Number of banks closed 2003: 3
Number of banks closed 2004: 4
Number of banks closed 2005: 0
Number of banks closed 2006: 0
Number of banks closed 2007: 3
Number of banks closed last year: 25
Number of banks closed so far this year: 37
Number 37, the Bank of Lincolnwood in Lincolnwood, Illinois, was closed by the FDIC on Friday.
Via Sideline Chatter:
Two bits, four bits, six bits, a court date.
A grand jury in Wintersville, W.Va., has indicted Linda Tate, 47, on charges she used her computer to send nude pictures of her daughter’s cheerleading rival at Indian Creek High School, Wheeling’s WTRF-TV reported.
How’d she get the photos?
Another item from Sideline Chatter:
Question: Why do so many kids play soccer?
Answer: So they don’t have to watch it.
An entertaining Los Angeles Times article on the shortest commencement speeches ever.
They’re never short enough; these may be the exception.
A brief, interesting profile of Edie Falco, so different from Carmela. An excerpt:
Ten years ago I could have gotten breast cancer and would have been no less worthy of all this fancy treatment, but I wouldn’t have gotten it. My family’s like, ‘Shut up, just go to these doctors.’
“I would be whisked off to these rooms, while there are women in the waiting rooms in their hospital gowns looking down with their arms around a cup of tea, and it’s [deleted] heartbreaking, because that’s me, that’s the real me, that’s the me that I’ve been far longer than this other one. I feel like a fraud, because I feel like I should say, ‘No, I’ll wait in the waiting room like everybody else.’ But part of me is, ‘Take it, take what’s being handed to you.’
HERMOSILLO, Sonora — One tiny coffin and one devastated family is enough to bring a city to its knees.
Thirty-eight such scenes are playing out here this weekend as Hermosillo mourns dozens of toddlers who died when a fast-moving blaze swept through their day-care center Friday.
The Arizona Daily Star has the story.
The day-care building had only one exit.
“[A] recording of the human voice made in April 1860, predating Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.”
Brow Beat has the details.
Here’s the site with the recordings.
[M]any people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?
According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.
From When the Thrill of Blogging Is Gone … , a brief New York Times article on the subject.
Call this the rule of law, or protection against being expropriated, or sufficient constraints on executive power, but it adds up to roughly the same thing. We strongly limited the power of the most powerful in our society – and this is in striking contrast to what happens in much of the rest of the world.
But over the past 20-30 years, we took our eye off this ball.
Simon Johnson with a quick historical look at power and the rule of law.
Recommended — and it’ll just take you two or three minutes.
Note that the unemployment rate has risen sharply for all categories in 2009. For “less than a high school diploma” the rate has increased from 9% in [2008] to almost 16% in May.
Education matters!
Calculated Risk has the graph.
Thanks to the blogger formerly known as Functional Ambivalent for the link.
Sally Kellerman is 72. Kellerman was Hot Lips in the movie M*A*S*H. She got an Oscar supporting actress nomination for the portrayal.
Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones’ drummer, is 68.
That fine actor Stacy Keach is also 68.
Composer Martin Hamlisch is 65.
Jerry “The Beaver” Mathers is 61 today.
Comedian Dana Carvey is 54.
Donatien Alphonse François de Sade was born on June 2nd in 1740. We know him as the Marquis de Sade.
Elizabeth was crowned Queen on June 2nd, 56 years ago today.
During David Souter’s confirmation hearings, in 1990, there were concerns about his reputation as a recluse; his views about abortion rights were also a mystery. Senator Howard Metzenbaum got at both when he asked Souter whether he could really imagine what a woman faced when she had an unwanted pregnancy.
Functional Ambivalent calls it quits.
Sorry to see, but understandable, and no surprise.
The best of good wishes, Best Blogging Buddy.
Those that follow this blog know of my continued praise of The Sweeties athletic success, mostly Mack of course because he’s the oldest and more into it. Kiley (6) and Aidan (5) both completed a mile run Saturday, but Mack ran the event in a personal best 6:42 and took first place in the 8-9 age group.
Later in the day Mack also played soccer and gave us this great sequence. You see him here lined up for a direct kick (the kicking player and Mack’s teammates are cropped out of the photo — I don’t post photos of other children without permission, etc., etc.) but you can see the ball. Pay special attention to the determined, downright fierce look on Mack’s face.
Now click here.
