Profiting on Enron

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Feb 27, 2002

In 1801, the District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.

In 1922, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed the right of women to vote.

In 1939, the Supreme Court outlawed sit-down strikes.

In 1972, President Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai issued the Shanghai Communique at the conclusion of Nixon's historic visit to China.

In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, the site of the 1890 massacre of Sioux men, women and children. (The occupation lasted until May.)

An acoustic full circle

ATLANTA (NYT) -- The Indigo Girls have come full circle. The popular Georgia-based duo began as an acoustic act, then grew ever more complicated through the years with dense layers of electronic studio production that baffled some of their fans. The good news is that the Indigos have at last made another rootsy, acoustic-rock disc, which appears to be the style they do best.

"It has a purity to it, doesn't it?" Indigo Girl Emily Saliers says of the new CD, Become You, which comes out March 5. The prime force behind the return to acoustic purity, Saliers says, was bandmate Amy Ray.

"Amy has been wanting to make an acoustic record for a while," Saliers says. "But I was on a roll with wanting to play electric guitar and expanding our production. I really love some of what we did, like the last album, Come On Now Social, but I knew Amy really wanted to get back to the roots."

The new CD is a rejuvenating effort that spotlights the Indigos' trademark vocal harmonies, made even crisper because there are no distracting studio techniques to cover them up. The album features the group's core backup band, rather than the many guest musicians who have participated in recent years.

Want to drive in a floating tunnel?

VICTORIA, British Columbia (AP) -- A tunnel floating beneath the surface of the water could provide a road link to Vancouver Island, according to a company that built the Confederation Bridge between New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. No such tunnel exists, but Italy is considering one across the Strait of Messina to Sicily and another has been proposed in Japan, said Kevin Pytyck of Aecon Infrastructure of Calgary, Alberta. The untried technology, in which the tunnel would be secured by cables tied to heavy weights on the seabed, would float some yards below the surface to avoid turbulence from ships, winds and waves generated by storms.

The eight-mile Confederation Bridge, Canada's longest but about half the distance across the Strait of Georgia, cost $850 million. Tourism has increased 30 percent on Prince Edward Island since the bridge was opened, traffic has risen steadily and the bridge is profitable, Pytyck said.

Hard to believe

BOSTON (NYT) -- What kind of manager is most effective? After management professors Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghosal began asking that question a decade ago, they came to this surprising conclusion: "Fully 90 percent of managers squander their time in all sorts of ineffective activities."