The mysterious, tragic disappearance and death of Northwest basketball star Tony Harris in Brazil brings to mind the mysterious, tragic disappearance (and presumed death) of retired Seattle SuperSonics forward John Brisker in Uganda 30 years ago.
Unlike Harris, the John Brisker disappearance had a spiritual, picaresque quality, the adventurer-narrative of a lost soul journeying to a lost land. And then the soul vanishes.
From paging to wireless phones and now Clearwire, the eccentric billionaire follows an established pattern: Grab what others don't see. But just try predicting his next move.
I've written about so-called "nature deficit disorder" and the fact that old-fashioned summer camps – classic overnight camps that focus on nature and the outdoors – are becoming an endangered species. Lots of kids don't want to trade their iPods for backpacks anymore. And summer itself is something of a fading concept as we move to year-round schools. But a story in The New York Times shows that South Korea may be a trendsetter: They've created what might be the world's first camp designed to save youngsters who are addicted to computers and computer games: the Jump Up Internet Rescue School.
Each year about this time, the late P-I columnist Emmett Watson urged us all to try the Thompson Turkey.
I never did, but you gotta love his last paragraph:
"The meat beneath will be wet, juice will spurt from it in tiny fountains high as the handle of the fork plunged into it. You do not have to be a carver to eat this turkey. Speak harshly to it and it will fall apart."
Two different acquaintances recently e-mailed me links to Despair, Inc. I'm sure this is because I blog about quirky items, not a suggestion that I am the target customer for the Austin-based purveyor of goods for the hardcore pessimist and/or serious slacker.
True, I would love a Pessimist's mug ("It makes everything taste bitter"), each nicely etched with This mug is now half empty. I really only need one, but it would probably get broken or stolen, so two is smarter.
Former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer recently went public with a new group, the Middle Income Housing Alliance of Seattle, aimed at dealing with the most obvious problem facing the region: it's getting too expensive to live here.
But how likely is success in dealing with such a huge issue? For starters, a lot of people are perfectly happy with the high cost of real estate -- that's their retirement bonanza. Next, it proves very hard to enact middle class relief when matched against the needs of the poor, who also can't afford housing. So far, Seattle has only addressed low-income housing, despite some kind words about middle class (usually called workforce) woes.
Don't know where they got it, but here's the image Wired and others are offering as a photograph of Kindle, Amazon's electronic book, which is to be announced today. That number in the upper-right corner is the phone extension of the Amazon employee who'll be fired today for leaking it ...
Update: Now on sale, with more images at the Amazon Web site.
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