Stupidity

For a man-on-the-street reaction, IM-Fve slightly altered a remark by Dick, a butcher: M-tThe first thing we do, letM-Fs kill all the economists.M-v Dick, a character in ShakespeareM-Fs King Henry VI, actually said M-tlawyers.M-v But donM-Ft think the other idea didnM-Ft occur to people in the White House on Friday morning, after the latest disappointing jobs data blew away more optimistic forecasts by leading economists on whom the Bush administration relied. For the sixth time in the past seven months, the closely watched report on non-farm payroll growth was outside the range of economistsM-F estimates, according to economist David Resler at Nomura Securities International.

ON AVERAGE, 83 buses roll into Baltimore's new Greyhound terminal off Russell Street in Carroll-Camden each day. Some are Greyhound. Some are Carolina Trailways. But none of the buses belongs to the Maryland Transit Administration. State-owned transit buses are stopping two blocks away, a significant distance for those toting luggage. It's a ridiculous situation that easily could have been prevented. The Haines Street station opened officially this week, but it's been serving Greyhound customers since June 24, when the company had to vacate its West Fayette Street terminal.

You've seen him in TV commercials. He's the guy who can't open a pickle jar or take care of his kids, the husband raised by wolves, the balding, portly fellow who leaps for joy now that a pill has solved his impotence. He's the one scalded by hot coffee and hit in the crotch with a bowling ball, though he doesn't seem to mind. In the powerful dominion of television advertising, this hapless, sloppy, beer-drinking punch line is the modern American man. And critics say he's getting more than his fair share of abuse.

AS ADLAI Stevenson III once said when launching a bid for public office, "The sap is rising." Eager investors may feel the same urge, now that the market for initial public offerings of stock is showing signs of life. Exposes of corruption on Wall Street sparked reform proposals that promise to purge the worst abuses in allocating IPO shares. Meanwhile, several respectable IPO prospects are in the pipeline, led by a likely share offering by Internet search engine Google Inc. But despite regulatory efforts, your chance of getting in on the ground floor of a hot IPO are no better now than they were a few years ago, when almost any dot-com company sprinted out of the IPO gate.

The Orioles tried to play a baseball game in the calm before the storm yesterday, and before Hurricane Isabel struck Baltimore, they faced the wrath of Hurricane George. New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was seething after his team played the Orioles to a 1-1 draw at Camden Yards, in a game called by rain after the fifth inning, which denied former Orioles pitcher Mike Mussina his 200th career victory. "This was incredibly bad judgment and stupidity by the commissioner's office," Steinbrenner said in a statement.

An Edgewater couple accused of driving 20 miles with their 12-year-old son and his friend in the trunk of their car face child abuse and other charges in what their lawyer at a bail-review hearing yesterday called a "stupid" mistake on their part. James John Duthoy, 46, and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Duthoy, 42, were arrested Saturday night in a liquor store parking lot, where officers freed the "flushed red and sweating" boys from the trunk of the 1992 Pontiac Bonneville, according to charging documents.

He has the leer - the voice - the rubber face. He can even manage the whip-crack timing. Someday, Eric Christian Olsen is going to make a great Jim Carrey in a TV movie about the sad Canadian clown who stole our hearts. Until then, we have Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. Olsen plays Lloyd, the idiot nerd who thinks he's cool that Carrey played way back when Dumb and Dumber became a hit. Olsen practically channels Carrey. It's uncanny, as is Derek Richardson's impersonation of Harry, the "dumber" half of Dumb and Dumber played by Jeff Daniels back in 1994.

EVERY YEAR, we return to Orlando, Fla. Instinct makes us do this. We are like the salmon who must swim upstream to spawn, and die. They are lucky. We must go to theme parks. A theme park is an amusement park where you pay one blanket admission fee, which is quite steep, but once you're inside, everything is totally free, except all the other stuff you end up buying, which will run you around $11,000 per child. Every few yards you find yourself stopping to buy high-priced theme-park food, theme-park merchandise, theme-park clothing, and theme-park photographs of yourself looking theme-park ugly.