miscellaney

• I think a Rusty Nail drink (Scotch whisky and Drambuie liqueur) tastes awful when cold. Well, still drinkable, but weird.
• I know I'm old when I remember that my seventh-grade year (1977) was going to be the first year in Tennessee that women played full-court basketball, instead of the half-court basketball my mother played while growing up.
• Why is it that football teams, like the University of Southern Mississippi and the New Orleans Saints, do really well against tough teams, like Florida State and the Dallas Cowboys, but then crap out against less-successfull teams like Southeast Louisiana State University and the Washingston Redskins, for example?
  

interesting facts

With its declining population and persisting squalor 15 months after Hurricane Katrina, New Oreleans now has the nation's highest murder rate--73.5 murders per 100,000 residents, surpassing Compton, California, which has 67 murders per 100,00 last year.

• USA Today

Counterfeit alcohol kills about 42,000 Russians annually. The phony booze, usually sold in bottles marked "vodka," contains such lethal substances as cleaning fluid, rust removers, and window de-icers.

• Associated Press

Polonium 210, the isotope used to assassinate former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, is 5,000 times as radioactive as radium. A lethal dose would weigh only 0.2 millionth of a gram, and be no bigger than a couple of grains of salt.

• The Wall Street Journal

US 90/Old Spanish Trail

I didn't know that old Highway 90 is part of the Old Spanish Trail. Begun in 1915, this trail was part of the "Good Roads" movement, a 2743-mile route running from San Diego, California, all the way across the U.S. to St. Augustine, Florida.

This is the oldest automobile road along the Gulf Coast, and was the first black-top link between Mobile and New Orleans.

Tulane job

I applied for a job for Tulane's Technology Services but didn't get it, disappointingly. I'd love to live in New Orleans, and be closer to my family in Biloxi.

I wish employment offices would give reasons for job denials (like "We can't match your current salary," "We hired someone already in the department," "We need someone who starts before you said you could," "We need someone with supervisory experience," etc.).

Oh, well...I'll keep trying!