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Death care comes home
"Today, 57 per cent of U.S. mortuary school graduates are women, up from 5 per cent in 1970," Slate reports. "Though this influx is stereotype bashing, it's also something of a homecoming. Today's women funeral workers aren't moving into death care so much as they're moving back into it. Before the 1860s, caring for the dead was viewed as a woman's role. Death care tended to take place in the home, and the cultural perception of women as more intuitive and emotional made them an obvious choice for the job. Additionally, because women were the ones who helped deliver infants, and the infant mortality rate was high … dealing with deaths was seen as part of the birthing process."
From pigskin to Pagliacci
"Just as Keith Miller's professional football career was on the rise, he had to choose between his successful history - and promising future - as a fullback and his new-found passion for opera - a world he knew nothing about," the Summit (Colo.) Daily News reports. "Prior to 1994, he had never seen an opera, musical or ballet; he grew up in Ovid, Colo., (population 300), became a star fullback for the University of Colorado … and played pro ball for the European and Arena Football leagues. Just as teams like the [Denver]Broncos were looking at him, he chose to pursue a career as an opera singer. Though he had never been to a performing-arts show, the spark for opera ignited when he took a date to Phantom of the Opera on his birthday. 'When I saw the first few moments of the show I was blown away, and since I had never seen anything like this before it was like giving chocolate to someone for the first time - unreal,' Miller said. … In the opera world, Miller's rise is nothing but meteoric. Nine years after teaching himself to read music, he has spent five years as a professional singer and has performed in nearly 200 operas, in increasingly larger roles, including ones at the Metropolitan Opera."
Soprano's last call
"A Montana man who mimicked a female voice is exchanging his ill-gotten Tempur-Pedic mattress for a cot in a federal prison," Associated Press reports. "The U.S. attorney's office in Idaho says a 60-year-old … was sentenced [last week]to a year and a day in prison for impersonating his ex-wife when speaking to company representatives. The calls to open a line of credit and order a $4,000 [U.S.]bed and sheets were recorded."
Imagine an accountant
Last week, a British accounting firm, UHY Peacheys, held its annual U.K. Budget breakfast to help clients understand the main points of the plan, City A.M. reports. Senior tax partner Steve Theaker took to the stage with his trusty guitar. "Imagine no taxation, it's easy if you try," he sang, with a new take on John Lennon's song. Other lyrics, The Daily Telegraph reports, included: "Imagine there's no Budget, nothing to comment on. … Imagine no accountants, Imagine there are no banks, no one to bugger up the economy.… Lots of people would have bugger all to do-oo-ooo.…"
Herd on the street
"Trading on inside information is illegal. Trading on other traders' information is not illegal, though, and a new study from Northwestern University suggests that synching with other traders is a profitable strategy," The Boston Globe reports. "Researchers obtained data on all the trades made by all the day traders in one firm from September, 2007, to February, 2009. Especially on days when there was high volatility, different traders tended to trade at the same time, as if they were synchronized. Such synchronous trading was, in turn, significantly associated with profits. The more a trader tended to move at the same time as others, the more money was made. Perhaps they had found the pulse of the market."
Robots on the street
A blog posting by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: "From the FT: Stock in Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company, jumps every time Anne Hathaway, the actress, gets a lot of media play. Why? The claim is that it's the fault of robotrading algorithms, which now account for most of the market, and which sometimes rely, among other things, on trends in news coverage."
Signatures? Much better
The Atlantic's Daily Dish blog quotes Julia Felsenthal on the unusual ways that agreements were validated in the past: "Cutting off a lock of hair and giving it to someone else was one way to seal a contract. Around the 13th century, agreements were sometimes marked with a slap, or some other traumatic act. The theory was that both parties would remember not only the injury but the accord that was reached on its infliction."
Thought du jour
"When I was 4, I told my mother I wanted to be a rock star when I grow up. She said, 'You can't do both.' "
- Steven Tyler (1948-), U.S. singer and songwriter