BOHEMIEN (Tuesday, December 30, 2008)
(1)-A PROMISE KEPT-- A Briton who lent five pounds (seven dollars) to a cash-strapped Australian while travelling through Europe has had his loan repaid -- nearly 40 years later, a report said Friday. Jim Webb, 72, was in the Belgian coastal town of Ostend in April 1969 with a friend when he met Gary Fenton who asked for a loan to pay for a ferry journey back to Britain. Fenton promised to repay Webb and noted down his address when the trio landed in England. On Sunday, Webb returned to his home in Sheffield to find a hand-delivered package with 200 pounds -- five pounds for each year the loan had not been paid -- and a note that read: "To Jim Webb, a good man. From Gary Fenton, a tardy payer of debts."

(2)-WHAT PEOPLE WILL DO-- Some things never change. Scientists said on Friday they had replicated an experiment in which people obediently delivered painful shocks to others if encouraged to do so by authority figures. Seventy percent of volunteers continued to administer electrical shocks -- or at least they believed they were doing so -- even after an actor claimed they were painful, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California found. "What we found is validation of the same argument -- if you put people into certain situations, they will act in surprising, and maybe often even disturbing, ways," Burger said in a telephone interview.

(3)-COMPOSER ORFF-- The opening line of Carmina Burana – “O Fortuna!” – could hardly be more apt. Few composers felt themselves more at the mercy of capricious gods and twists of fate than its composer, Carl Orff. He was never a diehard Nazi; indeed, he looked with disdain on their oafish cultural values. Far from espousing the hounding of “inferior races”, he was fascinated by jazz and by what today we would call world music. Yet he rose to become one of the Third Reich’s top musicians. According to one of his four wives, he “found it impossible to love” and “despised people”. Yet in Carmina Burana he created the world’s jolliest musical celebration of boozing, feasting and generally enjoying the sins of other people’s flesh.

(4)-SIR PAUL INTERVIEWED-- He overcame losing the love of his life and survived a disastrous second marriage. So what continues to torture him? In his most revealing interview yet, Sir Paul McCartney confronts the ghosts of his past. Plus, listen to his new album. Sir Paul McCartney is sitting outside his dressing room, a tent actually, which he shares with his new American girlfriend, Nancy Shevell. It has been erected backstage with its own intimate tea lights, and one hour from now, on this September night, he will perform live before 50,000 fans in Tel Aviv. He’s relaxed, biding his time, an already busy day behind him spent meeting Palestinian and Israeli peace activists.

(5)-EINSTEIN'S WIFE-- Albert Einstein's legacy as one of the greatest academic minds the world has ever known is deservedly earned. His groundbreaking work in the early part of the twentieth century fundamentally changed the way scientists look at the universe. To this day, his formulation of the General Theory of Relativity is considered one of the greatest intellectual achievements in modern history. While researching yesterday's post I came across an old controversy that seemed to cast doubt on Einstein's legacy. In 2003 PBS broadcast a made for TV special entitled "Einstein's Wife" insinuating that he collaborated extensively with his first wife Mileva Maric without crediting her work.

(6)-BYE BYE CHRISTIANITY-- In one of the most holy weeks in the Christian calendar, a report says that in just over a generation the number of people attending Church of England Sunday services will fall to less than a tenth of what they are now. Christian Research, the statistical arm of the Bible Society, claimed that by 2050 Sunday attendance will fall below 88,000, compared with just under a million now.

(7)-MEXICAN REVENGE-- The heads and bodies are found at separate places in Guerrero state, a hot spot in the country's drug war. Governor says eight of the victims were soldiers and one was a former state police commander. Reporting from Mexico City -- Twelve men were decapitated and dumped at separate sites in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, authorities said Sunday. Mexican news outlets quoted Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo as saying that eight of the men were identified as Mexican soldiers and another as a former state police commander.

(8)-WAS PATTON MURDERED??-- George S. Patton, America's greatest combat general of the Second World War, was assassinated after the conflict with the connivance of US leaders, according to a new book. The newly unearthed diaries of a colorful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.

(9)-AMERICAN SOMALI-- Federal agents are investigating whether young men from Somali immigrant enclaves in the U.S. are traveling back to their parents' homeland to fight on the side of Islamist terror groups. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is following the trail of more than a dozen young men missing from Somali communities in several U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, Boston and Columbus, Ohio, according to people familiar with the probe. Counterterrorism officials in Europe and Australia also are investigating similar reports in their countries.
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