bayer's cashing in + a new idol

"Bayer HealthCare...announced its decision to leave the New Haven area in November and put the site up for auction. Mark C. Bennett, a Bayer spokesman, said there were 17 bidders...a Yale official confirmed an Associated Press report that the price would be about $100 million. Dr. Levin said that money was not a problem and that Yale would pay cash."

The Rochester Museum of Science had an exhibit about money that showed the volume occupied by $1,000 or some such amount of one-dollar bills. I'm envisioning freight trucks of cash-filled suitcases pulling up in front o Bayer's headquarters in Germany.

Also... some clever words from an open letter to a Senator the writer once knew well: We have seen more people die last year from spinach then pot.

Finally... I WANT THIS MAN'S LIFE. I can't believe I'd never heard of photographer Edward Burtynsky before. How does he track down such extraordinarily haunting scenes of the industrial waste of the world? Perhaps they're not so difficult to find. Perhaps they're everywhere -- everywhere that we don't look.


A documentary featuring his work, "Manufactured Landscapes," seems a likely candidate for my favorite film since Koyaanisqaatsi. I've been so out of it. If only my usual life gave me the spare time to chance upon things like this more often.