In the “we couldn’t make this up if we wanted to” department, the office of Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan DA, has announced the arrest of James Delayo, the chief inspector for Cranes and Derricks. Delayo, a veteran of the New York City Department of Buildings, has been charged with accepting bribes from crane operators and crane companies. The Manhattan DA’s office has been investigating the spate of construction site incidents in Manhattan; however, these charges relate to events between 2002 and 2007 and are not connected to the recent crane accidents in New York City, according to a spokeswoman at the Manhattan DA’s office.
WSJ Law Blog June 6, 2008

On June 4, Sandra Day O’Connor delivered the keynote address at the annual Games For Change conference, which was held at Parsons New School For Design. In the speech, she said she’s spearheading a project called “Our Courts,” which she reportedly described as an “online, interactive civic education project for seventh-and eighth-graders” that familiarizes students with the legal system.
“If someone told me when I retired from court that I’d be talking at a conference about digital gaming, I’d think they’d had one drink too many,” O’Connor told the crowd. “Only one-third of Americans can name the three branches of government,” she lamented, “but two-thirds can name a judge on American Idol.”
O’Connor said that the No Child Left Behind act of 2001 has “effectively squeezed out civics education” from public schools. That’s why she wants to work alongside University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Paul Gee to create “Our Courts.”
WSJ Law Blog June 6, 2008

Buckminster Fuller envisioned a “New Era Home,” which would be “erectable in one day, complete in every detail,” and, on top of that, “drudgery-proof,” with “every living appliance known to mankind, built-in.” The hexagonal-shaped, single-family home was to be stamped out of metal and suspended from a central mast that would contain all its wiring and plumbing. When a family moved, the Dymaxion House could be assembled and taken along, like a bed or a table. Fuller constructed a scale model of the house, which was exhibited in 1929 at Marshall Field’s as part of a display of modern furniture. When Marshall Field’s displayed his model house, it wanted a catchy label, so it hired a consultant, who fashioned “dymaxion” out of bits of “dynamic,” “maximum,” and “ion.” Fuller was so taken with the word, which had no known meaning, that he adopted it as a sort of brand name. The Dymaxion House led to the Dymaxion Vehicle, which led, in turn, to the Dymaxion Bathroom and the Dymaxion Deployment Unit, essentially a grain bin with windows.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/09/080609fa_fact_kolbert
In the late 1940s, 30,000 people wanted to buy R. Buckminster Fuller's round Dymaxion House, which was made of aluminum and Plexiglas, assembled in a factory, weighed only 6,000 pounds and was designed to be disassembled, tucked into a cylinder and air-freighted anywhere in the world. But only two prototypes were made, and William L. Graham, an entrepreneur from Wichita, Kansas, bought both.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DC133CF933A05752C0A964958260
http://www.absolutemichigan.com/dig/michigan/buckminster-fullers-dymaxion-house/
http://www.yesterland.com/dymaxion.html

Amber Waves — June 2008Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
Feature articles in the June 2008 issue include: Who Will China Feed?; Food Stamps and Obesity: What We Know and What It Means; World Trade Organization and Globalization Help Facilitate Growth in Agricultural Trade; Defining the “Rural” in Rural America. Other articles cover such topics as Marketing Loans Induced Acreage Expansion in U.S. Dry Peas; ERS and Collaborators Model Foot-and-Mouth Disease Outbreaks; Lower Income Households Spend Additional Income on Foods Other Than Fruits and Vegetables; Almonds Lead Increase in Tree Nut Consumption; Pest Problems Abroad May Affect Compliance with U.S. Safeguards; Soil Conservation Preserves Reservoir Benefits Nationwide; A Look at the Economic Well-being of Farm Households; Farm Size Behind Regional Differences in Hog Output and Productivity. Also includes selected statistics on agriculture and trade, diet and health, natural resources, farm households, and rural America. Permalink

Phrase origins and meanings
Music
pull out all the stops
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/290100.html
face the music
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/8/messages/137.html

Games/sports
knuckle down
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/knuckle-down.html
cover all the bases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_idioms_derived_from_baseball

Covering the bases, 2005 speech by SEC commissioner at Stanford University
http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch062105lct.htm

Each morning sees some task begin,Each evening sees it close;Something attempted, something done,Has earned a night's repose.
http://www.horseshoeingmuseum.com/poem.htm
See complete poem at above link.

Around Toledo
Zoe’s Food & Spirits is located in a small shopping center at the northwest corner of McCord and Dorr. We enjoyed the favorite dish of our waitress: blackened ribeye steak. We took about half of our dinners home for another meal. No cover charge when they have live music. Stop at Asian grocery store in same center for edamame (Japanese soybeans)
http://members.tripod.com/aerogreen/edamame.htm