'Damn! Why can't they be thrifty like us?'-- "Most households not saving enough for retirement, analysis shows--Low income and minority workers are especially likely to be caught short, according to a study of Federal Reserve data"-- Los Angeles Times headline and subhead.

The sanctity of the human body--The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 bars profit-making for dealers in body parts. Skin, tendons, heart valves, veins, and corneas are worth $110,000. Include bones, and a cadaver will fetch $220,000. With the annual take nearing $1 billion, execs at these "nonprofit" companies pocket hefty salaries.

Days of yore--Folks under 50 may not remember there was a time when, if a person was too sick to go to a doctor, a doctor would come to the house. Commenting on those days, a friend recalled a 1960s New Yorker cartoon. A man is sick in bed. His wife and a friend are at the bedside. At the foot of the bed, a witchcraft doctor is doing his number. The wife is saying to the puzzled friend: "At least he makes house calls."

And oozes from the pores of the system itself --"WASHINGTON--A black youth is six times more likely to be locked up than a white peer, even when charged with a similar crime and when neither has a prior record, says a civil rights report contending racial bias exists throughout the juvenile justice process."--Associated Press.

'Say it ain't so, Bill'--We're inexcusably tardy in reporting that Bill Gates may not be the richest man in the world. What with the feds on his case, and the "volatility" of the market, the Gates money bag has been sliced in half. According to Forbes magazine (self-described "capitalist tool"), the king of the Microsoft software empire is now reduced to competing for that title with Larry Ellison, top dog at Oracle software. Stay tuned.

Crime rate down?--In Adelanto, California, a desert town, police patrol cars gas tanks are running dry. When the police operating budget was drawn up, gas was $1.10 a gallon. Now it's $1.80.

Cyberspace part of the Lord's empire?--In England, the Archbishop of York warned ominously of the Internet as a "potential for evil."

'Capitalism's World Disorder'--What disorder?--"Kabul [Afghanistan]--Alia Auddin is the only refuge for children in Kabul. It may also be the world's only orphanage where most children have at least one living parent. But poverty is rampant in Kabul: Up to 70 percent are unemployed, and a middle-level civil-service job pays about $10 a month."--News item.  
 
 
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