Saturday/Sunday, Jan 31-Feb. 1, 2009

WEB BOHEMIAN Weekend edition(Saturday/Sunday, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 2009)
(1)- WRITING ADVICE -- Do not write hundreds of pages without knowing what story you really want to tell. Do not write hundreds of pages explaining why you want to tell the story you are about to tell, why the characters are living the way they are when the story begins, or what past events made the characters into people who would have that story.

(2)- LOSE ANY MONEY?? -- Indiana State Police troopers spent their night recently counting a whole lot of money. They said three highway workers found more than $100,000 sticking out of an abandoned tire on I-70 near the Mount Comfort Road exit. State Police believe it may be drug money.

(3)- Q’S NOT A LEGAL NAME -- Parents of a boy in Jämtland in northwestern Sweden have been told they cannot name their son Q, following a ruling by the administrative court of appeal. The boy’s name had already been given the thumbs down by the county administrative court, despite the fact that his parents had been calling him Q since he was born.

(4)- NARCO-SUBS -- Florida federal prosecutors invoke a little-known law allowing them to prosecute smugglers sailing so-called "narco submarines" on the high seas. The eight crew members of two stealthy, semi-submersible ships intercepted earlier this month face up to 15 years in prison under the newly passed Drug Trafficking Vessel Interdiction Act of 2008.

(5)- PRESIDENTIAL PENSIONS -- In 1958 Former President Harry Truman was living solely on his tiny WWI army pension. Congress immediately responded with the Presidential Pension Act, giving Truman a retirement salary of $25,000, benefits and a staff. Today taxpayers support our former presidents to the tune of more than $2.9 million.

(6)- SHARK KILL -- An error in a routine maintenance procedure has caused the deaths of 15 bonnet-head sharks at the Indianapolis Zoo's Oceans exhibit. Zoo official Paul Grayson says the sharks died when a cleaning system released too much ozone into their tank, damaging the sharks' gills.

(7)- ANIMAL TOOL USE -- Tool use was once thought to distinguish humans from animal — until, that is, so many animals proved able to use them. It's hard not to feel a species-level déjà vu when seeing a capuchin monkey thoughtfully selecting an ideal nut-cracking stone. Here is a compilation of some of the most interesting animal tool use yet observed.

(8)- MIDDLEBROW MESSIAHS -- Robert Hutchins didn’t think much of his Yale education, which he said had “nothing to do with any intellectual development.” He didn’t keep this opinion to himself. When the Yale class of 1921 elected him “most likely to succeed,” he delivered a speech titled, “Should Institutions of Higher Learning Be Abolished?”

(9)- A NEW CHORD -- Black English is a matter not just of slang, but of sentence structure and sound. Some blacks use all three; Obama is one of the many who wields mostly the sound. Listen to the way he often ends sentences on a higher pitch than, say, Tom Brokaw would.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

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