archives

Here's one of about a million interesting difference between Iraq and America. In Iraq, there's really no such thing as the obituary page, at least not for most people. Only the rich and famous get death announcements in the newspapers here.

So most Iraqis spread word of a death in another way. They hang banners for the dead in public places.

The banners all look the same and I've seen many of them in the two weeks I've been here. But they're written in Arabic, so I had no idea what they were until one of our Iraqi reporters told me.

Last week I wrote this story about the funny little problems that arose when Cormorant Drive was renamed Mercy Avenue.

Over the weekend I received this email from a technical services manager at Mapquest:

"I read your article today about Cormorant Drive being changed to Mercy Avenue in Merced, CA. I've reported this data correction to our data vendor and I've asked them to get this updated as soon as possible. Unfortunately these types of changes may take 6-9 months to get updated on our site. The timing of the data correction depends on our vendor's schedule for verifying the change and correcting their data. We receive updates from them every quarter and then normally have the new data updated on our site within 30-60 days.

Stood next to a bunch of "celebrity chefs" yesterday at Castle Air Museum's regular Omelet Brunch. It raises money for the museum and related causes, and about 400 folks stopped by Sunday morning.

They chowed down on omelets--for which they picked their own ingredients--hash browns, biscuits, chili beans and the fixin's.

"We want you to be one of our celebrity chefs," Caroline Venable, executive secretary of the museum's board, told me a few weeks back when she called. "No, you don't," I said. "I can't cook that much or that well--but I'll be a heckuva server."

Update: The council meeting, which went until 11 p.m., did not have much controversy about hiring the next city manager. The council members opposing John Bramble's appointment voiced their concerns. However, no one from the audience spoke up. One person I talked with said there was little reason since the public was shut out of any meaningful discussions about who to hire.

The Merced council will vote tonight whether to hire John Bramble as its next city manager. He's leading the city of Brighton, Colo. right now and would start Dec. 1 if the council gives him the nod.

Obsolete law books from Merced County's Law Library were sold so they could be in "State of Play," a movie set to be released next year.

I learned this odd tidbit from reading the agenda packet for tomorrow's Board of Supervisors meeting.

The film stars Ben Affleck and Russell Crowe. Here's a synopsis: "Based on the BBC mini-series of the