] NEW YORK, Aug. 13 -- It was the summer of 1998. The bull
] market was kicking into full swing. Wall Street banks
] barely gave a second thought to hiring young whiz kids
] straight out of college.
]
] Historically staid brokerage giant Merrill Lynch & Co.
] sensed an opportunity to make big money in the new Wild
] West world of deregulated energy trading. But no one at
] the firm understood the market. So Merrill went out and
] hired people who said they did.
]
] Among the recruits was a 22-year-old wonder boy named
] Daniel L. Gordon. At an age when many students are just
] finishing college, Gordon already had a master's degree
] in international economics from Yale and had spent a year
] working at an energy-trading firm in Baltimore.
]
] Within two years of joining Merrill, prosecutors allege,
] Gordon would steal $43 million. If true, it would be one
] of the most audacious heists in Wall Street history.
] Gordon has not been charged with any wrongdoing. His
] attorney, Alan Levine, declined to comment on the
] allegations and said Gordon would be unavailable for
] comment. Merrill would not comment on either the
] allegations or Gordon's tenure with the firm.

Interesting read.

A Merrill Lynch Whiz Kid, and Then a Suspect (washingtonpost.com)

Funny diagram of military hand signals.

Military Hand Signals

] SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Green Party presidential candidate
] Ralph Nader was hit with a pie as he endorsed party
] member Peter Camejo for California governor.
]
] The show of political support at the Green Party's San
] Francisco headquarters took an unscripted turn Tuesday
] when a prankster burst into the room and slammed a cream
] pie into Nader's face. The culprit fled through a side
] door.

Nader Hit With Pie During Calif. Event

] Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups
] are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel.
]
] Next up: the computing industry.
]
] By Joshua Davis
]
] Aron Weingarten brings the yellow diamond up to the
] stainless steel jeweler's loupe he holds against his eye.
] We are in Antwerp, Belgium, in Weingarten's marbled and
] gilded living room on the edge of the city's gem
] district, the center of the diamond universe. Nearly 80
] percent of the world's rough and polished diamonds move
] through the hands of Belgian gem traders like Weingarten,
] a dealer who wears the thick beard and black suit of the
] Hasidim.
]
] "This is very rare stone," he says, almost to himself, in
] thickly accented English. "Yellow diamonds of this color
] are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15
] thousand dollars."
]
] "I have two more exactly like it in my pocket," I tell
] him.
]
] He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for
] the first time. I place the other two stones on the
] table. They are all the same color and size. To find
] three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a
] coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails.
]
] "These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much
] hope.
]
] "No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine
] in Florida for less than a hundred dollars."

Wired 11.09: The New Diamond Age

"A man has been jailed for 50 days for dissecting his daughter's guinea pig believing it was a government spy."
""It's not often you have someone this paranoid from using drugs that they think a guinea pig is spying on them for the government," Deputy District Attorney Tom Connors said. The paranoia was apparently a byproduct of Zavala's methamphetamine use, not mental illness."

Its the government I tell you... They're in it with the hamsters and the mice!!!

Man jailed for killing guinea pig he thought was a spy

"Scientists running a pioneering experiment with "living robots" which think for themselves said they were amazed to find one escaping from the centre where it "lives"."

I am Not a Number!!! Well, maybe Number 5...

Robot on the run

] A Briton has been arrested in the US after a suspected
] plot to supply a lethal surface-to-air missile to
] terrorists.
]
] It is thought the alleged target might have been a
] commercial aircraft or the US President's personal
] aircraft.
]
] Western intelligence officials have confirmed to the BBC
] it was a multinational sting operation, involving agents
] from the US, Russia and Britain.
]
] It resulted in the arrest of a British arms dealer at
] Newark in New Jersey on Tuesday.
]
] Two people were later arrested in New York and the trio
] are expected in court on Wednesday.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Briton arrested in 'terror missile' sting

] Herb Brooks, who coached the "Miracle on Ice" U.S. hockey
] team to the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics, died
] in a car accident Monday. He was 66.

I'm wearing black today.

'Miracle on Ice' coach dies in car accident

] Unabomber Ted Kaczynski has asked the U.S. government to
] return his personal papers and other materials, including
] a bomb confiscated by the FBI seven years ago.
]
] In papers filed at federal court in Sacramento, Kaczynski
] asked that the government ship the materials to a
] University of Michigan archive that already contains more
] than 15,000 of his papers.
]
] Those items include a pipe bomb and tons of documents
] including his voluminous autobiography, according to R.
] Steven Lapham, one of the federal prosecutors who tried
] the case. Also on the list: Kaczynski's tools, a can of
] matches, a pair of tweezers and a hatchet, which were
] confiscated when he was arrested at his Montana cabin.\

"GIMME BACK MY BOMB! Of course I promise not to detonate it in my cell."

Laughing boy

Unabomber seeks return of papers, bomb

] LONDON, England (Reuters) -- An armada of small, faded
] yellow toy ducks is expected to make landfall in Britain
] within weeks at the end of an epic 11-year voyage from
] the Pacific Ocean.
]
] They are the survivors of a consignment of 29,000 bath
] toys washed overboard from a container ship in 1992 that
] have since floated across the ocean, round the United
] States, through the Arctic and past Greenland.

CNN.com - England braces for rubber duck invasion - Jul. 26, 2003