Weekend Redux: What You Missed
Just because you spent all weekend waiting for Randy Moss to re-sign doesn’t mean the world stopped moving. We round up the notable stories you missed.
Saturday
It was all about the Leap Year babies on Friday. Dwello “Dewey” DePippo, who is 96-years-old but celebrated his 24th birthday, told some newborn leap babies how to make it to his ripe old age.
“I’ve never been drunk - not in my whole life,” said DePippo, who lives in Methuen.
“I lived this long because I haven’t been a bad boy, if you get my drift,” DePippo said. “And I’ve been good to people, and people have been good to me.”
Keep it in your pants, don’t get sloppy, and don’t be a jerk. Advice we can all live by.
A real estate crisis has hit Boston and Cambridge, and it’s not about foreclosures. Many of the biotech firms are heading for cheaper pastures in the ‘burbs.
In the suburbs, lab space costs about $27 per square foot, compared with $59 in Cambridge, giving companies a strong incentive to move.
Factor in easier parking and the higher vacancy rates, and it’s not a big surprise.
The Globe makes like Sal DiMasi and tests the waters on how the Legislature feels about casino gambling. The response was pretty tepid, with many politicians still undecided.
The Herald continues to make the life of Judge Richard Moses miserable, pointing out yet another sex offender he released went on to commit another crime.
Sunday
We here at Boston Daily love hyperbole. But that most useful of conversational techniques it not appropriate when you’re trying to convince someone you know what you’re talking about. Someone should tell Gov. Deval Patrick, because he’s vastly overstated the number of construction jobs his trio of casinos would create.
Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics for Moody’s Economy.com, asked by the Globe to make an independent analysis, said building three casinos at a cost of $1 billion each in Massachusetts would create a total of 4,000 to 5,000 new construction jobs for the duration of the building period, probably three years.
Under that analysis, Patrick’s prediction would be at least six times too high.
Easter is early this year, and the Boston archdiocese has moved up its annual fundraising drive accordingly. So if you’ve got a buck to spare, why not give it to the organization that probably closed your local church?
Due to budget cuts, many would-be soccer moms don’t have a place to drive their kids. So now they’ve become override moms, advocating for higher taxes to support town services. Somewhere, their kids are embarrassed beyond belief.
Yet another college student has fallen off a building and died. A senior at MIT fell five stories from the Technology Chapter of Delta Upsilon Fraternity House early Saturday morning.
Did you know that firefighters have groupies? There’s an organization of grown men called the Boston Sparks Association that excitedly jumps into a car to watch huge conflagrations and give water and food to the people who are paid to be there. We thought most people outgrew the obsession with firefighters once they graduated from elementary school, but it seems not.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
A “real estate crisis”? Surely you jest.
The Globe piece to which you link offers no evidence that the number of biotech jobs or firms in Cambridge is declining - in fact, it says that rents are up, vacancies down, and construction booming. Most cities would kill for that kind of “crisis” particularly in the present economic environment. In fact, the article seems to prove that what’s going on is a healthy development - the much-touted biotech industry, long confined to Cambridge’s Kendall Square, is finally maturing to the point where it’s spreading into surrounding communities. Some crisis.
March 18th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
There is a Real Estate crisis because the billionaire bankers have sold out America and the American people. Most of the federal tax revenue goes to the military (55%) and a good part of the remainder goes to building prisons or the police state (hiring FBI agents, etc.) The people have become slaves in the land their parents conquered. Most Americans actually enjoy their slavery and hope that their children will be slaves also.