My favorite Halloween pet photos from Boston.com

Apparently chicken heads are the preferred costume for cats this year.

Time to buy stock in Nice 'N Easy

You will not catch me doing this.

With stock portfolios in the toilet, layoffs looming everywhere and credit hard to come by, many folks are looking for places to cut back.

That includes their own heads.

Consumers are slashing their budgets by skipping visits to upscale hair salons and opting for inexpensive stylists. Some are getting haircuts less often or dyeing their own locks at home.

GW: No longer the most expensive college in the nation

After two years as the most expensive college in the country, GW has given up the top spot to Sarah Lawrence College, University officials confirmed this week.

Apparently coyotes frolic too

Spotted in Natick:

Coyote making merry with a (domesticated) dog's Santa toy.

NY Times: Leading in Job Losses, Rhode Island Struggles On

Rhode Island now has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, the first time the state has held that distinction in the three decades since such records have been kept.

With unemployment at 8.8 percent, Rhode Island has edged past Michigan, and every month seems to bring fresh reports of companies cutting workers, shutting divisions, closing altogether.

“I hate to say it but a distinct improvement for Rhode Island right now would be to have our economy be dead in the water,” said Leonard Lardaro, an economics professor at the University of Rhode Island, who compiles an index of Rhode Island’s economic health.

“Statistically this is the worst year. Clearly we’re going down faster than other states.”

Man installs barrier on street, forcing residents to walk to their homes. L.A. officials are trying to resolve the dispute.

Maria Freyre could not believe her eyes last week when she pulled onto the Lincoln Heights street where she has lived for 45 years.

A neighbor had erected a steel gate across Forest Park Drive, blocking 18 residents' access to their homes.

A simmering neighborhood dispute had prompted Gardner Compton's barricade. Forest Park Drive crosses private property, Compton said -- his. He was willing to let his neighbors walk on foot along the narrow dirt road, but cars were no longer allowed.

Angry residents called Los Angeles authorities, who pledged that they would move quickly to resolve the dispute and have the gate removed from the street, which has been in use since 1924.

Residents say they are lugging groceries past the gate and using miner-style flashlights to hike back and forth at night to their cars.

'Boston Globe' Will Drop Two Sections, Add New Tab

 Just like its sister paper in New York, The Boston Globe is in the midst of reworking its section make-up, effective with the Oct. 24 edition. The Globe is dropping two sections while introducing a new tabloid called "g" that will run in the paper.

While other newspapers across the country, including The New York Times, are hot to fold metro into the A section, the Globe opted to keep it as a stand-alone. 

The paper will continue to carry the A section and sports along with metro. Business will become part of metro. Features and arts and entertainment-related items that ran in Sidekick, will be incorporated in the new tab, "g."

Thoughts on losing Sidekick?

A water taxi for the Mystic?

The part that confuses me: why wouldn't it go to Boston? Who wants to take a boat ride from Medford Square to Malden or Everett? That serves no one.

Read more here.

"A pitch for soccer in East Somerville"

While I agree that moving the Revolution from Foxborough to the city would tap soccer's fan base and make games accessible to public transportation, this area has several problems:

#1) The traffic is already horrible (not that Foxborough's isn't, but there aren't any suburban side streets to avoid an d absorb game traffic here; Somerville is the most densely populated city in America after Manhattan)

#2) The green line extension, as this article mentions, will eat up some free space around here, and Somerville has worked too hard on not having the same parking problems as Cambridge.

#3) The article fails to mention the GINORMOUS IKEA that is also being built over here! I'm nervous enough about how that store will affect the city and traffic from 93 in Boston to Medford; now you want soccer games, too??

Read the article here.

Finally! It's on sale!

And I can't buy it because I'm going to Florida. I seriously doubt they sell trench coats in Florida.



And, of course, they're out of my size online. Figures.



Was $225, now $157.





I've been wanting this thing for months. Now it's nearly $70 cheaper, and back in my price range. This is madness.

A new survey by CareerBuilder.com might hold the key to your career using your zodiac sign.

Scorpio, Leo, Taurus and Cancer signs were the most likely to earn $100,000 or more per year while Aquarius and Capricorn signs were most likely to earn $35,000 or less, according to the survey, which included more than 8,700 workers and was conducted nationwide across industries.

Pisces, Sagittarius and Capricorn were the most satisfied with their current jobs, and Gemini and Cancer reported being the least satisfied.

Read on to see how key characteristics of different zodiac signs matched up with the careers survey respondents reported.

Can this be pro life?

The Bush administration this month is quietly cutting off birth control supplies to some of the world’s poorest women in Africa.

Thus the paradox of a “pro-life” administration adopting a policy whose result will be tens of thousands of additional abortions each year — along with more women dying in childbirth.

The saga also spotlights a clear difference between Barack Obama and John McCain.
Senator Obama supports U.N.-led efforts to promote family planning; Senator McCain stands with President Bush in opposing certain crucial efforts to help women reduce unwanted pregnancies in Africa and Asia.

'Turk Turkee,' menacing Harvard

She may have a small brain, but if she's choosing to harass Harvard students, perhaps she's smarter than they think? I wonder if it's related to the Kendall Square turkey...

From the Globe:

When she's sleepy, she has taken a fondness to napping in the dean's garden. Sometimes, she'll spend hours staring at herself in the windows of the many surrounding buildings, no matter how many students tread past.
But after about a year waddling around the manicured campus, Harvard Business School's so-called Turk Turkee has become less of a mascot than a feathered menace.

The hen has "become very aggressive," said Gaia Bravicich, a master of business administration candidate from Italy who says the turkey often roosts in front of her dorm. "I don't want anything bad to happen to [her], but it's not safe. [She] scares me and a lot of other people. I don't feel comfortable walking outside a lot of the time now."

Jim Cardoza, a wildlife biologist with the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, said he wasn't surprised to hear about Turk Turkee nesting on campus - or about the complaints.
"It's like coyotes, raccoons, and skunks. When they become accustomed to people, and there are abundant food supplies, and they're not harassed, they lose their fear of people," Cardoza said. "I wouldn't call them dangerous, but I can understand how grown adults might be afraid of them."

Better train service to Worcester, New Bedford?

Massachusetts political leaders plan to announce a $100 million deal today to buy train tracks from a private rail company in hopes of improving commuter service between Boston and Central Massachusetts and obtaining a key link for a new commuter line to Fall River and New Bedford.

Train service has been a source of frustration all along the east-west corridor, where commuters from suburban towns such as Wellesley and Framingham have joined Worcester residents in demanding more frequent and more reliable service to Boston. Murray, a former Worcester mayor, ran for statewide office in part on promises to revamp service.

Under today's deal, improvements to service are expected to happen in stages.

Winter Hill gang hub gets some religion

Once, it was the headquarters of Somerville's notorious Winter Hill Gang, the auto body shop where debts were settled, along with old scores. There, James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi met and forged a partnership that would lead to murder, corruption, and a FBI scandal.

But soon the infamous hangout of gun-toting gangsters in the 1970s will be born again - as a Pentecostal church.

A preacher who bought the Marshall Street garage earlier this year from former gang leader Howie Winter said he plans to transform the building into the new home of the Somerville Church of God, which will open its doors in January.

The planned transformation was greeted yesterday with amusement by several of the gang's former members as they reminisced about the old days.

"Hallelujah!" said John Martorano, a 67-year-old hitman-turned-government witness who confessed to killing 20 people - including one victim that he shot to death in the garage in 1974. "I think it's great. I'm all for religion."

Can you be a VP and not read the newspaper?

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin repeatedly failed to cite a newspaper or magazine when asked what she had read regularly before John McCain picked her as his running mate, saying only that she had read "most of them."

Palin also said that she doesn't believe that the media's coverage of her has been sexist. "It would be sexist if the media were to hold back and not ask me about my experience, my vision, my principles, my values," said Palin, Alaska's governor.

In an interview aired Tuesday on "The CBS Evening News," anchor Katie Couric asked Palin what publications she had read to stay informed and to understand the world.

"I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media," Palin replied. Asked for examples, she said, "Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years."

Study traces AIDS virus origin to 100 years ago

NEW YORK—The AIDS virus has been circulating among people for about 100 years, decades longer than scientists had thought, a new study suggests. 

Genetic analysis pushes the estimated origin of HIV back to between 1884 and 1924, with a more focused estimate at 1908.

Previously, scientists had estimated the origin at around 1930. AIDS wasn't recognized formally until 1981 when it got the attention of public health officials in the United States. 

The results appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

This is not a new idea

It's just sad that the economy has to get this bad before Boston "thinks of" this. Other parts of the country synchronized their lights several years ago! 

Boston drivers waste hundreds of thousands of hours stuck at traffic lights -- and hundreds of thousands of gallons of precious gasoline as their cars idle. Now the city says it's moving to adjust the lights -- saving people's time and the planet at the same time.

"We’re always looking at ways in which we can lower our emissions and be smarter about moving traffic," Thomas J. Tinlin, the city transportation commissioner, said.

Timing adjustments to the lights at 60 intersections in the Back Bay this summer have sharply reduced traffic delays, city officials said today. 

The officials estimated that, on an annual basis, the adjustments will save 135,000 hours of people's time and 125,000 gallons of gasoline, while eliminating 9.5 tons of carbon monoxide emissions.