ALO &

ALO &, a photo by Ted Compton on Flickr.

Now you mention it

Obama Touts Reforms After J.P. Morgan Loss - WSJ.com

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama on Saturday pointed again to the multibillion-dollar trading loss at J.P. Morgan Chase as a reason Congress should retain and continue to implement Wall Street reforms to prevent the kinds of practices that he says led to the financial meltdown in 2008.

This wasn't clear, say, six weeks ago? Six months? Three years?

Maybe it just took him all this time to find a phone booth.

Relicdom, at last

Having had YA birthday just recently, I feel entitled to officially declare myself a relic. A relic is something like a historical landmark but without the land. And only a little mark. It is, however, definitely a step up from geezer.

Also, relics often have magical powers.

Link rot

As eternal as things are said to be in the Internet, they're not. Sites disappear all the time—or now and then, at least. Such was the case of the Crackerjack prize archive site once listed on the Work Avoidance List; it has now been removed.

If you spot a link that does not work anymore please drop me a note.

Two sheets to the wind (and a pillowcase)

Two sheets to the wind (and a pillowcase), a photo by Ted Compton on Flickr.

The readiest cities

Amazon Media Room: Press Releases

The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since June 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents. The Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities are:

Well, click the link and find out for yourself. 

Picky, picky

Cell Doors 'Incapable of Locking' at Giant Afghan Jail | Danger Room | Wired.com

The detention facility that the U.S. built in Afghanistan is state-of-the-art. Except for all of the faulty hinges on the cell doors. Or the locks that are, in the words of a new report from the Defense Department’s inspector general, “incapable of locking either manually or electronically.”…

Some guy gets a peck on the forehead…

…but otherwise no kissing in this noir 1951 thriller, Appointment with Danger, which stars Alan Ladd and features Jack Webb and Henry Morgan and the United States Post Office. It should be required viewing in Washington, DC, but, short of that, it goes on our approved movies list.

Ohio

Ohio, a photo by Ted Compton on Flickr.

How much safer are you feeling, exactly?

Newark Airport security supervisor assumed murdered man's identity for 2 decades - Boing Boing

Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole, a security supervisor at Newark airport, lived a double life for 20 years using the identity of the victim in an unsolved murder.…

Yes, it is a very good time to give up on politics

Team Obama’s Dashboard tool uses real-time data mining for re-election efforts | The Raw Story

The hope is that it will become the election equivalent of the Facebook games CityVille and FarmVille…

Have fun, kids.

Here once

Here once, a photo by Ted Compton on Flickr.

Finally got around to seeing this.

Flora

Flora, a photo by Ted Compton on Flickr.

This is precious, huh?

JPMorgan executives set to leave, sources say - Yahoo! Finance

(Reuters) - Three top executives involved with a failed hedging strategy that cost JPMorgan Chase & Co at least $2 billion and tarnished its reputation are expected to leave the bank this week, sources close to the matter said on Sunday.

Company loses two friggin' billion dollars and the fact that a few top executives lose their jobs as a result is news. "They only remember your last trade," whines some unidentified dork.

But hey, all you taxpayers out there. Don't worry. This is peanuts compared to last time.

Yeah, right, sure sounds like proof to me

AP Exclusive: Drawing focuses on Iran's nuke work - Yahoo! News

VIENNA (AP) — A drawing based on information from inside an Iranian military site shows an explosives containment chamber of the type needed for nuclear arms-related tests that U.N. inspectors suspect Tehran has conducted there.…

The computer-generated drawing was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran's nuclear program who said it proves the structure exists, despite Tehran's refusal to acknowledge it.

A computer-generated drawing of some thing of some size that might perhaps possibly be of some use in maybe performing a friggin' suspected friggin' test…hey, must prove something. Let's bomb 'em.

Yup, it'll be a very entertaining summer

Newsweek cover: Obama ‘first gay president’ | The Ticket - Yahoo! News

It won't be nearly as controversial as Time magazine's breastfeeding cover, but Newsweek's May 21 issue declares Barack Obama the country's "first gay president."

The accompanying cover story was written by Andrew Sullivan…

Obama, Sullivan writes, "had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family."

No and yes

After browsing the Sunday papers I feel compelled to post notice here I am supremely uninterested in what Mitt did or did not do with a pair of scissors 50 years ago. I am not much interested in anything that happened 50 years ago, and I am interested in Mitt even less.

What happened 500 years ago, though, can be fascinating, as witness this piece by Hilary Mantel about Anne Boleyn, the infamous Boleyn girl who married into the Tudor family, gave birth to Elizabeth, the future I, and lost her head over the whole affair. Mantel's novel about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, recounts part of the Anne Boleyn story ending, as it does, shortly after Elizabeth's birth. Her second novel in this series, Bring Up the Bodies (an ominous title, sure, but hey, we do know how this story ends), continues where Wolf Hall left off. 

We have just begun reading Bring Up the Bodies; it'll be a while, but you can pretty much bet it'll be the next book on the list.