BOOK II:  Caesar battles the Belgae in northern Gaul; Publius Crassus crosses the maritime states of Gaul. The Roman Senate celebrates these achievements by adding another month to the yearly calendar, and giving its soldiers a choice of 30 days’ unpaid furlough, or free dance lessons at the YMCA.

BOOK III:  Caesar sends Servius Galba to open a toll road to the Alps. But Servius is attacked by the Seduni and Veragri tribes after it is learned that a speed limit will be enforced. Meanwhile, under the direction of Titurius Sabinus and Publius Crassus, Caesar’s maritime forces defeat the Venelli twins, who had been sneaking out during recess to write obscene messages in the sand.

BOOK IV:  Caesar moves into Germany for the first time, where he describes as “outrageous!” the rent for a one-bedroom apartment. The Germans cross the channel and move into Britain. Caesar then crosses the channel – something no Roman had ever before done on foot – and defeats the British, who, unbeknownst to him are really the Germans. He punishes them by sending them into exile in Germany.

BOOK V:  The Nervi attack a Roman encampment during a musical victory celebration. The Roman commander, Cicero, holds off the Nervi by having his troops sit in the last available seat each time the music stops. Caesar arrives with reinforcements, including extra pillows and a tape loop of Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

BOOK VI:  The shortest of the books in Caesar’s Gallic W-

BOOK VII:  Fourteen Gallic tribes revolt. This comes as a major surprise to Caesar, who only knew the names of five of them. Under the leadership of Vercingetorix, they battle Caesar at Alesia, where the tribes likely would have defeated the Romans had not the only deli in the area closed for summer vacation.  Caesar returns to Rome where the Senate declares yet another holiday. Caesar is approached by his agent to write a book about the war, only to learn that his longtime friend, Brutus – known familiarly as “Brute” because of his size – had been approached to write a similar book, leading to Caesar’s famous exclamation, “et tu, Brute?”

The word koan comes from the Japanese mispronounciation of an obscure Tibetan phrase, “Chap sang gawa yo rey?” – literally, “Where’s the bathroom?”

Koans and their study developed in China within the context of open questions posed by Emperor Yong-le (Ming Dynasty) to newly-weds who had forgotten to invite his majesty to the reception. In most instances, the emperor was appeased with a slice of wedding cake, his weight in silk pajamas, and a twirl around the rumpus room with the Mrs.

Enlightenment

The essence of enlightenment came to be identified with the interaction between masters and students, as opposed to an earlier practice, wherein a master spent hours yelling at his reflection in the mirror. Whatever insight this “Eureka!” moment might bring, its verification was always interpersonal – and very noisy. Thus, enlightenment came to be understood not so much as an insight, but as a way of acting to get out of washing the dishes after dinner.

This mutual inquiry into the meaning of the encounters between masters and students gave rise to a paradigm: one now looked at the enlightened activities of one’s lineal forebears not only to understand one’s own spiritual identity, but to also understand why one looked so much like the milkman.

Literary Practice

Koan practice developed from crafting snippets of encounter-dialogue with the literati into well-edited stories. This interaction often resulted with the “educated class” being relieved of their wallets. Eventually though, the methodology was amended to affect a more literary approach: teachers whose vehicles were stolen found their books left behind on the curb.

There were other dangers posed by encounter-dialogue. An early poetry competition devolved into a free-for-all when a contestant was unable to rhyme “solipsism.”

The style of writing Zen texts has evolved over the years, from the use of exclamation points at the beginning of a sentence – indicating a master’s anger over a student’s temerity to even ask a question – to the excessive use of smiley faces and other emoticons.

Koan Practice, or What’s My Mantra?

A koan may serve as a point of concentration during meditation or other activities, such as pole dancing or dating a pigeon. During koan practice a teacher may probe a student’s ken using “checking” questions to validate an experience, or by surprising the student with an obscene phone call.

Koan practice is particularly important among the Rinzai sect. These practitioners concentrate on qi breathing and its effect on the body’s center of gravity – as opposed to, say, looking for oncoming traffic while crossing the street.

A qualified koan teacher provides instruction in koan practice in private, though some are known to allow viewing through peepholes. In one particular case involving a student named Hu, his teacher wrote:

“Concentrate yourself into this jar of pitted olives, Hu…making your whole body one pickled inquiry. Day and night, work intently at it. Do not attempt nihilistic or dualistic interpretations.”

To which, it is recorded, Hu replied, “Are you nuts?!”

Historical Antecedents of Koan Practice

Before the tradition of meditating on koans, the renowned teacher Huangbo Xi (720–723 A.D.) was recorded to have said, “Yours is a clear-cut case, but I will spare you the thirty lashes.” This came as a relief to his students, who had no idea what their diapered master was talking about.

By the Sung Dynasty, the term koan had evolved to describe a teacher who, after advising a student over a cup of tea at a local restaurant, refused to pick up the check. The noted philosopher and teacher Wan-Yu is said to have instructed his students to contemplate the phrase, “Crime doesn’t pay, and neither do I,” while he slipped out the back door.

Modern Western Understanding

Today, English-speaking, non-Zen practitioners use koans to refer to universal truisms, such as, “A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the original word you thought of,” or ethereal, often unanswerable questions like, “Does being open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, refer to Eastern or Pacific time?”

Although there may be traditional answers to many koans, these are only preserved as exemplary answers by masters who couldn’t come up with anything original themselves.

Appropriate answers to koans vary, since different teachers demand different answers. In most cases though, the master is not looking for a specific answer, but rather for evidence that the student can pay the tuition.

Look at figure 1 below.

Figure 1.

The clear sky gives the illusion that the buildings are closer than those obscured by the haze. Considering that we are in New York City and the objects in question are part of the Pheonix skyline, both photographs represent a distance greater than one can cover in a 10-minute jog.

Would You Trade?

Breaking from the status quo is, for most people, emotionally uncomfortable. Consider the following choices.

A famous experiment involved randomly giving students a gift consisting of either a coffee mug or a candy bar. When offered the chance to trade, few wanted to exchange for the alternative gift. Of course, none of the participants had been told that the coffee mug had had a tiny hole drilled into its base, or that the candy bar had been sitting in direct sunlight for 45 continuous days.

The power of this bias was quantified in a related experiment. Students at an Ivy League university were randomly chosen to receive coffee mugs – the candy having been withheld due to pending litigation over food poisoning. Those with mugs were asked to name the minimum price at which they would sell their mugs. Students at a neighboring community college, who were without mugs, were asked to name the maximum price they would be willing to pay to obtain the mugs. The median price – 6 months in jail and a $10,000 fine – was more than twice the median offer price, $1.59, plus shipping and handling. Clearly, ownership of the mugs increased their perceived value.

This bias may help explain why people who believe they can talk to wild animals are often eaten by them. Likewise, it might be a contributing factor explaining why companies choose to promote troublesome employees instead of simply shoving them off the nearest bridge.

Social Norms

Social norms tend to reinforce one’s preference for the status quo. For example, courts view a sin of commission (lying about your credentials to get the lead astrophysicist position at NASA) as more serious than a sin of omission (saying that the dog ate your credentials and still getting the job at NASA).

Another example: Government decision makers are often reluctant to adopt tax reform if there are “losers” as well as “gainers.” As most elected officials are themselves seen as losers, there is rarely an instance when gainers outnumber them, making tax reform nigh impossible.

For many organizations, lack of information, uncertainty, and a tendency to treat that gaping hole in the Titanic’s hull by calling a plumber, promote holding to the status quo. In the absence of an unequivocal case-changing course, why face the unpleasant prospect of change? Thus, many organizations continue to support under-performing executives due to either: a)  a lack of solid evidence that they’ve failed, or b) witnesses. Killing a capo di tutti capi may be a good business decision, but it is generally uncomfortable for the person involved.

Going Forward

We’ve explored some of the causes of status quo bias, now let us consider possible remedies. Here are some tips for countering status quo bias that can be immediately implemented:

1. When you hear comments like “let’s wait and see” or “let’s meet next month to see how the project is going,” question whether you’re hearing status quo bias, or whether the conference leader has a job interview coming up.
2. Think about what your objectives are, and whether they are best served by letting someone else fail for a change.
3. Identify who might be disadvantaged by changing the status quo, and look for ways to eliminate them.
4. Ask yourself whether you would choose the status quo alternative – a cheaper product made in Jaipur by preschoolers – if, in fact, you knew you could get away with it.
5. Avoid overestimating the difficulty of switching from the status quo, unless it cuts into your lunch hour.
6. Actively manage migration away from the status quo—communicate dissatisfaction with the status quo by holding your breath until you are blue in the face.
7. Note that change becomes the status quo over time – unless it’s change for a $10 bill, in which case it becomes 2 fives, a fin and 5 singles, a roll of quarters, or the price of a gallon of regular gas.

Not too long ago, if you ran afoul of the law, were arrested and deemed a flight risk, you were locked up in the pokey until your trial. Granted, even in the good ol’ days money talked, and your lawyer could probably persuade a judge lenient or dimwitted enough to place you under house arrest. Today, though, when the courts let freedom ring, house arrest means wearing judicial bling – an ankle bracelet – to keep you within police radar range while you hobnob around the neighborhood, visit old haunts and even older friends, and continue to engage in the same illicit behavior that got you arrested in the first place.

But what if house arrest meant you were truly unable to leave the friendly confines of your quaint little crib? Imagine every front, side and back door that once opened to the outside world now only leads you to some other room within your own home. And every window that once held vistas of the Manhattan skyline or the Bronx County courthouse now only lets you peek into some other room of your own home.

Well, all this and more could be yours, penal contestants, if your dream house were suddenly transported from the 3rd dimension into the 4th dimension.

Turn Right

Now, those of you who finished the third grade and are conversant in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity are no doubt saying, “What the hell are you talking about, you idiot? Time is the 4th dimension! How do you move a house into time?” To which I say, Hold on there, Baba Looie. Let’s think of the 4th dimension as the next logical construct from the 3rd dimension.

For argument’s sake – and I’m writing this, so it’s my argument – let’s define the first three dimensions geometrically by saying that each dimension exists at a 90˚or right angle to the other. Length is the 1st dimension and width is the 2nd dimension. Width exists at a 90˚ or right angle to length; in other words, if length runs east to west (or west to east for those of you in Los Angeles), then width runs north to south. The 3rd dimension is set at a 90˚ or right angle to both length and width – this is height. As an example, consider a flagpole standing at the corner where Broadway and 96th Street intersect; the neon lights are not as bright at this end of Broadway, so the flagpole should stand out. Broadway represents length, 96th Street represents width, and the flagpole represents height, as well as one more thing to walk into if you’re not paying attention. Where length, width and height all intersect at the same point, we have the three distinct dimensions that define our physical world.

Following this logic, then, the 4th dimension would have to be set at a 90˚ or right angle to all of these three dimensions – length, width and height – simultaneously. Huh?

Let’s go back to the first two dimensions for a moment, shall we? Length and width define a plane, which is a flat surface like, say, a sheet of paper (or, perhaps, the top of one’s head). On this sheet of paper we shall draw a three-dimensional object, such as this cube.

Now, a cube is made up of six faces or squares, and a square, of course, has four equal sides. In this two-dimensional representation, however, we actually only see three sides – the front, the top and the right; we cannot see the side on which the cube sits, nor do we see its left side or its, ahem, back side.

In order to give the above cube the illusion of depth, three lines forming part of the top and right faces of the cube are shortened and set at acute angles to the front face of the cube. Thus, the top and right faces of the cube are not really squares (Got that, daddy-o?), they are trapezoids, i.e., only two of the four sides are parallel. What you are seeing is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional cube; your brain fleshes out the parts unseen. Thus, whenever you see this pancaked version of a cube, you are conditioned to accept it as a three-dimensional object. N’est-ce pas?

Your New Home, Minus The Ceiling

Let’s now imagine how a home would be constructed in the 4th dimension. For years builders have constructed typical (typical?) three-dimensional homes by referring to plans drawn on a two-dimensional plane: a blueprint. To imagine, then, how a fourth-dimensional house would be represented in the 3rd dimension, let’s look from our three-dimensional perspective at a house built in a two-dimensional world.

With grateful acknowledgment to Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926), let us take a look at a 6-room house in the town of Flatland somewhere in upstate New York, where everything, including the town’s residents, exists in only two dimensions. The house would look something like this:

North

South

Clearly, the owner is colorblind or the hardware store had a closeout on paint. In any event, the house is laid out like a ranch house with every room on one level. The rooms are numbered 1 – 6. Each room has four walls, and every wall has a huge sliding glass door (Hey, the owner can do whatever he wants!). Each shared wall leads into an adjacent room; walls that are not shared lead outside the house. Thus, room #1 shares one wall, its south wall, with room #2; the west, north and east walls all lead outside the house. Room #2 is an interior room, sharing all four of its walls with the four adjacent rooms – the north wall is shared with room #1, the south wall is shared with room #3, the west wall is shared with room #5, and the east wall is shared with room #6. Room #3 shares two walls, its north wall with room #2 and its south wall with room #4. Room #4 shares only one wall, its north wall, with room #3. Room #5 shares only its east wall with room #2, and room #6 shares only its west wall with room #2. Everybody got that?

You can enter this house through any room that has a wall facing the outside except room #2, which is in the interior of the house. Rooms 1, 4, 5 and 6 have three walls with access into the house; room #3 has two such walls, the west and east walls. Thank goodness the house comes standard with indoor/outdoor carpeting.

Once inside the house, access to each room is somewhat limited. If you are in room #1, for example, the only way to get to rooms 5 or 6 is to pass through room #2; the same is true if you want to get to room #3. To get to room #4, you have to walk through room #2 and room #3, which at 3:00 AM is not likely to win you any brownie points from anyone who might be asleep there.

Well, We’re Movin’ On Up…

Now let’s “fold” this house into three-dimensional space. We do this by folding along each shared wall, just as you would fold a flat piece of paper with six connected squares into a cube. For those whose opposable thumbs leave them all thumbs, this house is in the shape of a cross, which makes this task rather easy.

First, fold room #4 up – i.e., into three-dimensional space – along its shared wall with room #3. Then fold all four sides of room #2 – i.e., along the walls it shares with rooms 1, 5, 6 and 3 – up into three-dimensional space. Finally, connect the south wall of room #4 with the north wall of room #1 and, voila, we have a cube–er, three-dimensional house.

Now, one way to represent our now three-dimensional house in two-dimensional space is to draw it as a cube, as we did above. If we wish to see all the rooms, though, a combination of trapezoids and rectangles is needed to give the impression that we are looking into a three-dimensional cube.

The figure on the left is a view of our house looking through room #1 back to room #3, the smaller rectangle; room #2 is the base of the cube; rooms 5 and 6 are the sides; and room #4 is the top.

The figure on the right is the house with the sides stretched to make the relationship of each room clearer, as well as more bizarre. In this figure, rooms 1 and 3 are highlighted, with room #1 in the front and room #3 in the back. Since every side of every face of the cube is actually a wall, every wall then is connected to a wall of another room. What this means is that no wall now leads outside the house. No matter what room you are in, regardless of which wall you punch, walking through its sliding glass door will always lead you into another room.

Stairway To Heaven?

Now let’s put our original two-dimensional owner-occupant in room #1. If he (yes, only a man would let someone fold his two-dimensional house into three-dimensional space) walks through the sliding glass door on the north wall, he now enters room #4. When the house existed in its original two-dimensional state – and the owner was somewhat shy about waking his crazed, knife-wielding cousin snoring away in room #3 – he would have decided to exit the house through the sliding glass door on the north wall, and trudge through the mud all the way to the other end of the house until he finally reached room #4. This could be very disconcerting, especially after a late-night burrito and mocha latte snack, as room #4 had the only bathroom.

When our Flatlander looks through a sliding glass door now, regardless of which wall he chooses, he always sees into the room adjacent to that wall. Remember, in the 2nd dimension there is no concept of up or down because those directions only exist in the 3rd dimension. In the 2nd dimension he reached every room of his house by simply walking – or perhaps gliding – straight ahead, or turning left or right. Now in three-dimensional space, however, every wall is connected to another room, and that other room may well be on another level – the second floor or the basement. But as far as our owner-occupant knows, he is still walking on one level as he had always done, albeit now confused as hell.

With his once two-dimensional house now folded into three-dimensional space, our owner-occupant is unable leave the house, as each wall is now connected to another wall, and there is no wall anywhere leading outside the house. His only escape from his house would be to have it “unfolded” in a lower dimension – in this case, back into two-dimensional space.

§§§§§§§§

Now imagine a three-dimensional house folded into fourth-dimensional space. We here in the 3rd dimension can no more point toward a direction that is at a right angle to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd dimensions than a two-dimensional Flatlander could point to the 3rd dimension, but in theory a dimension outside our world does exist. From our lofty three-dimensional perch we can look “down” and peer into the two-dimensional world of Flatland, just as someone – or some thing – from the 4th dimension can gaze down into our three-dimensional world.

If your gorgeous Park Avenue penthouse were suddenly folded into fourth dimensional space with you inside it, you would find yourself trapped forever within your apartment. Every wall, floor and ceiling would be connected to another wall or floor or ceiling. And if you think of each wall, floor and ceiling as simply another surface on a cube – i.e., the room in which you are sitting and sulking – then you may find that, unless your apartment was folded into the fourth dimension with care, you could exit the sliding glass door on the west wall of your bedroom and find yourself standing on the ceiling of your living room.

Needless to say, 24 hours in this funhouse might well punish you more cruelly and unusually than anything the Supreme Court could have imagined.

I was thinking of vacationing across the pond and began searching the internet for the lowest airfares between Philadelphia and London. I found a very reasonable fare of $156 from Philadelphia International to Heathrow on British Airways, but taxes and fees were an additional $385, more than twice the airfare, raising the total to $541, one way. One way. Misgivings ran the stakes even higher – that fellow over there is taking off his shoe just to pick his feet, isn’t he? My outrage and my fears were short-lived, however, when a quick check of my finances revealed that my farthest trip would be limited to the last stop on the subway.

So, the next day I was on the Broad Street subway line riding north towards Center City, my vacation underway. Like any urban dweller, I was trying to avoid making direct eye contact with potential homicidal maniacs – like that lemon sitting across from me, for instance – and began staring at an advertisement for BBC America. As I began to daydream about riding the Tube at the end of the 19th century, a story I had read about a leaping Londoner came to mind.

Starting in 1817 and peaking in the mid-19th century, newspaper reports in The Times of London and elsewhere described a “peculiar leaping man” who startled and attacked young women. Initially, few people believed these tales, and today English parents consider it a fable, used to control their misbehaving children. This occurred, after all, in Victorian London, where plague and poverty ravaged the city, and rumors were more persistent than diarrhea.

But in January of 1838, the Lord Mayor of London received a letter from a resident of Peckham describing an attack on Polly Adams on October 11th of the previous year by a man that could leap over fences. The writer referred to the assailant as “Spring-Heeled Jack.”

On February 18, 1838, Lucy Scales, age 18, and her sister Margaret were on their way home at 8:30 that evening after visiting their brother in Limehouse. Suddenly, as they passed the entrance to Green Dragon Alley, the terrifying cloaked silhouette of Spring-Heeled Jack leaped from the darkness and exhaled a jet of blue flames from his mouth that blasted Lucy’s face. The teenager screamed; she fell to the ground, blinded, and suffered a fit. Spring-Heeled Jack then jumped high over his victim and her sister and landed on the roof of a nearby house, from where he bounded off into the night — a prodigious jump at any time of the day.

Talk of a mysterious leaping madman attacking women quickly circulated around London, and further sightings and attacks were reported. In one especially notorious incident, the leaping miscreant tried to snatch 18-year-old Jane Alsop right out of her own home. Ms. Alsop, who lived in the district of Bow, provided the first reported physical description of Spring-Heeled Jack:

He presented a most hideous and frightful appearance, and vomited forth a quantity of blue and white flame from his mouth, and his eyes resembled red balls of fire… He wore a large helmet, and his dress, which appeared to fit him very tight, seemed… to resemble white oilskin.

Family members who had saved the young woman noted afterwards that the menace did not run, rather he bounced away.

A week after the attack on Jane Alsop, a similar one was attempted. Here, though, a young servant boy witnessed the attack. He described the assailant as tall and thin, with pointed ears and fiery eyes, and wearing a cloak. The boy also noticed a gold filigree ‘W’ embroidered onto the front of the man’s wardrobe. Assuming that it was not a high school letter earned in track and field, the public now had a clue as to the man’s surname, or pedigree. The incident abruptly ended when the boy screamed, alerting the neighbors who quickly opened their shutters. Sensing an exit cue, Spring-Heeled Jack rocketed over the roofs on Commercial Road.

When the boy regained his senses, he was interrogated repeatedly by the authorities. His inquisitors wondered what was the significance of the embroidered ‘W’; some conjectured that the glyph was the initial of the Marquis of Waterford, a notorious prankster who in the past had gone to great lengths to perpetrate his hoaxes. The Marquis was also something of an athlete, but even his physical gifts could not equate with a man who could leap 25 feet into the air, as the leaping menace was alleged to have done.

As Spring-Heeled Jack’s infamy grew, more reports appeared in the newspapers. Mary Stevens of Battersea was attacked, as was 18-year-old Lucy Squires in Limehouse, as the leaping menace showed his knack for spotting victims who had reached the legal age of consent. In both instances he tore at his female victims’ clothes and ripped their flesh with hands that felt like iron. Those who saw his feet swore he had springs in his boot heels, meaning that, contrary to Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man, they were not just for wandering.

In 1843, Spring-Heeled Jack proved to be an equalitarian menace to society, appearing in Northhamptonshire, Hampshire and East Anglia, where he frightened the drivers of mail coaches by leaping from trees onto their horses. Each time, after riding the spooked animal for a bit, and apparently not deviating from the mail carrier’s appointed rounds, he would end the escapade by leaping from the horse into a convenient tree.

Two years later he was seen in West London. Reports came from Ealing and Hanwell of a weird figure leaping over hedges and walls, shrieking and groaning. This perpetrator turned out to be a practical joker from Brentford who spent the next few years shrieking and groaning from Dartmoor Prison.

In November of 1845, Spring-Heeled Jack confronted 13-year-old prostitute Maria Davies in Bermondsy. In full view of frightened onlookers, he “breathed fire into her face” then tossed Ms. Davies off a bridge; she drowned in the open sewer below. Spring-Heeled Jack was now a murderer.

Throughout the 1850’s and 1860’s, the manic leaper was reportedly seen all over England. As fear kept most people off the streets after dark, Londoners willing to take the law into their own hands did just that and formed vigilante committees, patrolling the streets at night, trying to track down the miscreant. Not to be outdone, the police put out extra patrols, but no one came close to catching him.

This is not to say, though, that there were no arrests. In 1877, Spring-Heeled Jack appeared at Aldershot Army Barracks. An army officer was arrested on a charge of impersonating the menace, but he was later released. Later, another man was arrested in Warwickshire when he was caught trying to jump to escape; he was wearing a white sheet and a pair of boots with carriage springs attached. The man was later seen in Liverpool jumping on rooftops in September 1904 – being after Labor Day, one wonders if the menace exchanged his white sheet for a darker one. His last reported sighting had him scaling the steeple of a church before disappearing forever behind a row of houses. That same year more than 100 residents of Everton saw a man in a flowing, non-white cloak and black boots making great leaps over streets and rooftops.

Somewhere along the way, Spring-Heeled Jack gained cult hero status. He appeared in the small theaters of the day, portrayed as a cloaked figure with shiny boots and huge whiskers. He became a star of the cheap weekly periodicals, whose sensationalism amused the working-class. One such saga, Spring Heeled Jack, The Terror of London, by George Augustus Sala, appeared in 48 weekly parts. Mr. Sala’s protean Spring-Heeled Jack reflected the proletarian ethos of the serial’s readers, becoming a superhero who rescued damsels in distress and persecuted those in authority who abused their power. In 1904 the character was revived in another penny-serial novel, The Spring-heeled Jack Library. And in 1946 a film was made about him, The Curse of the Wraydons.

Apparently tiring of the temperate English climate, Spring-Heeled Jack made dozens of appearances in the United States between 1938 and 1945, belching flames and making gigantic leaps, then melting into the darkness. In the 1970’s, perhaps benefiting from the introduction of commercial supersonic flight, he appeared in both the U.S. and the U.K., sporting long hair and minus the cloak – apparently, fashion sense and mayhem are not mutually exclusive. In 1976, at least a dozen residents of Dallas, Texas claim to have seen a ten-foot-tall, thin creature with long ears leap across a football field in a few strides.

Little has been heard about Spring-Heeled Jack since then. Theories abound as to the origin of this urban legend with the bizarre appearance – an alien, a demon, mass hysteria, overheated imaginations. As for me, I prefer to treat the tale with a healthy measure of skepticism, and one eye very wide open.

And while it appears to be easier to track the whereabouts of nonagenarian ex-Nazis in Paraguay, the futile search for Osama bin Laden has not been for lack of trying.

§ According to London’s Daily Mail, in 2002 Britain’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) recruited psychics to locate Mr. bin Laden. The MoD conducted an experiment to see if volunteers could ‘see’ objects hidden inside an envelope. They initially tried to recruit 12 professional psychics who advertised their abilities on the Internet, but when they all refused – perhaps they foresaw the results? – MoD were forced to use ‘novice’ volunteers.

The study involved blindfolding test subjects and asking them to see the contents of sealed brown envelopes containing pictures of objects and public figures. Twenty-eight per cent of those tested managed to guess the contents of the envelopes, which included pictures of a knife, Mother Teresa and an “Asian individual.” But most subjects, who were holed up in a secret location for the study, were hopelessly off the mark. One even fell asleep as he tried to focus on the envelope’s content.

After spending £18,000 of taxpayers’ money, MoD concluded there was “little value” in using psychic powers in the defense of the nation and the research was halted.

§ In 2005, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) disbanded its Alec Station, a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, according to a story in The New York Times.

Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, but the decision to disband Alec Station, named after the son of Michael Scheuer, the first head of the unit, reflected a re-focus of CIA resources on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.

Apparently, the closing of Alec Station had very much to do with the individuals assigned there. Agency insiders referred to the members of Alec Station as a cult, saying they had became so obsessed with al-Qaeda that they referred to themselves as “the Manson Family.” These two dozen or so “Family” members regularly issued cables to Agency heads about Mr. bin Laden’s growing capabilities and his desire to strike American targets throughout the world.

One can only wonder how many times senior Agency officials, after receiving the latest batch of admonitory cables from “the Manson Family ” at Alec Station, sighed resignedly, “Not again.”

§ President George Bush enlisted British Special Forces in an attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden before Mr. Bush’s term in office expired, according to London’s Sunday Times.

The U.K.’s Special Boat Service and Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in U.S.-led operations to capture Mr. bin Laden in the wilds of northern Pakistan. This effort was, according to British and American sources, “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, despite a published statement from Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam warning that her country would not accept “indiscriminate action” on its territory by U.S. forces without first being informed that there was an al-Qaeda or terrorist target there.

In fact, the CIA and U.S military had already carried out special operations on Pakistani soil – and perhaps twenty more countries – pursuant to a 2004 confidential order, “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” signed by Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. According to The New York Times, “Al Qaeda Network Exord” gave the military open orders to enter and operate wherever the U.S. felt al-Qaeda was hiding.

A U.S. intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam War. One can only hope these operations will end more favorably for the U.S. than did that conflict.

§ Perhaps the strangest bit of news on Osama bin Laden came when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that Osama bin Laden had “at long last been found.”

“For more than two years, we combed the Middle East looking for bin Laden,” Rumsfeld said. “Frankly, it was starting to be an embarrassment. You can imagine our surprise when we finally found him hiding deep inside the darkest recesses of each and every one of our souls.” What? Was Mr. Rumsfeld suggesting that since toppling the Taliban regime in 2001, and with U.S. forces ranging along the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border in search of Mr. bin Laden, all we really needed to do was to take some transcendental look inward?

“We were so busy tracking the remaining members of the Taliban regime and freezing al-Qaeda assets that we missed what was right in front of us all along,” Rumsfeld said. “Osama bin Laden wasn’t hidden in a cave in the mountainous Pakistani province of Waziristan or huddled in the back of a Chitral meat market stall. He was lurking in the blackness within us all, right there with the laziness and the jealousy.”

Apparently, in addition to FBI intelligence reports, heat-sensing equipment to search in underground tunnels, aerial photography, eight Ultra-High Frequency Follow-On communications satellites, submarines, aircraft, ground units and global ground stations, all we needed to do to find Osama bin Laden was a little soul-searching; all we needed was love. (Queue the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love.)

“It just goes to show,” Rumsfeld continued, “that sometimes it’s easier to look for the man in the FBI dossier than it is to look at the man in the mirror.”

Man in the mirror – wasn’t that a song from that self-styled king of pop and alleged child molester, Michael Jackson?

§ In a press conference on the seventh anniversary of the September 11th attacks, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino about the Bush administration’s ongoing efforts to find Osama bin Laden, calling him the mastermind of 9/11. Ms. Perino interrupted the reporter, claiming Mr. bin Laden was not the true mastermind of the attacks:

Q: But Osama bin Laden is the one that — you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11–

PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now.

Ms. Perino, apparently, was attempting to justify the Bush administration’s failure to catch Mr. bin Laden by suggesting he was not the mastermind. But in September 2006, former press secretary Tony Snow stated, “Osama bin Laden, mastermind of September 11th, the person that many people talk about and still have concerns about, calls this fight, the fight in Iraq, ‘the third world war.’”

It would seem that “mastermind” is a rather fluid term.

Ms. Perino suggested that it would take “superpowers” to catch Mr. bin Laden. “So there are human limitations to any — this is not the movies, we don’t have superpowers,” she said. It did not, however, take superpowers to corner Mr. bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001, where he escaped in part because of a lack of troops.

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The failure of the exigencies of modern warfare notwithstanding, I suggest that what is needed here is a fresh approach towards Osama bin Laden’s capture or kill – whichever comes first. To that end might I suggest the following as means to find Mr. bin Laden:

• Hire a bounty hunter.
• Lower the limit on his Mastercard.
• Have his college alumni association track him down for a donation.
• Follow his groupies.
• Offer free fluff-and-fold service to any woman who has recently slept with him.
• Place an ad on al-Jazeera television offering free samples of “Just for Men – for Moustaches and Beards.”
• Publish a current photo of Charles Manson and announce that we’ve already caught bin Laden.
• Offer him a major role in an upcoming Martin Scorcese film.
• Ask someone who owes him money.
• Leave 2 tickets to the revival of “Guys And Dolls” in bin Laden’s name at the Will-Call window.
• Publish photos showing bin Laden and former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover auditioning for “A Chorus Line.”
• Offer him 0% financing on a Toyota Prius.
• Check overnight surveillance video from all local 7-11’s.
• Go into every cave in eastern Afghanistan and yell, “Shave and a haircut…” and wait for someone to respond, “Two bits!”

“What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” the former Attorney General remarked. “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

What indeed. Mr. Gonzales’s staunchest critics, the U.S. Congress – that august body under whose aegis lay the authority to confirm or deny Presidential appointees – have thrown the former public servant under the bus.

Now, politicians are a peculiar lot; they rarely eat their own, and when they do their dietary habits generally run across party lines. While Republicans ruled Capitol Hill, Mr. Gonzales went about his work shielded, for the most part, from criticism. But with Democrats now holding a slim majority in the House, his role as architect and key policy maker during this time has come under increasing fire as members of Congress now question:

• his firing of nine U.S. attorneys, apparently for political reasons;
• why he allowed the Justice Department to become politicized, favoring Republicans and prosecuting Democrats;
• why the government eavesdropped on private citizens without obtaining necessary court warrants;
• his role in as the lead source for legal opinions, since rescinded, on interrogation that became known as the “torture memos”;
• his refusal to rule on whether the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding constituted torture;
• whether his post-9/11 anti-terrorism policies broke or circumvented existing law;
• why in 2004 he confronted former Deputy Attorney General James Comey at the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft over Mr. Comey’s refusal, as Acting Attorney General during Mr. Ashcroft’s recuperation from surgery, to reauthorize a classified government intelligence program.

Add to this Mr. Gonzales’s frequent response to questions posed to him during Congressional hearings, “I don’t recall,” and one gets the sense that Mr. Gonzales doesn’t get it at all.

Mr. Gonzales told WSJ that he did not play a central role in drafting the widely criticized legal opinions that allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to use aggressive interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects and expanded the president’s power to hold “unlawful combatants” and terrorism suspects indefinitely. He also claimed he told the truth to Congress about a classified eavesdropping program authorized by the President. While Mr. Gonzales admitted to making mistakes in handling the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys, he still maintained that he made the right decision, allowing that while he bore responsibility as the former Attorney General, it “doesn’t absolve other individuals of responsibility.”

Mr. Gonzales has characterized the arguments and testimony against him as one-sided and taken out of context. He contends that while he was White House counsel he was just one among several lawyers to whom President Bush and his staff turned for legal opinion; the final say rested with the Justice Department.

Hmm, sort of makes one wish one were at the end of that long line along which the bucks are being passed.

Looney Tunes (See Fearless Freep And His Sensational High-Diving Act! – Acme Sign Co… There can be only one explanation for white tiles in a dressing room!) – Cartoon Network

Lockup: New Mexico (Hey, !@*&%!, what ‘chu lookin’ at?) – MSNBC

Great Performances At The Met (La donna e mobile) – Public Television (WNET, New York)

The Honeymooners (Bang… zoom!) – CW11 (New York)

Bones (Use your mutant powers, just talk people to death.) – TNT

American Greed (More, More, More – Andrea True Connection) – CNBC

Monk (Wipe!) – USA

Hogan Knows Best (You’re going out dressed like that?) – VH1

Speeders (Can I have some of that candy you got there in your glove box?) – TruTV

50 Greatest Moments At MSG (In 1994, Patrick Ewing was the undisputed leader of the Knicks.) – MSG

CSI: NY (Apart from the fact of it not being attached to a person, there’s nothing wrong with his finger.) – Spike TV

Ice Road Truckers (I won’t send my guys out to do something I wouldn’t do myself.) – The History Channel

The First 48 (Normally, I don’t take stuff like that… but for some kind of reason, it ended up in my purse.) – A&E

The Game 365 (Scott Boras, Scott Boras, Scott Boras – Scott Boras) – MSG+

Wizards Of Waverly Place (She ate a dog biscuit like it was a chocolate chip cookie straight out of the oven.) – The Disney Channel

Iron Chef America (Cora vs. Simon: Hamburger) – The Food Channel

Yankees Classics (Deep to left!) – YES

Spider-Man (Spiderman, spiderman, does whatever a spider can.) – Toon Disney

MythBusters (Well, here’s your problem.) – The Discovery Channel

The Brady Bunch (Marsha, Marsha, Marsh!) – TV Land

The Jeffersons (Weezie!) – TV One

Tom & Jerry (Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?) – Boomerang

Living With Ed (We picked a color that was very close to her eye color to paint the house.) – Planet Green

Private Practice (How am I supposed to do this after the baby’s born?) – SoapNet

The Barrett-Jackson Automobile Auction (Sold to the collector in the front row for $250,000.) – Speed

Conspiracy (Fifty-one witnesses raced up the grassy knoll to the picked fence…) – History International

What I Like About You (Almost lost control of my bladder.) – The N

Renovation Realities (I don’t have a hallway in my house.) – DIY Network

No Data (Zzzzzzz…) – The N.Y. Legislative Channel

December, 1908: A fledgling teenaged painter fails the entrance examination to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna for the second time. Had he passed, Der Teppichfresser (“the Carpet-Chewer”), as Adolph Hitler would later be called, would probably have been nothing more than a bohemian footnote to art history instead of the 20th century’s most infamous, anti-Semitic, possibly monorchic, mass murderer.

March 2, 1949: One day in 1943, General Electric engineer James Wright “crossed a diamond with a pearl” (with apologies to Steely Dan’s Kid Charlemagne) – he accidentally dropped boric acid into silicone oil and came upon a compound that bounced 25 percent higher than a normal rubber ball, and could copy any newspaper or comic book print that it touched. In 1949, unemployed advertising salesman Peter Hodgson attended a party at which the novel “nutty putty” was the chief form of entertainment. Apparently, the hitherto obtuse Mr. Hodgson had an epiphany; he borrowed $147 (adjusting for inflation, $1277.32 today) and bought the production rights for nutty putty. The now renamed “Silly Putty” debuted on this date and garnered more than $6 million in sales for the year, making it the fastest selling toy in history, and forever changing the perception of Mr. Hodgson among his former advertising colleagues.

August 18, 1962: John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison jettisoned Pete Best for Richard Starkey, a k a Ringo Starr, thus ending the run of the band The Quarrymen for a band whose name provided fewer Scrabble points, The Beatles.

August 7, 1964: H.J. RES 1145, a joint resolution of Congress known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, an act to “promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia,” [and one that gave President Lyndon Johnson the authority to increase U.S. involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam] was, according to National Security Agency historian Robert J. Hanyok, based on “translation mistakes that went uncorrected, altered intercept times, and selective citation of intelligence… deliberately skewed by mid-level agency officers.”

January 1, 1970: According to Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, a couple of long-haired hippie scientists at Bell Laboratories and the inventors of the Unix operating system – widely used in business, technology, education and home computing (Apple’s Mac OS X operating system is based on Unix) – midnight GMT on this date was the moment when time began – epoch time, that is. Unix measures time in the number of seconds – 86,400 of them per day, with the occasional second added for a leap year – that have elapsed from the Unix epoch, 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970, to the date in question. For the sake of brevity, if not sanity, Unix epoch time is written in the ISO 8601 date format, which is 1970-01-01 T00:00:00Z.

On New Year’s Eve in 1938 in Indianapolis, Indiana, the drunkometer made its long-awaited debut. Invented in 1931 and patented in 1936 by Dr. Rolla N. Harger, an Indiana University biochemist, this device became the legal method for helping establish blood-alcohol level. First, the suspected inebriate blew into a balloon. The captured air was then mixed with a chemical solution that changed color if alcohol was present; the darker the solution, the more alcohol was contained in the breath. This precursor to the breath analyzer could not, however, determine intoxication, since a variety of factors determine how alcohol affects individual drinkers. This gave rise to colloquial terms to describe inebriation, such as tipsy, sloshed, hollow legged, tanked, loaded, drunk as a skunk and out for the count; as well as terms to describe the type of drunk one has become, such as cheap drunk, silly drunk, nasty drunk and wino.

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After months of frustrating experimentation and failure, Thomas Edison finally gave his first public demonstration of his incandescent lamp on New Year’s Eve in 1879. A month later, Edison was awarded a patent for his invention. This was soon followed by the invention of the utility bill.

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On December 31st in 1997, the government of Sweden reported that more Swedes had died that year than were born, the first time this had happened in Sweden since 1809. The government also confirmed that no Swede born in 1809 was, at the moment, still alive.

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In Denmark, New Year’s Eve (nytårsaften in Danish) is celebrated, familiarly enough, with fireworks and champagne. After consuming the New Year’s Eve evening meal of three courses – including the traditional dessert, Marzipan ring cake – thousands of inebriated revelers gather at midnight in the city square to cheer and set off their fireworks, as the clock on the Copenhagen City Hall strikes twelve. The rest of the country, home alone finishing off what remains of the champagne, tune into the national television station, DR1, to watch the Queen’s New Year’s Speech on the program, Dinner for One.

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In Peru, a unique tradition marks the last day of the year. Elaborate effigies, called Años Viejos (Old Years), are created to represent people and events from the past year. Often the persons these effigies represent are political leaders whom the public intensely dislikes. The dummies are made of highly incendiary materials, such as straw, newspaper and old clothes, affixed with papier-mâché masks, and then stuffed with firecrackers. At midnight the effigies are lit on fire, the resulting explosions symbolizing a burning away of the past year, as well as any people or flammable structures that happen to be standing nearby. The origin of this New Year’s Eve tradition is unknown, but apparently began after an epidemic of yellow fever left swept the country.

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Another popular New Year’s Eve tradition in Peru is the wearing of yellow underwear, which is said to attract positive energies for the New Year. It is not known, though, how many revelers wear their yellow underwear on the outside of their clothes.

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UTC, or Coordinated Universal Time (in casual usage, Greenwich Mean Time), is the standard against which all the world’s clocks and time zones are set. The date December 31, 1994, was skipped altogether in the Republic of Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert Islands) as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands changed time zones from UTC-11 to UTC+13, and UTC-10 to UTC+14, respectively. A current resolution before Congress, proposing that U.S. clocks be adjusted to skip most of the dates occurring between the years 2001 to 2008, stands little chance of consideration, according to its sponsors.

Vice President Dick Cheney admitted during an interview with ABC News that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods – such as waterboarding – used by the CIA on terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite both the Pentagon and the CIA internally prohibiting waterboarding, and testimony from Stephen Jackson, acting head of the Dept. of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, to the House Judiciary Committee that there is no legal sanction for these tactics.

During a live broadcast interview, actor William Shatner – a k a Captain James T. Kirk of Star Trek fame – revealed that he had inside information confirming that there is, in fact, life on the planet Mars.

Researchers at the Department of Biology at Binghamton University in Australia who were studying yawning among parrots discovered that the birds do not generally engage in contagious yawning, as humans do, and that yawning is the body’s way of cooling off an overheated brain.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin announced that five FCC Commissioners and other Commission staff would fan out across the country and hold town hall meetings, workshops and roundtables, all in an effort to raise awareness and educate consumers on the upcoming transition from analog to digital television.

The U.S. Gross National Debt – the amount of money borrowed by the General Fund – reached a record $10 trillion.

A recently discovered script written in the 1970’s by the BBC and the British government, and to be broadcast in the event of nuclear attack, instructed the public to “stay calm and remain in your own homes,” and to “turn off fuel supplies, ration food to last 14 days, and conserve water” – with a warning not to waste it by flushing the lavatory.

During a radio interview with The Daily Telegraph of London, former NASA astronaut and moonwalker Dr. Edgar Mitchell – a veteran of the Apollo 14 moon mission – claimed that aliens do exist, that the space agency had had contact with these aliens, described as “little people who look strange to us,” and that the extraterrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions, but that alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

George W. Bush became the first U.S. President to revoke a pardon, one he had granted only a day before to real estate developer Isaac Robert Toussie of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had been convicted of making false statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and of mail fraud, after learning of political contributions totaling more than $40,000 to Republicans by the man’s father before Toussie’s clemency petition was filed with the White House.

Barack Obama became the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.

The invidious, so-called Obama parody, however, contradicts this by resurrecting the word negro, not in its familiar historical role as a nobler affirmation to the then common derogatory term colored, but now as a cultural misidentification of Blacks – a kinder, gentler substitute for the word nigger. It shows that the negative stereotypes ascribed to Blacks have not been eradicated from our society. It allows one to hide behind the tenet of free speech and wink at the spirit of parody with a performance that allows racist Whites once again to laugh at, not with, Black people.

The denigration of Blacks is a crucial part of the racist argument against full human status of Black people. The name one responds to is a measure of one’s sense of self worth. Similarly, the collective response of a minority group to a name can have devastating effects on their lives, especially if they themselves did not choose the name.

To place this in historical perspective, the origins of the word “negro” – from the Spanish word negro, meaning black, and the Greek word necro meaning dead – clearly defined the state of Africans at the birth of the slave trade; it dehumanized them and devalued their historical worth as a people in order to, conversely, ensure their value as slaves.

Today, a generation of White children who grew up idolizing Black sports figures and listening to Black music would no doubt profess some confusion at any effort to define the social distinctions of Blacks as a minority group. But Black people are distinctly different; no American minority group has been caricatured and denigrated as often or in as many ways as Black people. Accomplishments by Blacks outside the populist spheres of sports and entertainment are underreported and overshadowed by a steady deluge of images, in all forms of media, portraying Blacks as violent, intellectually inferior and criminal, incapable of policing their own lives much less the national community. The election of Mr. Obama notwithstanding, these images engender and embolden the racist diatribe.

It is not the creation of the so-called Obama parody that worries me, it is its embrace by key figures of the Republican party and their apologists, for whom the social lessons of history are a blur.

Meet this season’s coolest police detective as Francisco Vargas Echevarra stars as Detective Lieutenant Frank “Bala” Bullitt in the 2011 sequel to the 1968 film, Bullitt, entitled “Bite the Bullitt!”

Bala Bullitt is the toughest cop on the tough upper east side of Guayaquil’s San Francisco district. Using his wits and a modified 1986 Yugo, Detective Lieutenant Bala is the city’s last line of defense against the naked brutality of Guayaquil’s criminal nudist colonies.

In this sequel, the owner of Isla del Fuego’s Broken Arms Inn, Hernando el Mentiroso, has been subpeonaed to testify in open court before a closed-door session of Mayor Jaime Honda’s City Council. The Honda Civic Improvement sub-committee has been investigating recent inroads by the Department of Public Works into Isla del Fuego’s lucrative binocular business. Bala Bullitt and his crack squad of action addicts have been assigned to protect Senor el Mentiroso until hearings start the coming Monday, or until the electric bill for City Hall is paid in full, whichever comes first.

Things turn ugly when underworld kingpin Diego “Nariz de la Aguja” Pendejo, known as The King of the Basement Apartment Rentals, puts out a contract on Senor el Mentiroso’s wife, only to learn that Senor el Mentiroso is a bachelor. Thus follows the gato y raton game of cat-and-mouse played out in the streets of San Francisco, Guayquil, including a thrilling remake of the original wild and woolly car chase, this time featuring Bala’s 1986 Yugo versus a 1963, 125 cc Yamaha Fun Scooter!

For sheer heart-pounding excitement and nonstop action, your entertainment dollar couldn’t travel farther if it had a passport! See “Bite the Bullitt!”

Breaking Bad News

No one likes to break bad news, and though you may not be able to give the news gently, you can still be sensitive or, failing that, you can yuk it up. In any event, avoid euphemisms, such as “He’s past suffering now,” when you really mean, “About time he’s gone.” Remember that silence is a powerful tool, but long silences may cause the aggrieved party to start humming.

Now, let’s start by identifying the person who receives the bad news as the aggrieved party or aggrieved, for short, and the person who bears the bad news will be known as you. And while the one who delivers the bad news may well be viewed as bad news, it is important to remember that this is a normal reaction, and not an entirely accurate description of you.

When delivering bad news, give the information clearly, in manageable chunks and in response to the aggrieved’s questions. If the content is dire, make the seriousness of this clear by wearing all black and carrying a trident. Observe the aggrieved’s reactions – if he (yes, to include she) loses consciousness, this is an indication that the aggrieved has heard enough.

Before starting to communicate any bad news, plan what will be discussed.

• First, confirm that the news is indeed bad. No sense wasting effort on someone who’ll get over it by lunchtime.

• Try to create an environment in which the aggrieved is comfortable. Candles, incense and peppermint are a good start; sing-a-longs are generally discouraged.

• Ensure privacy and openness; keep a box of tissues handy. Consider that a desk between you and the aggrieved will only serve to act as a barrier – unless of course he has a knife, in which case those tissues will come in handy stemming the blood flow until an ambulance arrives.

• Negotiate the time you have for the aggrieved. It will help them to know that you are allowing adequate time, but check your watch frequently to remind them that they’re on the clock.

• Ask the aggrieved whom, if anyone, they would like to have with them. This need not be a next of kin, but you should stop short of allowing anyone who has recently passed on.

• If the aggrieved is under 16 years of age, keep the door open.

The Element Of Shock

Remember: Bad news will cause a shock reaction, even if it is expected. Before disclosing their reactions, fears and worries, the aggrieved should be allowed to sit quietly, preferably without any sharp objects nearby.

There is always an element of shock when bad news is put into words and reality sets in. During this time, the aggrieved is unlikely to retain any further information or even hear what is said. At times such as these, when words become meaningless, consider bringing in a mime.

In a busy environment, it may be difficult to give enough time to someone who seems unable to grasp the situation. Understand your limitations and suggest that the aggrieved sit outside and cool his heels until you can find someone dumb enough to take your place.

Sometimes it is difficult to gauge the aggrieved’s reactions. His words might indicate acceptance of a situation, but his body language may suggest something quite different. To assess the situation properly, it is useful to tell the aggrieved how you are interpreting his reaction. For instance, you might say, “You say that you understand, but you look a bit puzzled to me.” This allows the aggrieved time to reconsider the propriety of actually shooting the messenger, while affording you an extra moment or two to reflect on the fine art of groveling.

Keep in mind that the more information you give at any one time, the less will be remembered. Start with the salient facts, and only move on when the aggrieved has actually come back from the bathroom.

Learn to listen attentively and acknowledge the aggrieved’s reactions. For example, practice nodding in a mirror; keep a slice of onion in your shirt pocket – when an empathetic response is required, lean your head forward and inhale deeply. He will think you are sighing, and the resulting copious flow of tears will earn you much-needed brownie points.

Use open-ended questions and statements to encourage the aggrieved to disclose his feelings, worries and concerns. For example:

• This must be difficult for you; it certainly is for me.

• I can see that you are angry, and I guess I would be too in this situation, though I might not try to stomp on your neck.

• You seem frightened to me. Are you frightened? Are you really frightened? You want me to give you something to be frightened about?

• Hey, how about those Knicks?

When The Aggrieved Party Is A Patient

When bad news is due to a medical condition, most people will have some idea what their symptoms mean. Others may have received some previous information; it may even have been about you. If this is the case, and the possibility exists that there is damaging photographic evidence, it is important to establish exactly what the patient knows or suspects before dispensing any helpful advice.

Questions might include:

• How would you describe me to a sketch artist?

• Ever wonder what you’d look like on the side of a milk carton?

• You wouldn’t happen to know a good lawyer, would you?

• So, how about those Knicks?

Occasionally the recipient of bad news will fall silent and seem completely unprepared or unable to respond. It may be helpful here to acknowledge his silence with a response like, “Say something, for crying out loud!” Give the patient some time before speaking (or yelling) again, and if he still does not respond, offer to meet him again at Le Cirque or Peter Luger’s Steak House, with the provision that he pick up the check.

It is important to give information at the patient’s pace; this may mean that he will not receive all the information at the same time. He is more likely to accurately absorb the message if it is given in manageable chunks. You will know when the patient has heard enough when he either changes the subject or falls asleep. He may ask you not to go on, giving reasons such as “I don’t understand all this,” or “All I’m interested in is the money; read the will.”

Only give information to someone other than the patient when:

a) the patient cannot pay,

or

b) the patient can pay but needs a translator.

If the bad news is about diagnosis and treatment, there is generally time to prepare in advance. Further questions from the patient, however, may contain the propensity for more bad news, for which you have had no time to prepare. In such a situation where you do not know the answer, make it up, or offer to refer the question to someone more appropriate, preferably someone more adept at lying.

Addressing The Future

Lastly, when you are sure that the bad news has been absorbed and first reactions have been addressed, it is important to consider the future.

If the bad news has been broken in public, it is important that neither of you be standing near a major body of water, as some aggrieved who consider shedding this mortal coil often look to take a buddy with them. If the aggrieved appears very distressed, it could help for you to run, as being chased is likely to call the attention of the proper authorities to your plight.

Remember, if the aggrieved is also a patient, he may ask questions about treatment, prognosis and other aspects of his future. If the diagnosis is terminal, this could mean more bad news, especially for you. Offer him inappropriate reassurance in order to maintain hope, both his and yours. Encourage him to set unrealistic goals for the future, but avoid expressions such as “What you need to do is…” and instead, offer to finish his dessert for him.

Finally, you may want to address specific issues with the aggrieved, such as not extending his cellphone contract. Remember, what’s left of his future is in your hands.

I had watched Kennedy’s inauguration on television at Sugarbear’s apartment. Ronald was one of my best friends and he hated that nickname, but he so resembled Post Sugar Crisp’s advertising mascot that, after I had called him Sugarbear in class one day, the nickname stuck; even his mother began calling him Sugarbear.

Sugarbear’s family had this wonderful console model television that his father and two friends had lugged up five flights of stairs. His dad had found an outdoor antenna, but did not have any of the hardware to attach it securely to the roof. So he tied it to the fire escape outside the living room window with some clothesline.

One afternoon I was watching television at Sugarbear’s house. His mom remarked how pasty white Jacqueline Kennedy appeared. I had to duck a couch pillow she threw at me when I reminded her that, on a black and white picture tube, all Caucasians looked pasty white.

A year later we were all fairly pale—frightened and shaking—when President Kennedy announced on television that there were offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida. One of my neighbors, Karl, a jazz musician who had graduated from Cornell Medical School but never practiced, explained to me that the Russian-made missiles there had a range of 2000 miles, which meant that Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, where we lived, was within range. Karl seemed to know so much about everything; he had introduced me to jazz, taking me to see Stan Getz at the Village Vanguard for my tenth birthday. His girlfriend, Alma, whom he introduced to everyone but me as his wife, was crying as we watched the President that night. Karl was holding us both, trying to reassure us that CONELRAD would issue an emergency radio broadcast well ahead of any approaching missiles, giving us all enough time to get to the fallout shelter in the basement of my elementary school.

On November 22nd the following year, all time stopped — President Kennedy had been assassinated. I’ll never forget Officer MacDougall at the corner, waving my friends and me across the street on our way home from school. I had seen him every school day for as long as I could remember. He had brought Sugarbear and me to the stables where the mounted police kept their horses, broken up a fight between an older kid and me and taken me to the Henry St. Settlement House where the Police Athletic League ran their boxing program. And now, after his supervisor had just said something to him and driven off, Officer MacDougall was calling me over to him. When I reached him I saw his face; he looked as though all the blood had been drained from him. He hugged me like I was one of his own kids, then motioned for me to rejoin my friends, all the while saying nothing.

Later, Karl made no effort to suppress his anger. He said that they would never have allowed 24 years of Kennedys—Jack, Bobby and Ted—in the White House. I had wondered who “they” were, but it seemed that everyone in the building knew, and no one believed it was Lee Harvey Oswald.

As the decade progressed, with a race riot across the Hudson River in Newark, New Jersey, student protests at Columbia University over the Vietnam War, and two more political assassinations, I felt energized. These were my people—angry at a lack of representation in local government, fed up with poverty and police brutality; my war—teenagers, drafted to fight in Vietnam for the benefit of a power elite, our plight largely ignored by the general public until the Caucasian sons of elected officials started dying; and my heroes—Robert Kennedy, he more than any politico then or now had the pathos to understand that dignity should be afforded to all people, and Martin Luther King, whom I admired but actually felt less of a connection.

1970 brought my own involuntary participation in that conflict 10,000 miles from my favorite movie theater, and a perfect foil for a generation—Richard Nixon. Never had one man done so much for Halloween masks as had “Tricky Dick.”

When President Nixon resigned, all the air left the balloon. All the moments since then did not mark a generation so much as they stained the glass through which I looked at the world. For a quarter century I walked lockstep with everyone else, as though slogging through mud. Then came the morning of September 11th, 2001; the numbness and fear I felt a generation earlier returned, but this time without the resonance of reason, that assurance that—somehow, some way—the President would resolve this, had to resolve this. My sense of our political conduct since that day is like that of a blind man throwing darts—until now.

Barack Obama has emerged to reach across the gulf of age and race, class and ethnicity, as John Kennedy tried, and to an even greater extent, his brother Robert succeeded. He has that calm demeanor that allows one to believe he’ll approach even the direst circumstance with reason and restraint. It doesn’t take courage to fire first, and Mr. Obama seems to have learned that lesson at an early age. And, yes, he is Black. It seems momentous now, but I remember a conversation I overheard after David Dinkins, New York City’s first Black mayor, was defeated by Rudy Giuliani. A fellow said, “Well, we had a Black mayor. We got that out of the way. We won’t see that for a while.”

If the presidency of Barack Obama is allowed to become nothing more than a blip on the radar screen, then those people in this country who still view Blacks with enmity will have a similar excuse with which to exclude future participation by people of color at the highest political level. If Mr. Obama’s success as President is to be more than a momentary crack in that most obvious of glass ceilings, then it must be a success for all people. It must embrace a sense of fairness and egalitarianism, and allow us to believe that, once again, anything is possible, and there is a reason to pursue a greater good.

Sooner or later you will be asked to do a presentation, one requiring a full display of your creative and oratorical skills. So, how do you overwhelm your audience when your greatest skill heretofore has been talking behind the backs of your coworkers?

The first thing is to realize that all communication is an art form, unless you are to art what a bicycle is to a fish. So, if you believe Monet was a top-ten hit for Tommy James and The Shondells, move on.

Step two is to understand that there is no single recipe for success, or meatloaf, for that matter. When it comes to presentations, an occasional break with tradition may pay off – at four to one on a muddy track. More often than not though, an iconoclastic approach will only revile and repel your audience, which is usually not the best way to further one’s career.

For you, the answer is the poster. Yes, that stalwart of boardrooms and adolescent bedrooms, the poster offers style, format, color, readability, attractiveness, and showmanship – traits that, when properly applied, easily camouflage one’s lack of knowledge. Remember, when using posters, take the time to show off.

POSTER LAYOUT AND FORMAT

DON’T create your poster on just one or two large boards, especially billboards; these 45 x 100-foot homages to nearsightedness are clumsy and a real nuisance to lug around. They frequently don’t fit well into the wall space you are provided, and they don’t lend themselves well to rearrangement or last-minute modifications. They strain your muscles and your patience, and when they fall down, they tend to crush anyone standing beneath them.

DO make up your poster in a large number of separate sections of roughly comparable size. Resist the temptation, however, of shaping each section irregularly so as to resemble a jigsaw puzzle. Mount each standard-sized piece of paper individually on a colored board of its own of slightly larger dimensions. This frames each poster segment with a nice border. Where the borders are restricted, and frames  prove inadequate, consider using barbed wire.

DON’T write an overlong – Dare I say, inelegantly insouciant? – or miasmatic title; excessive jargon, hypenation, colons or inappropriate use of French are a bore. N’est-ce pas?

DO keep your titles short and on target. After all, good titles simply ask questions, like, “Who just took your seat?”

DON’T make the title type size larger than the poster itself.

DO make your title large enough to be easily read from a considerable distance, say, Cleveland. The title should never exceed the width of your poster area; leave enough free space for doodling. Never occupy more than two lines, as most municipalities have laws prohibiting this and will issue you a ticket. If things don’t fit, shorten the title, or consider the possibility that you had nothing to say in the first place and remove the title altogether. Remember, a title in all capital letters beats two pair and three of a kind.

DON’T leave people wondering about who did the work. ‘Fess up and take your medicine!

DO put the names of all authors and institutional affiliations just below the title. It’s also a nice touch to supply the full names of any correctional institutions they may have attended. Refrain from vulgar displays of ego by using the same large type size for your name as you did for the title; instead, use something smaller and more discreet to announce your presence, like a pocketknife.

DON’T use too small a type size for your poster. This is the single most common error, aside from writing in crayon. Use of 10- or 12-point type will only please your optometrist. And never, ever, use 2-point type except under a court order.

DO use a type size that draws a crowd around your poster. Failing that, offer free beer.

DON’T pick a font simply because it was the only one left after all the others had paired off.

DO use a high-quality laser printer to print your poster. Where funding is an issue, select someone with legible handwriting. Also, consider adjusting the kerning, i.e., the space between each letter, to reduce the risk from pickpockets.

DON’T pick a font where the lower-case ‘m’ resembles someone bending over at the waist.

DO design your poster as though it were the layout for a magazine. Select fonts and sizes that work well together, and dismiss the ones that don’t with only a week’s severance.

DON’T confuse your reader by having them jump all over the poster area to follow your lead. Instead, lay out numbered footprints on the floor.

DO, by all means, use colors in your poster, and always try to use them without letting them know they’re being used.

DON’T, however, use gratuitous colors, nor should you use white after Labor Day. Polka dots are prone to misuse, so the less used, the better. And unless you are producing a rabbit from your hat, avoid black light.

DON’T vary the type sizes and typefaces, especially in the same sentence.

POSTER CONTENT

DO be descriptive, but understand your audience – you are not performing at a stag party.

DON’T use sexist language; avoid terms like “sportsman,” instead, use “brown nose.”

DO remove all pronouns from your text and replace them with hand puppets.

DON’T use chalk outlines to represent people.

DO break up your poster into sections when it appears that there is excessive loitering. Remember, you are not limited to a 150 words, unless it exceeds your vocabulary.

DON’T expect anyone to spend more than 3 to 5 minutes looking at your poster. If they do, count the silverware before they leave.

DO get right to the point, and remember the most important principle: Don’t miss the last bus home! In clear, no-nonsense language, your poster must explain:

1) the origin of the universe;
2) why you should never shave the cat;
3) how your presentation completely embarrasses the last guy who stood up here;
4) and how clothes make the man.

DON’T write your poster as if your life depended on it, even if it does.

DON’T waste lots of precious space on messy details; skip straight to the cheesecake.

DO recall that a poster should be accessible. A little informality can help, but stop short of calling everyone “baby.”

DON’T assume everyone in the audience is an expert, unless they’re all smirking at you.

DO consider adding a helpful tutorial section to your poster. For example, consider adding:

1) a vowel to the end of your name;
2) a short course in defensive driving techniques;
3) photographs taken with an infrared lens;
4) a definition of synthetic lethality with an accompanying demonstration on your ex.

DON’T leave out the cottage cheese overnight.

DO give credit where it’s due; just do so in a low voice.

DON’T leave out references; drop a dime on your nearest competitor.

DO supply a context for your work. Cite references or relevant statutes before being placed in handcuffs.

POSTER PRESENTATION

DON’T use scented hygiene products that remind your audience of a turnpike rest stop.

DO realize that many songs, dances and legends can explain away your various nervous tics.

DON’T stand too close to the audience; it is much easier to deflect objects hurled at you from a distance.

DO treat people you encounter with courtesy and respect; do not, however, follow them home.

DON’T put your hands in the pockets of your sport coat if you’re not actually wearing you’re sport coat.

DO offer a firm handshake to everyone in the audience; this should leave little time for your presentation and get you off the hook.

DON’T act as though you are desperate for the audience’s affection; on the other hand, don’t flip them off either.

DO ask for clarification if you do not understand someone’s question, then ask again and again until they tire of speaking to you.

DON’T fidget or slouch, especially if you are lying on the floor.

DO go on the offensive when challenged about things you don’t know.

DON’T attempt to explain away your nervous foot-tapping as Morse Code.

DO remember when arguing with an audience member that two wrongs do not make a right, but that three do.

DON’T use a correction fluid, such as “White-Out,” to conceal a pimple.

DO offer to explain complex formulae as soon as you get back from break.

DON’T tease the audience; it can only come back to haunt you later when, after the presentation, they are outside waiting for you with baseball bats.

Mr. Haggard, you may remember, admitted meeting with Mr. Haas, a young volunteer at Mr. Haggard’s Colorado church, in a hotel room where he received drugs, which he claims he threw away, and a massage from Mr. Haas but claims he did not engage in any sexual activity with the young man.

Mr. Haggard is not without his coterie of true believers. They are convinced he discarded the drugs without consuming any, though had he presence of mind he would have sold the drugs, and thus recouped the price he paid for the hotel room. These same folk are willing to accept that he took it upon himself to act solely upon himself — with an audience, mind you. But stopping short at a massage?

Now, no one blames Mr. Haggard for not turning down a massage. Is it really that odd to occasionally succumb to the vicissitudes of life and retreat from church dogma into that exquisitely physical pleasure that may well enervate the soul? I would argue that any elevated sense of disbelief stems from Mr. Haggard’s own stated invocation of will power, a force truly unlike anything mere mortals possess. I mean, who among us can say that we, too, would have stopped just short?

Then again, perhaps Mr. Haggard the evangelical was unable to sublimate Mr. Haggard the corporeal habitué, otherwise he might have remembered a passage from the Bible, John 8:32, also found etched into the marble wall in the main lobby of CIA’s Langley, Virginia headquarters — “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” I often wish, though, that the sentence started with “You” instead of “Ye,” as I have a friend named Ye and I don’t want him to think I’m picking on him.

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Speaking of writing on the wall, when is that impeachable rogue, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich going to see an optometrist? Even while the wheels of jurisprudence are leaving their tire tracks up his back, he blithely makes the rounds of popular talk shows, like The View, and claims to have gained some perspective on his plight by channeling the likes of such key luminaries of color as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, whose only apparent relevance to Mr. Blagojevich stems from their having spent some time in the slammer.

I have apparently misread their chapters in history, as I am unable to recall either of these three ever casting themselves as endearing media darlings.

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One of my favorite things Russian, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, was in the news recently when he ordered natural gas shut off to the Ukraine, in the process cutting supplies to Europe and leaving hundreds of thousands of shivering gas customers in the Balkans and Eastern Europe with an unmistakable message, one loudly heard throughout the 1970’s spate of blaxploitation films: We’re here and we’re badder than ever.

By the way, does the Continent — Europe, like Madonna and Bozo, is an unmistakable single-named icon — really need to be reminded that their cold war is but a refurbished Cold War?

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According to a story in the January 29, 2009, edition of the New York Times, bonuses paid to Wall Street workers totaled $18.4 billion for 2008, the sixth-highest payout ever, according to the New York State comptroller. I am sure that this sum was well earned, but considering that brokerage firms alone lost more than $35 billion, I wonder exactly what these workers were being compensated for? It couldn’t have been for their temerity to woo an initial, opaque $300 billion bailout, could it?

Yes, my personal choice for one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, the oddly phrased Toynbee Tiles first appeared in Philadelphia’s streets in 1983, a simpler time when inspired young poets could be found scrawling misspelled lewd phrases into wet cement.

Inscribed with a somewhat cryptic message, the tiles themselves are license plate-sized rectangles made of linoleum, tar paper, asphalt crack filler and an unknown form of glue, and embedded flush into the pavement. They are most often white but can be found imbued with colors, and are sometimes accompanied by smaller adjacent tiles bearing an additional, mostly incomprehensible message.

How the tiles got into the street is a bit of a mystery, as no one has ever been seen pressing them into the pavement. Then again, no one apparently saw the Mafia’s “boss of all bosses” Big Paul Castellano and his driver Thomas Bilotti shot to death in front of a packed Sparks Steakhouse on busy East 46th Street in Manhattan either. Timing is everything, I guess.

National Public Radio, The Philadelphia Inquirer and local news affiliates have reported on these enigmatic pieces of graffiti, which are scattered about two dozen locations and bear, for the most part, the following inscription:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK’S 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER

The Toynbee Tiles were thought to be the work of a lone, local street artist, but three dozen or so have been found in New York City, and tiles have also turned up in Boston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. — one only a block from the White House. One might suspect the artist is piling up frequent traveler miles on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor run, but at least one tile has been found in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Atlantic City, and Aberdeen and Edgewood, Maryland. Apparently tired of the harsh winter weather — and willing to do something about it — tiles have also been spotted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Santiago, Chile; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. A tile found next to a Toynbee Tile in Rio (by the Sea-o) bore the curious inscription:

Escriva: Toynbee A,
2624 S. 7th Street
Phila, PA, 19148-4610,
USA

This, as it turns out, is a real address in South Philadelphia, though the occupant is not A. Toynbee and he refuses to discuss the subject of tiles, regardless of their origin.

So who, then, is this “A. Toynbee” of the “TOYNBEE IDEA” portion of the inscription? Well, the word on the street is that he is Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), the late British historian who harbored some unconventional views on civilizations and on raising the dead. Among his more noted quotes:

• The human race’s prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenseless against ourselves.

• Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

• I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

The second part of the inscription on the Toynbee Tiles, “IN KUBRICK’S 2001,” is a reference to the late film director Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. While the remaining portions of the inscription, “RESURRECT DEAD/ON PLANET JUPITER” may bring to mind the ending of Kubrick’s movie, there have been some other suggestions that are intriguing:

• A brief blurb published in the May 14, 1983, edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer spoke of a man named James Morasco, a local carpenter whose otherwise unknown group, the Minority Association, campaigned to resurrect dead Earthlings on the planet Jupiter.

• In the early 1980’s David Mamet wrote a short play titled 4 A.M., about a radio talk show host conversing with a “lone nut” who cross-referenced Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and resurrecting the dead on Jupiter.

• Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury wrote a short story, The Toynbee Convector, that alludes to Toynbee’s idea that in order to survive, humankind must always aim far beyond what is practically possible, in order to reach something barely within reach.

• Arthur C. Clarke’s short story Jupiter V contains elements in common with 2001 — the screenplay of which he wrote along with Kubrick — and mentions Toynbee several times.

Tiles have been known to contain additional messages that delve deep into their author’s paranoia and ambiguity over media giants John Knight of Knight-Ridder News Service, NBC, CBS, Group ‘W’ Westinghouse, KYW Radio, Time, Time Warner, Fox and Universal.

Though much speculation centers on Morasco as the source of the tiles, his widow flatly denies his involvement; that, however, has not stopped a Philadelphia production company from proceeding with a documentary about Morasco and the Toynbee Tiles.

What the tiles have given rise to, though, is a lot of speculation. Who is actually responsible for laying the tiles and why? Theories suggest everything from the Bahá’í faith to extraterrestrial intervention. In any event, it certainly is but one more reason to visit Philadelphia.

Given the acid test of any prediction—Did it happen or not?! — the year 2008 proved to be a bust for prognosticators: Nostradamus buff John Hogue predicted a global famine, psychic Michael Smith foresaw a super volcano in Washington state or British Columbia erupt, covering the entire Earth in ash. By comparison, Miss Olivia, my 3-year-old Boxer, enjoyed considerable forecasting success pawing at the eventual winner of Major League Baseball games — one of her many uses for The New York Times. Despite these failures and much public derision, predictions continue unabated.

A look at two earlier examples offers some insight into the mindset of the 9/11 hijackers. The August 19, 2001, airing of CBS’s 60 Minutes featured reporter Bob Simon interviewing Hamas operative Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh’s words were translated into English by CBS as follows: “I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness.”

Never mind that the Koran makes no mention whatsoever of virgins, but 70 of them? Had Abu Wardeh visited my New York City neighborhood, he would have considered revising that number down somewhat. And what of his implied reference to an afterlife? Many religions claim access to this promised land, but the truth is that there is no empirical evidence to prove that it exists — or for that matter any claim regarding its inhabitants.

§§§§§§§§

So then, what should one make of the claims of someone with a rigorous background in science, such as retired German chemist Professor Otto Rossler, who predicted nothing less than the end of the world should CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, test its Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and, at $7 billion, most expensive atom smasher?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a 17-mile-long doughnut-shaped tunnel that lies near CERN’s Geneva headquarters at depths ranging from 170 to 600 feet. Built to smash sub-atomic particles together at nearly the speed of light, the LHC experiments aim to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life.

Prof. Rossler feared that the experiment could create a devastating quasar — a mass of energy fueled by several tiny black holes — inside the Earth. “Nothing will happen for at least four years,” he said. “Then someone will spot a light ray coming out of the Indian Ocean during the night and no one will be able to explain it.

“A few weeks later, we will see a similar beam of particles coming out of the soil on the other side of the planet. Then we will know there is a little quasar inside the planet.”

According to Prof. Rossler, as the quasar devours the world from within, the two jets emanating from it will grow and catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis will occur at the points where they emerged from the Earth. “The weather will change completely, wiping out life, and very soon the whole planet will be eaten in a magnificent scenario — if you could watch it from the moon. A Biblical Armageddon. Even cloud and fire will form, as it says in the Bible.”

§§§§§§§§

Prof. Rossler was not alone in his dire prediction, as a handful of scientists believed that the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could “eat” the planet from within. Together they attempted to halt the startup of the LHC through the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that the experiment violated the right to life.

The court, however, rejected calls for a temporary delay on the project, and on September 10, 2008, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider accelerated its first protons amid considerable fanfare.

Inside the control room, physicists and engineers cautiously shot the beam down part of the circular tunnel, stopping it before it completed its loop underneath the villages and cow pastures at the French-Swiss border. One hour after starting up, on the first attempt to send the beam circling all the way around the tunnel, it successfully completed the trip, to raucous applause. Newspapers worldwide reported that the first experiment of the world’s largest atom smasher had gone off without a hitch.

§§§§§§§§

The goal was to finish the initial testing of the LHC and to start doing physics by the end of October 2008, but on September 19, 2008, one of the liquid helium pipes used to keep the superconducting magnets cool sprang a leak. One to two tons of frigid liquid helium leaked out and evaporated. Of the LHC’s 1232 bending magnets, 154 had warmed up as a result of the leak.

These magnets, however, cannot be cooled quickly; they must be “trained.” The LHC magnets are so powerful that their magnetic field tugs on the coils enough to alter their shape. The training process involves slowly increasing the current in the magnets so that the coils can settle into their final position. Each time the magnets warm up they must be retrained and recooled.

CERN reported that the equipment mishap would not endanger the general public. They estimated that 6 months would be required to complete repairs on the damaged equipment and to finish training the magnets. The LHC had not completed its schedule of experiments as a result of the accident, thus the full catalog of experiments would have to begin anew. As of this writing, efforts are again underway in the European Court of Human Rights to halt the experiment.

The LHC itself is scheduled to fire up again sometime in the spring of 2009.

Once, I thought I had come up with a novel way to get the garbage into the cans. I would wait until the janitor—there were no building superintendents back then—put the trash cans out on the curb. Then I would open our living room window, climb onto the fire escape, and with the precision of a B-52 pilot, drop those nasty shopping bags full of chicken bones, blackened fruit, moldy welfare cheese and God-knows-what right into those cans.

I would like to say that I never got an opportunity to carry out my scheme, but being grounded for a month was enough to convince me never to try it again.

Later, I got to hear my mom and her friends declare that, after seeing me drag myself and the garbage through the building, I was moving slower than molasses in January, a quaint phrase but one that does not do justice to the fleet-footedness of that goo.

§§§§§§§§

At 12:40 pm on Wednesday, January 19th, 1919, an unusually warm day in Boston, a loud rumbling noise, followed by a “rat-a-tat-tat” that witnesses described as sounding like a machine gun, startled residents of the city’s North End, which straddles Boston Harbor. The ground shook like a wooden elevated station platform annoyed by a passing train; this was followed by the grating sound of tearing metal.

All watched horrified as a 50-foot-high steel tank, located at 529 Commercial Street, broke apart and unleashed an enormous wave of molasses—15 feet high and 160 feet wide.

For everyone in the area, the world went black—or as dark as molasses—as the monstrous wave of future pancake syrup, moving at a robust 35 miles per hour and exerting a pressure of 2 tons per square foot, engulfed everything within a two-block area. Bridget Clougherty was standing on the porch of her house, when she was knocked over by the wave and drowned; Anthony di Stasio was walking home with his sisters from the Michelangelo School when he was picked up by the wave and carried on its crest as though he were body surfing.

As this early version of The Blob surged along Commercial Street, it broke the girders of the Boston Elevated Railway’s Atlantic Avenue station, lifting a train off the tracks; buildings on the adjacent pier were flattened or swept off their foundations and crushed; employees of the Department of Public Works, firefighters on duty in a nearby station, and children playing in the street were knocked over and drowned, or crushed by the sheer force of 26,000,000 pounds of molasses.

The next day, the Boston Post carried this graphic account: “The sight that greeted the first of the rescuers on the scene is almost indescribable in words. Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form—whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was… Horses died like so many flies on sticky flypaper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings—men and women—suffered likewise.”

The Boston Globe reported that people “were picked up by a rush of air and hurled many feet.” Others had debris hurled at them from the rush of sweet-smelling air. A truck—certainly one of the larger pieces of debris—was picked up and hurled into Boston Harbor by the onrushing wave. Twenty-one people and several horses were killed. The approximately 150 who were injured included people, horses, and dogs; coughing fits became one of the most common ailments after the initial blast. Property damage was estimated at more than $100,000,000 in today’s dollars.

First to the scene were 116 cadets from the U.S.S. Nantucket, a training ship of the Massachusetts Nautical School. They worked to keep curious onlookers from getting in the way of rescuers wading into knee-deep mire to pull out survivors. Soon the Boston Police, Red Cross, Army and other Navy personnel arrived. Many of these people worked through the night. The injured were so numerous that doctors and surgeons set up a makeshift hospital in a nearby building. Some of the dead were so glazed over in molasses that they were hard to recognize. After four days, the search for victims was halted. Two victims who were pulled from the molasses on that last day could not even be identified.

Why Had The Molasses Tank Burst?

At the time, in addition to being used as a sweetener, molasses was fermented to produce rum and ethyl alcohol, the active ingredient in several other alcoholic beverages and a key component in the manufacturing of munitions at the time. Originally built by the Purity Distilling Company four years earlier, the tank could hold up to 2.5 million gallons of molasses.

The Boston newspapers reported that the tank had exploded. The tank’s then current owner, U.S. Industrial Alcohol, claimed that anarchists had dynamited it as an act of sabotage. The company had reaped huge profits during World War I, converting molasses into alcohol to make munitions and providing the doughboys with an alternative to the local drinking water. As a rich and powerful symbol of capitalism, Industrial Alcohol was a ripe target for anarchists. A number of the company’s facilities in New York had been bombed earlier in the decade, and Boston’s Italian immigrant community was home to some of the most radical anarchists in the country. There had been 40 explosions in Boston and its environs in the past year alone. And when an employee reported that he had received a bomb threat against the Commercial Street tank, it lent weight to the company’s version of events.

The families of those killed and injured by the blast—mostly poor Irish and Italian laborers—contended that U.S.I.A. was at fault and should compensate them for their loss and suffering. The Massachusetts Superior Court appointed Colonel Hugh Ogden, a former military officer, to hold hearings on the matter. What was found was enough to drive one to drink.

The tank’s location was chosen because of its proximity to the wharf, but the company showed no concern for the safety of the people who lived and worked in the densely populated neighborhood around it. The man who oversaw construction of the tank, Arthur Jell, had no technical or mechanical training; he was unable to read a blueprint or to determine specifications that would make the steel in the tank safe. No engineers or architects were consulted, nor did an architect or engineer ever inspect the tank.

With Prohibition looming, the company was rushing to finish construction while there was still a legal demand for the alcoholic beverage use of its molasses. The strength of the tank was not tested before it was filled. To avoid costly interruptions, Jell ignored employees and others who had warned that the tank was unsound.

The tank had leaked or “wept” molasses consistently since its construction in 1915. U.S.I.A had ignored the warning signs, simply caulking or patching the leaks, and finally painting the tank brown in an effort to conceal them. It had long been emitting strange sounds and had vibrated like an enormous washing machine under the immense pressure of its contents. The rise in local temperature from 2°F to 41°F over the past two days assisted in the build up of pressure inside the tank.

According to engineers, hoop stress is greatest near the base of a filled, cylindrical tank. The failure here occurred at a manhole cover near the base of the tank, and it is possible that a fatigue crack there grew to criticality. The tank had only been filled to capacity eight times since it had been built, putting the walls under an intermittent and dangerous cyclical load.

§§§§§§§§

After five-and-a-half years of legal wrangling, Ogden rendered his decision. There was no evidence that the tank had been sabotaged. Instead, he found a history of negligence and mismanagement by U.S.I.A. and ordered the company to pay $1,000,000 (about $7,000,000 in today’s money) in compensation to the victims.

Massachusetts and most other states responded to the verdict by passing laws to certify engineers and regulate construction. The molasses case marked the end of an era—big business now faced no government restrictions on its activities and consequences for its actions.

United States Industrial Alcohol never rebuilt the tank. The property became a yard for the Boston Elevated Railway (predecessor to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) and is currently the site of a city-owned baseball field.

[Note: The Massachusetts Historical Society has few significant research materials on the Molasses Flood. So I turned to microfiche of the newspapers of the day, plus an article written by MHS Director William M. Fowler, Jr., that appeared on a recent anniversary of the Flood, and an excellent account of the disaster, Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, by Stephen Puleo.]

Regardless of its ubiquitous presence, death is generally not a subject that brings movie audiences roaring to its feet. Some people live in fear it; others manage to avoid thinking of it; and some obsess over it as though it were Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story of a Brazilian man who was so fearful of being buried alive that he had a tomb built with air, food, water, megaphones and a television. Now, I can understand his fear of being buried alive, taphephobia, but what do you call a fear of missing your favorite TV program?

And then we have people so concerned with their carbon footprint they seek an exit that intrudes as little as possible upon nature. In Carrboro, NC, EcocoffinsUSA sells so-called green caskets. These biodegradable coffins, made from bamboo, willow, bananas and other materials, and assembled in factories in South China and Indonesia, allow you to eventually be at one with nature—hmm, all this foofaraw, despite the fact that normal wooden caskets start to deteriorate after about 20 years, returning themselves and their occupants to the earth from whence they came.

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Death remains one of life’s impenetrable mysteries. After all, no one has entered The Great Beyond and returned with a ticket stub. It is not a subject easily embraced; though we may reflect somberly when someone has passed on, we are usually pretty happy it wasn’t us.

Little is said about the subject in polite company, and it is usually left to the secular community to explain the various rituals that prepare the dearly departed to finally depart. Worse still, few if any public schools offer coursework dealing with what one needs to know when you-know-what has happened.

Now, death itself may be an enigma, but it should be more than just a way to opt out of a cellphone contract. And though we may never uncover its secrets until it is too late to take crib notes, we can at least prepare ourselves for that final exam.

Most people are aware that the final disposition of the body involves either burial, in a grave or grave, or cremation; rarely are the deceased left leaning against a lamppost. So, unless you prefer civic authorities to flip a coin, you should attempt to resolve the issue of your final resting place before it becomes an issue.

The Will

There is no law requiring that you have a will, though it is nice to leave something for your loved ones to fight over. If you die without one, the State will determine who gets what, and you can be sure the State will seek the lion’s share of your estate.

Unlike informed consent, the right to vote, marriage and drinking, there is no minimum age required to make out a will. Just consider what you’d like to give away, whom you’d like to give it to, and the name of the person to take responsibility over all your affairs once your ability to actually have an affair has ended.

Keep your will in a safe place—like a safe.

The Living Will

A living will is a record of your preference to remain alive, should you be unable to stop your friends or relatives from prematurely pulling the plug, or to have the plug pulled when you tire of eating apple sauce 7 days a week. If you don’t have one, the decision will be left to those very same friends and family, plus the doctors and the courts—see Klaus and his erstwhile sleeping beauty, Sunny von Bulow.

A power of attorney allows you to put someone in control of your possessions while you can still enjoy them. As always, if you don’t have one, most of the haggling over what is yours will occur at the bedside of what was once you.

You have the right to decide ahead of time how you wish to be disposed when your time has expired, and also how you wish to be remembered. You may, as Barbara Streisand and others have done, reserve a plot in the ground of your choice—provided, of course, that burials are legally allowed there. Cremation, as always, remains a popular alternative for your remains, with your ashes serving as a lasting reminder that the floors need to be swept.

Services

There are three different types of services: funeral, memorial and committal. In brief, funeral services are held with the body present—for some, the only occasion for which they dressed up; memorial services are held with no body present, which does not mean nobody attended, so you’re still responsible for the catering; and finally, committal services are held at the grave site or just prior to a cremation, where people who only knew you by your name will still have no idea what you looked like.

You also have the power to control what is said and what is written about you by preparing your own obituary. This is not the time to pinch pennies and insert one line in The New York Post. If finances allow, hire a creative type from Madison Avenue to craft a going away gift your family and friends will enjoy for years to come.

You may wish to craft an epitaph, but remember, it is meant to be inscribed on your tombstone, not read as the opening monologue on The Tonight Show.

Everyone feels strongly about something—the environment, nuclear proliferation, the economy, wearing white after Labor Day. But who among us has the acumen to tackle issues as complex as these? It can be daunting enough understanding why a golden brown Hostess Twinkie contains red dye #40.

Now, any of us can offer an opinion on these weighty topics, but there are actually some folks who are paid to do so. Cab drivers and barbers notwithstanding, there are think tanks and lobbyists whose opinions are heard, if not solicited, by elected officials whose salaries we pay.

Occasionally, these same politicians even listen to those who elected them. And it is these representatives of the electorate who voice their opinions to each other and, time permitting, the President.

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I have often been mystified at the process by which the Chief Executive culls information and forms an opinion; the various parts that form the final picture often appear to have been painted by number. So, to gain a better perspective on this high-level decision-making endeavor, I will try to determine whether a corollary drawn from my own shortsighted experience might apply to the President’s own powers of deductive reasoning. Short of that, I could always send him an email saying, “You’re on your own, buddy.”

Let’s say 4 inebriated friends and I are trying to decide where to eat tonight. So, I decide to discuss it with them, which is a friendlier gesture than simply pushing them all out the door. Then out of that 4, one person talks to the other 3, probably about me. From these remaining 3, one of the malcontents tries to coerce the other 2. This leaves one person to finally argue with the one dimwit who wasn’t smart enough to excuse himself and hide in the bathroom. And to make matters worse, each one of us follows this same routine.

Translating this influence peddling into a mathematical algorithm, that’s 5 times 4 times 3 times 2 times 1, which equals 120 (yeah, I used a calculator).

Think about that for a moment—5 people each soliciting opinions in the same manner, resulting in 120 possible conversations that yield perhaps 120 possible restaurant choices; that’s fine, but you’ve wasted a lot of time if you only end up at Sizzler’s.

Now, let’s apply this logic to current decisions made in the Oval Office. The President solicits opinions from the Vice President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff—a Chairman and Vice Chairman appointed by the President, not much wiggle room there; the Chief of Staff of the Army; the Chief of Naval Operations; the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the Commandant of the Marine Corps—6 all told, plus all 15 cabinet appointees; that’s a total of 23 individual minds who don’t mind expressing an opinion or two, solicited or not.

If one now does the math, (substituting ‘x’ for ‘times’) that’s:

23 x 22 x 21 x 20 x 19 x 18 x 17 x 16 x 15 x 14 x 13 x 12 x 11 x 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1

This equals 2.585202e+22 on my calculator, or 2.585202 x 10 to the 22nd power, which is 2585202 followed by 22 zeros; by comparison, Snow White had only 7 dwarfs following her.

To give this value full impact, the number is presented here in its familiar form:

25,852,020,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

That’s 25.852 octillion, or to place it in the context of the national debt, 25.852 trillion trillion.

Hmm… 25.852 trillion trillion possible opinions—and I’m reaching for the Excedrin trying to figure out how much to tip the waiter.

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With each member of the President’s advisory group vying for his ear, when it comes to dinner at the White House, staffers probably eschew protocol and assign seats on the basis of height. Now, I’m sure it’s likely one or two of the President’s advisers will agree on something, which could easily reduce the possible choices to, say, a few trillion.

But it seems to me that perhaps we, the electorate, when asked our opinion of President Obama’s performance in the coming months, might want to do the math ourselves and cut the President some slack.

Many residents can attest to being one of a generation raised, if not actually born there, but few can state with certainty that they will remain occupants there forever. Let’s face it, space is at a premium in these high rises; families needing more of it move, others seeking more of it between themselves and their neighbors flee to the suburbs; those that cannot afford to flee avoid the elevator and order out. But despite the transience, there are places, special places, where everyone who visits knows your name as well as their own.

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Some New Yorkers consider any borough other than Manhattan to be a way station en route to that island paradise, a remote, rent-friendly wasteland whose cultural pulse renders it brain dead. Take Queens , for instance. The second largest borough in New York, it is home to 31 known nationalities and considered by the U.S. Census Bureau to be the most ethnically diverse county in America. Tucked inside this pastiche of coif and color is a community—there are 33 of them in fact—whose residents register no complaints about, and are quite content with, their community and their borough, a place whose charnel air is its attraction: the cemetery.

Now, every borough buries its dead somewhere. But who knew these communities for the silent morbid majority would themselves shout so proudly their unique place in the city’s cultural history?

Consider the Calvary Cemetery in Woodside with 4,749 graves or interments. Under the dubious category of “somewhat famous,” one finds soldiers from the Indian, Civil, Spanish-American and Vietnam Wars, including 17 Congressional Medal of Honor recipients; 34 congressmen; 9 actors and actresses; 2 Hall of Fame baseball players; state representatives; senators; artists; a mayor; a novelist; a boxer; a 4-time Olympic gold medalist; the librettist for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; a victim of David Berkowitz, the notorious “Son of Sam” serial killer; and film director D.W. Griffith’s cinematographer.

Interesting? Maybe—but every corpus animusque has its share of revered local heroes. What is curious about this Queens cemetery (and its ilk) is its organized crime wing, with its 17 made markers. Consider a sampling…

Brodie, Steve; born sometime in 1863, died no later than 1901. Brodie was a small-time bookie and folk figure, allegedly the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. On July 23, 1886, he claimed a $200 bet when he survived his leap from Roebling’s masterpiece and made front-page headlines. Like most urban legends, though, this incident was later proved to be a hoax, not because the odds of anyone surviving the 135-foot plunge are slim to none (a few have), but because the inebriated loudmouth later admitted that he simply climbed down the bridge.

Carfano, Anthony; b.—take a guess—1898, d. September 26, 1959. Known as “Little Augie Pisano,” Carfano was a capo in the Genovese crime family headed by “Joey the Boss” Masseria, an association Carfano would later regret. According to Joseph Valachi, famous federal songbird, “Little Augie” was murdered because he refused to meet with Vito Genovese after Genovese took control of the Family in 1957. Carfano was shot to death in his car. Mrs. Janice Drake, a dancer who happened to be in the car with him, also took a bullet or three. Carfano is entombed in the mausoleum of his father-in-law, John “Jimmy Kelly” DeSalvio, nightclub owner and Democratic leader from Greenwich Village.

De Sapio, Carmine; b. December 9, 1908, d. July 27, 2004. The last kingpin of New York City’s Tammany Hall, De Sapio was an odd mix of political corruption and social conscience, He successfully promoted the elections of Robert Wagner for mayor in 1953 and W. Averell Harriman for governor in 1954; he named Manhattan’s first Puerto Rican district leader and backed Manhattan’s first black borough president; he supported the Fair Employment Practices Law, endorsed rent control and help to lower the voting age to 18. Eventually though, he was denounced as corrupt and authoritarian, and convicted in 1969 of petty bribery and sent to prison.

Masseria, Joseph (Guiseppe); b.—pick a date already!—1879, d. April 15, 1931. “Joe the Boss” was murdered by four—count ‘em, four—mafia gunmen: Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis and Bugsy Seigel. Masseria headed the most powerful organized crime family in New York City. During the Castellammarese war, he came into conflict with Salvatore Mararanzano—the leader of what today is known as the Bonanno crime family. Maranzano fought to free the New York Families of Masseria’s tyrannical rule. The Castellammarese war ended with the murder of “Joe the Boss” in a Brooklyn restaurant, elevating Maranzano to the top post in La Cosa Nostra. But his power did not last long; he was murdered in his business office in Manhattan on Sept.10, 1931, the murder having been ordered by Lucky Luciano and carried out by Meyer Lansky’s men.

Ferrigno, Stefano; b. May 12, 1900, d. November 5, 1930. Ferrigno was an underboss for Manfredi ”Al” Mineo, head of one of New York’s five Families. He and Mineo were Masseria allies—a big mistake. On the orders of Salvatore Maranzano, both were shot and killed while exiting an apartment building in the Bronx. One of the shooters was Mafia blabbermouth Joseph Valachi.

Lanza, Joseph; b.—oh, forget it, d. October 8, 1968. “Socks” Lanza was a capo in the Frank Costello/Vito Genovese crime family that held absolute power over New York City’s Fulton Fish Market, the largest fish distribution center on the East coast. He founded the Sea Food Workers Union and the Fulton Market Watchmen and Patrol Association, which forced every ship owner, peddler, and trucker to pay $50,000 a year in protection money to him.

Ruggiero, Benjamino “Lefty Guns”; b. April 19, 1926, d. November, 1994. As a youth “Lefty Guns” joined the Bonanno gang, and over the years became one of their top soldiers and hitmen with over 20 hits under his belt. In 1977 Ruggiero became a “made” man (member). Shortly thereafter, he met Donnie Brasco, who was actually FBI agent Joseph Pistone. Dum dee-dum dum.

Vernotico, Girad; b.—yes, another one—1904, d. March 16, 1932. Vernotico was the husband of Vito Genovese’s second wife, Anna. Genovese’s first wife had died a year earlier and he let it be known that he wanted to wed Anna Vernotico, who was already married. After a six-month period of mourning, Genovese ordered Anna’s husband Girad murdered. On March 16, Girad was found strangled on the roof of a tenement at 124 Thompson St. in Manhattan. Antonio Lonzo was murdered with Vernotico because he had been with Vernotico and witnessed the murder. Six days after Girad’s murder, Vito Genovese married Anna in a church ceremony in Greenwich Village.

Other mob figures who call Calvary home are Thomas “Three Finger Brown”; Ignatius Lupo “Lupo the Wolf” Luchese; Natale “Joe Diamond” Evola; Giuseppe Morello, a k a “The Clutch Hand,” a k a Don Petru; Bonaventura “Joseph” Pinzolo; Ciro “the Artichoke King” Terranova; Paul “Paul Kelly” Vaccarelli; Francis Crowley; Michael Vengalli; Gandolfo Curto; and Vito Bonventre.

Saint John Cemetery, Middle Village

Along with the requisite Congressional Medal of Honor winners, baseball players, mayors, congressmen and artist Robert Mapplethorpe, Saint John Cemetery, with its interment of 2121, is also home to Edward Bennett, born God-knows-when in 1903, died January 16, 1935. Bennett was best known as the Hunchback Mascot/Batboy for the New York Yankees, serving in that capacity from 1921 until May of 1932, when he was involved in a serious car accident. His position with the Yankees was never recast.

Saint John has 24 interments of organized crime figures, including such well-known names as Joe Colombo, head of the Family bearing his name; Neil Dellacroce, underboss of the Gambino crime family; Carlo Gambino, another boss bearing vanity nameplates; Vito Genovese, the “Boss of all Bosses”; John Gotti, the so-called “Dapper Don”; and Salvatore “Lucky Luciano” Lucania.

Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale

Of its 1228 interments, Mount Carmel is resting place to such non-criminal notables as Minnie and Samuel Marx, parents of The Marx Brothers, and Henny Youngman, king of the one-liners, but only two mobsters, neither of whom was of Italian ancestry.

Reles, Abraham “Kid Twist”; b.—an enigma, wrapped in a riddle—1907, d. November 12, 1941. Poor Mr. Reles either fell, jumped or was pushed out of his sixth-floor window at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island while being held in police custody; he was given the nickname, “The Canary that Couldn’t Fly.” At the time of his death, Reles was about to testify against Lepke Buchalter and other fellow mobsters.

Weinberg, George; b.—ho hum—1901, d. January 29, 1939. An associate of Dutch Schultz, Weinberg handled the money end of Schultz’s operation. After the murder of Schultz and his brother Abe in 1935, Weinberg decided to turn informant and testify against his former associates. Weinberg committed suicide, ahem, while he was under police protection and hidden away in a White Plains, NY, safe house.

Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing

One of the largest cemeteries on our list with 4248 interments; Barbara Streisand has a plot reserved here. There are 7 mob figures interred here, most notably Louis”Lepke” Buchalter, the Jewish mob boss who was a part of the infamous Murder, Inc.

Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery, a k a All Faiths Lutheran Cemetery and Lutheran Cemetery, Middle Village

1972 interments. No mobsters but notable for Charles Stephen Schepke, the only peacetime Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient.

Mount Zion Cemetery, Maspeth

1812 interments and no gangland heroes? What’s going on here?

Saint Michaels Cemetery, East Elmhurst

951 interments. Someone should mention that Granville T. Woods, known as the “Black Edison,” whose numerous inventions revolutionized the railroad industry, rests here, but instead I’ll remind you that Frank Costello, the “Prime Minister of the Underworld,” and Joseph N. Gallo, Gambino consigliere, lie somewhat less peacefully.

Mount Olivet Cemetery, Maspeth

Of the 870 interments, Helena Rubinstein, the cosmetics magnate, may or may not have been of some benefit in preparing Jack “Legs” Diamond, known during Prohibition for surviving more bullet wounds than any other gangster—except for the three that killed him as he slept.

Montefiore Cemetery, a k a Old Montefiore Cemetery, Saint Albans

Only 808 interments but 6 of them drove black, steel-reinforced Packards. Three of the most vicious gangsters of the time, the Amberg brothers—Herman, Joseph and Louis—were executed together in an auto repair shop in Brownsville, Brooklyn by Murder, Inc.

Mount Lebanon Cemetery, Glendale

775 interments. Apparently the Shapiro brothers could not get out of their own way, as gangland associates murdered Meyer, Irving and Willie—in Willie’s case, he was buried alive.

Mount Judah Cemetery, a k a Highland View Cemetery, Ridgewood

Ah, the percentages are becoming negligible; 483 interments and only one gangland murderer, Augie “Little Augie” Orgen. Though he could have been killed for lack of imagination in coining his nickname, “Little Augie” gained control of the labor rackets in 1923 when he had “Kid Dropper,” a k a Nathan Kaplan, murdered outside a Manhattan courthouse. Little Augie was later shot to death on a Manhattan Street corner by Lepke Buchalter and Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro.

Flushing Cemetery, Flushing

Number 12 in the countdown with 460 interments and no mobsters.

Maple Grove Cemetery, Kew Gardens

403 interments; no organized crime members, but notable for interring a victim of the “Son of Sam.”

Mount Saint Marys Cemetery, Flushing

351 interments and quiet as a lullaby.

Union Field Cemetery, Ridgewood

Arnold Rothstein, who fixed the 1919 World Series, is one of its 286 interments.

Linden Hill Methodist Cemetery, Ridgewood

204 interments, with another victim of the “Son of Sam.”

Fresh Pond Crematory and Columbarium, a k a U.S. Columbarium, Middle Village

106 interments. Notable for the cracked sidewalks surrounding the place.

First Presbyterian Church of Newtown Cemetery, Elmhurst

94 interments, and not one mob rat among them.

Bayside Cemetery, Ozone Park

88 interments. Was there any reason why they couldn’t put the Bayside Cemetery in Bayside?

Prospect Cemetery, Jamaica

50 interments. Yawn.

Machpelah Cemetery, Ridgewood

41 interments. There were more kids in my first-grade class.

Beth El Cemetery, a k a New Union Field Cemetery, Ridgewood

37 interments, including pretend mobster Edward G. Robinson.

Mount Neboh Cemetery, Glendale

35 interments. No waiting!

Grace Episcopal Churchyard, Jamaica

30 interments and easily reachable by bus, subway or Long Island Railroad.

Zion Episcopal Church Cemetery, Douglaston

28 interments. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Linden Hill Jewish Cemetery, Ridgewood

20 interments. I blinked and I missed it.

Beth Olom Cemetery, a k a Congregation Shearith Israel Cemetery and Shearith Israel Cemetery, Cypress Hlls

With 14 interments and 2 aliases, who needs criminals?

Lawrence Family Cemetery, Astoria

6 interments. Hey, its a family operation.

Federation of French War Veterans Cemetery, Flushing

2 interments. Mon Dieu!

Ocean Promenade, Belle Harbor

One interment—the American Airlines Flight 587 memorial.

Saint George’s Episcopal Churchyard, Flushing

One interment.

Ridgewood Sailors Memorial Monument, Ridgewood

One interment.

Yes, one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do, especially when you’ve done all you can.

“You sound a million miles away, T., like you were speaking into the wrong end of the phone,” Rummy cackles.

“Rummy? Geez… Last time I heard from you was in—“

“Lebanon, I know. Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep,” he says mockingly. I was taken aback. How did he know I ‘d been using Oil Of Olay?

“You know what time it is, Rummy?” I ask gruffly.

“Yes.”

“Oh…” Who knew Rummy would break down and finally by a Timex? “You know, your people left me holding the bag back there in Beirut,” I reply, returning to my growl.

“Huh? What are you talking about? You had just gone grocery shopping. That box of Fruit Loops wasn’t going to walk itself back to the apartment.” Rummy was getting defensive.

“Alright, Rummy. It’s late… I think.” I yawn, then expectorate into a cuspidor, except I don’t own a cuspidor—it’s my shoe. “So get on with it, Rummy.”

“Alright. And stop calling me Rummy. I hate that.”

“Hey, I could turn over and go right back to sleep… Don.”

There was a moment of silence before Rummy – er, Don – spoke. When he did, all the vibrato was gone from his voice. “I’m holding a news conference tomorrow.”

“You always were looking for an excuse to get in front of the camera,” I reply, before belching into his ear.

“What was that—bourbon again?”

“No, Pepsi.” It really was Pepsi. The liquor store wouldn’t extend me any more credit until I paid them the 69 cents I owed.

“Pepsi and bourbon… some things never change,” muses Rummy.

My head was flooding with memories. “Yeah,” I sigh, “those are just a few of my favorite things.”

“Reminds me of when you and I were at that meeting in Langley. We went outside for break and you got that dog bite, then that bee sting—“

“Get to the point, Rummy!”

“I just wanted you to know,” Rummy continues, his tone quite somber now, “that I’m coming clean. I’m gonna tell them everything.”

I was shocked. “What? Everything?”

“Yep, the whole 2.3 trillion.”

I couldn’t believe it. No one would. For the longest time there had been rumors that the bean counters at the Pentagon somehow could not account for over $2 trillion dollars in spending. I remember something about The Washington Post calling the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, asking if he knew anything about the missing dough. The guy’s aide said the senator was aware of it, but was indisposed at the moment—probably hiding under his desk. Then CBS News produced a whistleblower, a guy who had been looking for all that change behind every sofa cushion in the Pentagon until his bosses got wind and splurged at IKEA. And now, Rummy was going to go before the cameras later and spill his guts. “That’s one helluva rock you’re turning over, Rummy.”

“Don,” Rummy corrects me. “That’s why I called you first, T. I need you to help me find it.”

“The 2.3 trillion?” I ask.

“No, the office cat. Of course, the 2.3 trillion! If it were only a billion I’d have found it myself.” Rummy could be contrite when he wanted to.

“You offering me a job, Rum—er, Don?”

“You telling me you can’t use the work? Last time I looked, you were living out of a suitcase.” He was back to being snide stentorian Rummy.

“It’s a big suitcase,” I snap defensively. “American Tourister, with a matching garment bag.”

“Well, with what you’ll make from this case, you can buy yourself a shoulder bag to hold all your accessories.”

“How much?”

“Three cents on every dollar you turn up, T.”

I was incredulous, either that or it was gas. “Three cents? We’re not just talking defense contract largesse, here. We’re talking stuff even the Inspector General admits the Pentagon can’t track! I won’t touch it for less than a nickel,” I say, realizing I had him over a pork barrel.

“What are you—crazy? I can get two cents on the dollar down at Barney Franks.”

“So go, already. You’ll be hung up in committee for the next 6 months. C’mon, Rummy, you’re always looking to put your two cents in. Add it here.”

“Alright, already—a nickel. But I want results and I want ‘em fast!”

“No sweat,” I say, feeling smug. “What’s today?”

“Monday.”

“What—Labor Day already?”

“Labor Day was last Monday,” snaps Rummy, “Today’s the tenth. Why don’t you buy a calendar, for crying out loud?”

“Why, when I can get them free from that Chinese restaurant on Fifth and Union.”

“What—Wong Foo’s? They closed down three years ago!” snorts Rummy.

“Oh… I guess I should throw out that egg foo young I got in the ‘fridge.”

“You’re an idiot, T.!”

Rummy had hurt my feelings, but I was going to let it go. After all, I needed the dough. “Fine. I’ll spend today nosing around, see what I can find and get back to you later. Where are you gonna be tomorrow, in case I need you?”

“Let me check… Tomorrow’s the 11th—I’m having breakfast with a couple of guys on the Hill, probably go over to IHOP. Wanna come?”

“No thanks. That stuff just goes right through me.” I hang up the phone and lay back. Wow!—a nickel for every buck I find. The year may have started out badly, but now 2001 was shaping up to be my best year ever!

This spate of rampant entrepreneurship owes its roots to a slice of Americana once as common as drive-in theaters and masked wrestlers from south of the border – the door-to-door salesman.

Of course, selling door-to-door is neither a new nor a novel idea – in fact, it sounds like a terrible idea for a novel, but I’ll continue anyway. Over a 150 years ago, while trees and shrubs were being cleared to make way for urban development and suburban sprawl, C. W. Stuart and Co. of Newark, NY, foresaw the modern boom in home improvement. The company went door to door, selling what looked a lot like the previously uprooted trees and shrubs back to the consumer. Johnny-come-latelies to the field, like The Home Depot and Loew’s, are merely trampling on the footsteps of this door-to-door pioneer.

According to headlines ripped from the April 1952 pages of one of America’s leading publications, Modern Mechanix (later Mechanix Illustrated, then Home Mechanix, reintroduced as Today’s Homeowner, and finally, onto its current incarnation, defunct), fully two per cent of America’s workforce made over $7 billion in 1951 in door-to-door sales. This fabulous figure was more than double the previous peak, which occurred only a year earlier.

Yes, door-to-door selling had opened the door to self-employment, independence, fallen arches and untold copies of IRS Form 1099 for the average Joe. By 1952, over 3000 manufacturers employed door-to-door salesmen who dragged their feet across the rugs of America, hawking everything from brushes to nylons to fire extinguishers. In a tough, competitive market like New York, for instance, it was estimated that by 1952, half of all television sets purchased were sold by door-to-door salesmen. The considerable weight of those early television sets, plus the fact that most New Yorkers lived in tenements built before Elisha Otis patented the elevator, gave rise to a cottage industry that provided these exhausted pioneers with an additional, sorely needed means of support – a truss.

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Today’s cyber-flea market goods fare poorly when compared to those peddled by the intrepid doorknockers of years past. Many goods sold as new today are often discontinued models or unopened birthday gifts. The products of yore sold door-to-door, on the other hand, had the same quality as items found in a retail store – or those that had fallen off the back of a truck.

With any commercial endeavor, however, lax oversight leads to enormous profits, and hucksters took advantage of this, selling products that bore the unique signature of the era, Cold War hysteria. A salesman in Los Angeles was arrested for selling an “anti-atom bomb” lotion. It turned out to be nothing more than a homemade mixture of water and cold cream, which he sold for $2.49 per half pint. As it only cost him six cents to make, one has to give him some credit for properly channeling the spirit of free market capitalism.

Still other salesmen, a dollar or so shy of moral integrity, found themselves filling idle hours in the pokey after having talked people into buying special clothing for protection against the effects of an atomic explosion.

Of course, not every unscrupulous salesman preyed upon people’s fear of impending nuclear Armageddon. There was the example of the fellow who sold inflammable brushed-rayon sweaters that burst into flame so easily authorities believed the wearers were victims of spontaneous human combustion.

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The intervention of policing units like the Better Business Bureau helped rid the profession of its unsavory reputation, and door-to-door selling became one of the cleanest and most lucrative professions of the day. Success stories abounded…

§ Al Gogolin new nothing about Toledo, Ohio in 1948, but he went there anyway to establish his home heating equipment business. He rang doorbells, convinced the housewife would go for a smile and a good thing if it were brought directly to her attention. In his first full year, Gogolin chalked up more than $100,000 in gross sales. Four years later, the Gogolin Heating Co., ringing more doorbells and tracking inside more mud than ever before, had five top salesmen, five junior salesmen and a half dozen mechanics to keep up with its orders to repair and install heating equipment.

§ Even more spectacular is the case of Forest S. Barrett. In 1941, when American radios were preoccupied with news flashes of The Blitzkrieg and Japan was still only an oil-starved nuisance, Barrett took a job with a Bible distribution firm, going door-to-door with the sales pitch, “Read the Bible to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy.”

In a few years, Barrett became the firm’s sales manager, later a partner. By 1945, the company was changed to Barrett Distributors and moved to Dallas, Texas, with Forest S. Barrett as president and sole owner. By 1952 he employed 300 door-to-door salesmen and an office staff of 30, with estimated sales for 1951 at close to $3,000,000.

What the pious Mr. Barrett had done was to add a new twist to door-to-door salesmanship – he used the chain-letter principle, calling it pyramiding partnership. He formed a partnership agreement with a salesman and left that salesman free to form a similar (or different) profit agreement with anyone else. Each succeeding salesman thereafter joined the previous salesman in a separate agreement of his own. Barrett claimed that “anyone capable of following instructions, recruiting, hiring and managing other people” had unlimited opportunities with him. Sound familiar?

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The independent salesman of the 1950’s had a vast array of products to choose from: floor waxers, popcorn machines, vacuum cleaners, kitchen appliances, tools, gas and oil savers, fruit trees, machine tools, ball point pens, greeting cards, food products, insecticides, soap, razor blades, store signs, radios, typewriters and more.

Most people who started quickly learned the first rule of door-to-door selling: Don’t call yourself a door-to-door salesman. Instead, use sales representative, distributor, factory representative or any other name that connotes a sense of class, on your business card and in newspaper ads.

Second, don’t sell encyclopedias door-to-door in New York City. The New York Post hired 3000 men to sell them as part of a special ad campaign. After three years of being ignored, cursed at, chased, beaten and robbed, only 32 men remained on the job.

Third, keep your annual earnings a secret. A survey at the time by Barron’s found that average annual earnings of door-to-door salesmen ranged from $6,000 to $20,000 a year. But most did not make their full earnings known to the public for fear of increasing competition in their area.

For those men who sought a career walking the beaten path, the chances were they would not do as well as the success stories above. Then as now, it takes a lot of time to get a decent-sized company rolling. But if you could ring doorbells and enjoyed the gift of gab, there was no reason why you couldn’t talk yourself into a sizable income, or a stretch in prison.