Wednesday, January 28, 2009

WEB BOHEMIAN (Wednesday, January 28, 2009)
(1)- WILL NOT PAY -- An investigation is ordered into the death of an elderly British man who collapsed with a heart attack when a debt collector drove him to an ATM. Andy Miller, 78, had suffered a heart attack recently and when relatives notified authorities he was unable to pay a 60-pound ($90) fine for speeding because of his health problems, magistrates ordered a debt collector to go to his home.

(2)- WEIGHTS AND MEASURES CHEAT – This is clearly a case of cheating on the weights and measures scale.

(3)- AUSSI HERO -- The first Australian soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross in 40 years doesn't see himself as a hero, but the prime minister insists Special Air Service Trooper Mark Donaldson is "the stuff of Australian legend.” Donaldson's coalition convoy in Oruzgan Province was ambushed. Donaldson ran, under machine gun fire, rescued a wounded interpreter and drew enemy fire and attention away from injured soldiers.

(4)- MASSIVE WORM ATTACK -- The largest corporate malware outbreak in more than seven years has started. Nearly nine million machines worldwide have been infected with the Downadup, or Conficker, worm, says Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer of anti-virus firm F-Secure. That makes this the biggest corporate virus outbreak since Nimda unleashed its fury in 2001.

(5)- IT’S A MYSTERY -- The calm of the San Francisco night has been disturbed recently by the sight -- and smell -- of burning toilets. Eighteen portable toilets at construction sites around the city have been set on fire in the past two months. No one has been hurt, but the blazes have caused about 45,000 dollars in damage to the portable outhouses and surrounding property, forcing police and fire officials to step up nightly potty patrols.

(6)- RECALLING GEORGE -- George Plimpton endeavored, in a wry, self-deprecating manner, to "play out the fantasies, the daydreams that so many people have." He had his nose bloodied by Archie Moore at Stillman's Gym; he was vanquished by Arnold Palmer on the golf course; he floated through the air on the trapeze for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus; he performed with the New York Philharmonic; he was shot by John Wayne in Rio Lobo.

(7)- SCOLDS RULE -- Puritans love disasters. No sooner has some calamity befallen mankind than some hair-shirted scold emerges from his priest hole and starts wagging his finger. The message is always the same: ‘You are being punished for your immoral lifestyle.’ The latest grist to the puritan mill is, of course, the credit crunch.

(8)- PUBLISHING -- Why is publishing the only industry so arcanely enigmatic that no one, not even the people doing it, seems to understand its sublimely mystical machineries? Many media watchers are linking the latest horrors in publishing to the financial crisis, but it's not quite as simple as that, either.

(9)- OBAMA’S MILITARY WOES -- With at least two ongoing wars, President Barack Obama enters the Oval Office facing the toughest national security landscape for any American president in some time. A tour of the foreign policy horizon shows that America’s 44th president will have his hands full with a panoply of problems that would vex any head of state, much less one who is expected to be the leader of the Western world,according to the Armed Forces Journal.

CARTOON COMMENTARY

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