and passé. Who wants a boring old reputation when they can have a brand!)

This is, however, a mere quibble.

Brand is the term du jour, so brand it is.

And the web - as we used to say in the dot.com era - changes everything. So managing an online identity is essential. In this light, Brand-Yourself is an excellent idea. Especially for Net-Geners. (On second thought, it's not a bad idea for Gen-X or Boomers, either.)

Especially in this market, the first impression someone gets from you had best not be a MySpace clip of your throwing up, or the libelous comments some anonymous moron's making about you on the execrable JuicyCampus. And, of course, making sure you have a strong and positive web presence will certainly help you gain credibility in certain professions (e.g., marketing).

Speaking of marketing, while I'm giving props to Brand-Yourself's concept, how about a little marketing shout-out about their concise and pithy tag line:

We make it easy to establish a web presence that makes you more hirable.

Fourteen words! Way to go, guys.

 

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Here's an earlier post on JuicyCampus, and another about the career-limiting cameos some South Carolina students made in the movie Borat.

That's Sir Allen Stanford, to you, bub

Hard Work. Clear Vision. Value for the Client.

Given all the economic news these days, one of the few cheery things left for us to do is to read the website copy of disgraced financial outfits.

Before it was taken down and replaced with a no-fun trustee site, Bernie Madoff's was a garden of web-ly delights:

The owner's name is on the door. Clients know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm's hallmark.

Poor Bernie! Unblemished record one day, zit as big as the Ritz the next.

While the Madoff saga has as yet to grow old to me, I certainly don't want to skimp on Allen Stanford.

Or, rather, Sir Allen Stanford. Or as I'm starting to think of him, Sir Allen of Mexia. (That's Mexia, Texas, to you, bub.)

Like so many of those who are knighted, Sir Allen's origins are somewhat humble. I believe that his grandfather, Lodis Stanford, started out as a barber, before establishing the real estate and insurance business that became Sir Allen's fiefdom. Grandpappy Lodis' - or should I say Grandpater Lodis' -

...philosophy of hard work, clear vision and value for the client remains the cornerstone of Stanford’s success today.

And as befits a nobleman, Sir Allen has done many noble things that go well beyond merely making money what can only be called the old fashioned way, given that the eponymous Mr. Ponzi hung out his shingle in the 1920's.

Sir Allen is "one of the world’s leading investors in developing economies. He recently launched a US$2 billion investment fund earmarked for upscale development projects in the Caribbean."  He's made St. Jude Children's Research Hospital his "charity of choice," which I'm sure Marlo Thomas thought was a wonderful thing at the time - I do hope those checks cleared. And that charities, especially one as worthy and outstanding as St. Jude - hard to think of a better cause, isn't it? which somehow makes things all the worse -  aren't impacted by any clawbacks when the Ponzi'd investors come clawing back around for their money.

Sir Allen also has private enterprise team that helps out with "disaster needs in the Caribbean and Latin America."

Given that he owns half of Antigua, wonder if they'll be helping out with the disaster there of Sir Allen's own making?

And speaking of teams, Sir Allen's:

...companies have established a significant presence in golf, polo, tennis, cricket and sailing, the same sports that resonate with Stanford’s high net worth client base.

Interesting, when the news first broke about Sir Allen's business, it came out that one of those impacted by Sir Allen's shenanigans was one Johnny Damon, a high net worth client baseball player, who had his checking account frozen because his money manager had placed some of his funds with broker dealers who had accounts with Stanford entities.

Johnny, who is not as far as I know Sir Johnny, is a former member of The Red Sox, whose fan club was, in days of yore, known as the Royal Rooters. (Once you start looking, fancy Brit sounding names are everywhere, are they not?)  More democratically, the club's fans are now know as Red Sox Nation. Alas, Johnny chose to abdicate his position in center field for the Olde Towne Team, leaving a city where he was considered a king, to ply his trade in New York, where he's just another rich guy who hits a ball with a stick.

Speaking of rich guys hitting a ball with a stick, like most baseball players, Johnny no doubt plays golf.

Somehow, I don't really see tennis, sailing, or polo - let alone cricket - resonating with Johnny.

But Johnny may not be fully representative of Sir Allen's high net worth client base.

Perhaps it was his fondness for cricket and not, as is speculated, for monetary reasons, that Sir Allen re-lo'd to Antigua and Barbuda in the first place.

Polo may be big there as well, since it is a British Commonwealth Nation.

One clear connection between Sir Allen and cricket and polo has got to be Baylor University (Waco, Texas), where he matriculated.

I didn't even bother to go to Baylor's site to confirm what I know intuitively: Baylor U is a hotbed of polo and cricket.

Polo - hey, it's Texas: think horses.

And cricket. If you don't think Baylor has smashing cricketeers well, sticky wicket to you. I bet a lot of Baylor's cricket stars come, in fact, straight out of Mexia High School.

Anyone sitting there scratching his or her head and asking, what about "Friday Night Lights"?

Pish tosh.

Football just doesn't resonate with a high net worth client base.

Sir Allen, by the way:

...is the first American to be knighted by that British Commonwealth nation and was appointed Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of the Nation.

Which makes him, I'm guessing, the Antiguan equivalent of Sir Winston Churchill when he was made an honorary American citizen, no?

You should know that knights and princes keep company. Sir Allen was knighted:

...in a ceremony attended by His Royal Highness Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, in celebration of the country's Silver Jubilee in November 2006.

Sneering because Prince Edward is the least well known of QE2's four children? Thinking that he was fobbed off on Antigua's Silver Jubilee because everyone else in the Royal Fam had better things to do? ("Please, Edward, don't make me cross. Mummy is not asking you, she's telling you. And do remember to cover your bald spot and use SPF 45. The sun can be terribly so in The Colonies.")

All I can say is: Prince Edward has a big island in Canada named after him, which is more than you can say for Prince Charles, Princess Anne, or Prince Andrew.

There is just so much to fall in love with on Sir Allen's website, and it's not all polo and knighthood in flower.

You can also learn about the Stanford Investment Model:

The objective of the Stanford Investment Model (SIM) is to provide consistent returns regardless of market volatility, and it is based on the investment philosophy that has been used successfully for all of Stanford's proprietary funds. We target a consistent yield or income stream as agreed upon with our clients, while monitoring risk and managing the overall volatility of the portfolio.

And what is the very best way to provide those consistent returns, and get the income stream agreed upon by your clients?

You guessed it: the Ponzi scheme.

Our strategy for diversification to minimize the effects of market volatility is sophisticated and far-reaching. We pursue true global diversification with relentless intensity to meet our objective of targeted returns. We carefully consider asset classes, investment strategies, sectors, and regions of the world that most investors either don't have easy access to or rarely receive information about. SIM was developed first and foremost to minimize the downside risk of a portfolio.

Personally, I've got a small quibble with use of "sophisticated" here.

Anyone who's forwarded a chain letter with a dollar in it, and has received nary a farthing in return, has a pretty good idea how this works.

As for that "rarely receive information about" phrase?

This, in fact, is no longer quite true. (C.f., Bernie Madoff.)

There's also a nice bit on the website about how great it is to work at Stanford Financial, which:

....offers a rich culture and unique environment in which to do business...Stanford is simply different and we cherish our differences.

Hope you cherished those difference while you could, Sir Allen.

There may well be no polo or cricket teams where you're going to end up.

It all seemed so innocent, until someone in Iran saw the specs for the President’s helicopter on my laptop

So, what do you think's going on in the head of the schnook who was working for a Maryland defense contractor, and had the blueprints to Marine One, the President's helicopter, lifted from their laptop. Which they'd made vulnerable because they had P2P file-sharing software on it. (Story source: MSNBC.)

Honestly, I really didn't think I was doing anything wrong-wrong.

I mean, I was doing it on my own time, which - given the hours I work - I really don't have much of.

I mean, I work from home all the time, so what if I occasionally do a bit of home from work?

I mean, everyone file-shares, don't they?

I mean, I read that creative artists actually make more money when people share their copyright materials online, because once people see who good that music/film/article is they'll want to step up and buy the real thing.

I mean, content should roam free, shouldn't it?

I mean, who does it hurt if I get a copy of an album that I probably wouldn't have bought if it wasn't free?

I mean, who wants to pay twenty-bucks for a video you'll watch once and it will be on cable for free in a couple of days anyway?

I mean, look at all the freeware out there. What's with these lousy software companies thinking they can charge us for some app when I can do almost all the same things with something free, anyway?

I mean, what's the Internet for, if it's not for making friends all around the world - it's like having a million pen-pals all around the world, without having to buy a pen, paper, or one of those expensive overseas stamps.

No, I wouldn't think of swiping a copy of People Magazine from the rack at the checkout counter. Come on, that would be, like, stealing.

I mean, this may be what's running through the person's head, if that person is not now completely absorbed in keeping his or her job, and/or finding a new one. (Good luck with that!)

If you missed the story, Tiversa, which helps companies avoid and remedy peer-to-peer file sharing security breaches, announced a couple of days ago that they'd found the blueprints for Obama's chopper on a computer in Iran. (As in 'axis of evil' Iran, if that category remains operative. Other fun destinations where the specs were found: Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar, and China. What a relief to find out that there are no countries on the list who might be inclined to do us any harm, don't you think?)

It's not clear whether Tiversa was working for the defense contractor, or just found the files when they were doing their routine sniffing around to see what highly classified or other sensitive info is floating around there. In either case, props to them for the marketing value of their eye-catching/spy-catching work.

Not only did Tiversa find the files in Tehran, they were able to trace it back to its source, pinpointing the precise computer on which someone who probably just wanted to download some tunes opened up their company-issued laptop to a whole lot of vulnerability. And themselves to a whole lot of job hurtin'.

Former US Army General Wesley Clark, a Tiversa advisor, said:

"I'm sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went."

Embarrassed is probably not quite the right word. Unemployed is probably closer to the mark. Unless that person was so all-fired essential to the defense contractor's mission, and has such irreplaceable skills and knowledge that the company just can't go on without him/her. And what's the likelihood of that.

And if the defense contractor didn't have rules about downloading strange software, or file sharing, or know that they were vulnerable, they have to be feeling a tiny bit chagrined about how they're going to look when they go to answer their next RFI.

Tiversa has acknowledged that they're not sure "how sensitive" the Marine One information is.

For all I know, the specs of Marine One are on the back of Wheaties boxes - or on the front, even, where they could take the place of a picture of Michael Phelps. They may be so widely known that no harm can come of this - we all know Marine one's kind of khaki green, and has a big rotor-thingy on its tale, and that it makes the White House lawn ripple when it lands the First Family on their return from Camp David. So maybe none of its any big secret.

Still, I would truly hate to be the employee who, while eating lunch one day, decided they wanted a copy of Coldplay's Viva La Vida.

Some things you really do live to regret, and for this poor bastard, that urge to file share is likely on of them.

When you work for a defense contractor, in no way can this be a good career move. And if you're the defense contractor, in no way can you laugh this one off.

Down the Titanic Slide

On Saturday, the NY Times had a "humorous" little article on what laid off Wall Streeters could (or couldn't) do now that their jobs are pulling a disappearing act.

There was one serious suggestion: analysts could try to find jobs in the industries they covered, which might work if all those industries weren't downsizing. I mean, nice that you know everything there is to know about banking or the Big 3 automakers, but don't call us, we'll call you. Plus, someone might want to look at what you'd written over the years, and this could be a double edged sword. You either got it wrong, so how are you going to help us now? Or you got it right, and nobody likes an I-told-you-so smart ass.

Other suggestions for places to look for jobs, while equally unavailable, were less serious. E.g., Wall Streeters would certainly have the experience needed to sell expensive cigars, but who's buying?

The owner of a party service, Send in the Clowns, claims that he's getting interest from ex-Streeters looking for work.

“We get a lot of calls from Wall Street guys who are looking to work with us,” he said. “They want to change their careers... A Wall Street guy could come over and do magic shows for the kids, play musical games with the kids, do face painting with the kids.” There are positions for disc jockeys, stilt-walkers and mechanical bull servicemen. And, of course, the marquee job.

“We’ll hire clowns from Wall Street,” he said. “No problem.”

Frankly, I can't imagine a lot of people wanting some jaded ex-trader entertaining their kiddies. They'd probably just blow cigar smoke in the little tykes' faces.

I'm sure one Wall Streeter who won't be looking to join a clown act is the eTrade baby. With me, he finds clowns really creepy.

eTrade Baby Avec Clown

(If this video embed doesn't work, you know what I'm talking about.)

Although I don't imagine they'll be hiring a lot of Lehman alums,I did trot over to SendIn's web site to check out their wares.

A lot of what they have are those inflatable rides that have become a staple of church fairs, harvest festivals, and ritzy birthday parties - of which, one can imagine, there will be fewer and fewer, now that the Wall Street parents won't be able to foot the bill for them.

One of the inflatable rides caught my attention: The Titanic Slide

I found a really nifty shot of it on PartyUSA. 

Better than this pic, even is the write-up on it:

"This awesome slide captures the feeling of the real giant. Adding to the realism of this ride are the famed triple screw propellers and rudder. One could almost believe the ship is sinking! Who will survive the slide down? This dual slide captures all the excitement of the famed ocean liner on its maiden voyage."

Ah, yes, I'm quite sure an inflatable ride can truly "capture the feeling of the real giant"  - that sheer middle of the night, freezing cold, death is nigh, women-and-children first, Nearer My God To Thee, chaos and panic.

As for the rest of the blurb, just when I've convinced myself that we're at the beginning of the end of the economic crisis, there goes George Soros trying to convince us that the ship is sinking.

And "who will survive the slide down?"

That's a very good question.

I remain guardedly hopeful that we the people will pretty much all survive - if we redefine survive so that it doesn't continue to include mindless, endless consumption. And if we don't turn on each other, knock people out of the way to reach a life boat, hip chuck folks overboard, whack people with a paddle when they try to hoist themselves out of the icy waters and onto our raft, and generally behave rottenly.

Sure, some of us may have been prudent, smart, and lucky enough to have our own life boats. We have donned our own personal - bought and paid for with cash - Mae Wests, and are prepared with a thermos full of hot tea and some set-aside hardtack to survive until we drift to shore.

But are we really prepared to watch a lot of other folks drown or die of hypothermia while we sort out who's deserving and who's not?

FDR saved capitalism from socialism and fascism.

It's that time again.

Good luck, Mr. President.

When hockey moms go bad

As if the news out of Michigan weren't grim enough, last week I saw that a bookkeeper had embezzled nearly $1M from the Ann Arbor Amateur Hockey Association (Source: The Ann Arbor News.)

Kimberly Knight had volunteered to help balance the books for the AAAHA - and who doesn't love a good volunteer. Instead, she ended up unbalancing the organization's decades-long savings, money intended to build an ice rink.

My first thought was, what's a youth hockey organization doing with $1M. But hockey is a serious pursuit in Michigan, just as it is in these parts.

One million dollars. All those years of savings. And "Midwest nice" that wouldn't assume for a New York minute that that nice lady volunteering to do the books was cooking them.

Knight -  who in her mug shot closely resembles a more heavy-set version of Lorraine Bracco, the wonderful actress who played Tony Soprano's shrink, Dr. Melfi - used the money for reasons great and small. She helped out the family business by purchasing construction equipment, and she spent all kinds of money on nice little gifts for herself.

Among the items that Knight purchased: a 2005 Cadillac Escalade for her husband. (Happy birthday, honey!) And why is it that embezzlers never buy anything that's not showy? But I guess that she should get some props for buying something that's Michigan-made.)

She also treated herself to:

$3,890 for designer 14-karat white gold and diamond earrings; 21 Pandora beads and a diamond watch for nearly $2,500; $5,300 in watches and link-style bracelets; $2,853 on bracelets and 33 Pandora beads; and $5,300 on 96 Pandora beads, rings and a bracelet.

Not familiar with Pandora jewelry? Well, neither was I until I saw this story, but apparently collecting Pandora beads and designing your own bracelets and what-nots is yet again one of those quite popular trends that I miss out on entirely. Think Build-a-Bear for grown women. (The other one that I missed out on was Longaberger Baskets, which I'd never heard of until I worked for a company that had them as a client. Live and learn.)

Knight's attorney says that his client - whose own kids were involved in AAAHA at one point in time - "is remorseful."

Well, you can't eat thanks - and you can't eat remorse either.

And, I'll bet she'll be even more remorseful once she has her day in court.

While my first question was what was a kids' hockey group doing with so much money, my second one was: where was the group's Board?

I'm on two non-profit boards and, even for the piddly little $70K non-profit, we have to file forms and sign off on statements. Don't non-profits in Michigan have to submit some sort of returns? Didn't anyone, during the two years that Knight was on her Pandora spree, look at a bank statement?

I guess when it's an all-volunteer organization, it's easy to assume that everyone's on the up and up.

Especially when the group involves kids, and when the volunteer bookkeeper is someone who - for years, apparently - was associated with the group on an honest basis. Just a Midwest-nice hockey mom helping out.

I suppose when people have access to the till, it's easy to put their hand in. You tell yourself that, what with all the volunteer hours you put in, surely they can spot you a couple of Pandora beads. Especially when you think of how much they'd have to pay a real bookkeeper.

The outcome of Knight's trial will be interesting.

My guess is that, a couple of years ago, she would have gotten off with restitution and a long probation.

These days, people are a lot more pissed off.

That Escalade! Those Pandora beads! All those donations that will be so hard to replicate in a thinner economy - especially in Michigan.

My bet is that Kimberly Knight will be stamping out license plates, not stringing together another Pandora charm bracelet for herself.