Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/217530
NEWS OF THE WEIRD by CHUCK SHEPPARD Downtown London residences are known to be staggeringly expensive, but media blogger Sam Cookney calculated in October just how much. Cookney said he can live in an upscale apartment in Barcelona, Spain, and commute almost every workday to London (700 miles away) for less money than a modest central London rental. (Sixteen commuter days over four weeks a month would run, in pounddollar equivalents: $2,420 for a West Hampstead rental, $121 council tax, and $188 transit travel card, totaling $2,730. Barcelona, in euro-dollar equivalents: $938 for a threebedroom flat with three balconies near transit, no tax, $47 daily roundtrip on Ryanair, $32 a day in airport Chuck Sheppard transportation, totaling $2,202 — a savings of $528 a month.) Plus, he said, sunny Barcelona is on the Mediterranean. (On the other hand, Cookney luckily can work on the plane, for each flight is two hours long.) [Yahoo Finance, 10-28-2013] Can't Possibly Be True Lawyers for Radu Dogaru, who is on trial in Romania for stealing masterpieces last year from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands, said the heist was also the museum's fault — for having such unimaginably lax security — and that if the museum did not admit that, Dogaru would sue. Museum officials said they had tracked some of the works to Dogaru's mother, who is claiming ignorance, and the son's lawyers hope to discount any insurance-company judgments against her by spreading the blame. [Agence France-Presse via Yahoo News, 10-22-2013] The online retailer Amazon.com maintains a side business of operating massive Internet-capacity "cloud" farms and contracts out space to some of the world's largest entities, including U.S. government agencies. In a case brought to light in October by a U.S. Court of Claims ruling, Amazon had won its bid against IBM for a cloud contract with the CIA, but had gone a step further by actually improving the CIA's system and implementing a better plan. In the bizarre world of government contracts, that created a "fairness" problem, as IBM argued that its rights were violated because the specified contract work was no longer exactly what was being done (i.e., the client's work was being done better). IBM lodged a time-consuming protest, but later dropped the suit. [Wall Street Journal, 10-16-2013] COPYRIGHT 2011 CHUCK SHEPHERD WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM WEEKLY HOROSCOPES BY HOLIDAY For the Week of December 1, 2013 ARIES (March 21-April 19) A Scottish proverb suggests that what can be done at any time will be done at no time. That's why if you really don't want to set up a visit with someone this week, you should say, "Come on over any time!" TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Nothing happens until you get involved and take action. You'll strike on a new system that has helped many achieve results. If you follow it, you'll get the same results or better. GEMINI (May 21-June 21) Most things of value are hard won. If it happens very easily, it's usually a sign that there will be more to pay later. Keep this in mind as a too-good-tobe-true scenario unfolds this week. CANCER (June 22-July 22) Some seem to love their pets more than they love their family, friends and people in general. If you're to pursue a relationship with this type of person, you'll have to be in a relationship with their animals, too, or it's not going to work. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) You've renegotiated in the past, and now you're not so sure you can be trusted to keep the agreements you make with yourself. Try again anyhow. Make a small promise and keep it, and then another and another. Later you'll look back and wonder why you chose to see it as a struggle. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) How big of a game do you want to play? If you want to play in the top leagues, you must be able to handle the top problems. As for the petty troubles of this week, try to approach them with grace and certainty. They are what make you better able to handle an ever-expanding life. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) Outrageous nonsense may try to pass for plausible reality. The average casual passerby likely will be objective enough to see the outrageous nonsense as utterly ridiculous, while intelligent people close to the action may begin to question their rationality. SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21) If someone wants more social attention than you do, it can feel suffocating. If someone needs to be alone more, it can feel like a rejection. Avoid the pain of mismatched needs by consciously seeking those with a similar social set-point. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) It takes an animated person to realize when a scene is static. You like to move energy around, and that skill will come in handy now. You'll change people's perspectives and lives this week just by being you. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)This week you'll experience another one of those situations that are no one's fault, and yet you're the only one who can make it better. Just know that making it better is not the same as accepting blame. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) No one can take away your power to choose what to think. Choosing thoughts is one of your most important abilities, and you'll use it well. It does take a bit of experimentation, as thoughts don't always lead to the expected place this week. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) There have been times when you've wanted to amp up your appeal, but this week you can't afford to get any more appealing than you are. You don't need people wanting things from you. By Holiday Mathis IN THE MORNING Weekdays 5:30AM to 10:00AM ADVICE GODDESS Took The Wind Out Of Her Zales Around Valentine's Day, my beloved boyfriend of a year kept hinting about a big surprise. He'd been talking about moving in with me, and I was expecting a proposal and a ring. I got a fondue pot. I have two children and, apparently, the idea that a man should put a ring on a woman's finger before moving in with her and her kids. He said he'd propose when he was ready. Then, by accident (I think), he left his Amazon.com page open on my computer, showing the tackiest, cheapest ring in the world and a pocketknife for himself (which cost more than the ring). I told him to move in and forget the ring. I bought myself a ring, but that didn't work. I felt unvalued and ashamed. We fought often, and he ended up moving out. He wants me back, but I don't want to live with him without the stupid ring. We're both too needy to live apart. Can we salvage this? — Heartbroken Mama As evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller jokes in "The Mating Mind": "Why should a man give a woman a useless diamond engagement ring, when he could buy her a nice big Amy Alkon potato, which she could at least eat?" Well, the answer is that men can walk away after sex and women may walk away with a bunch of little mouths to drag around and feed, so women evolved to seek reliable signs that a man has access to resources and a willingness to provide them. Any hump 'em and dump 'em smooth talker can make promises. The most reliable signs of commitment are those economists call "costly signals," meaning that they require substantial effort or financial investment and are therefore difficult to fake. Basically, only a guy who's madly in love with you would be willing to prove it with an object as wildly expensive and useless as a diamond. That's why buying yourself a ring didn't work and why you felt "unvalued and ashamed" when your boyfriend got down on one knee, but only so he could plug in a moderately-priced kitchen appliance and propose, "How 'bout we put stale bread cubes on sticks and dunk 'em in melted cheese?" Being too needy to live alone is reason to get a dog or paste a face on your robot vacuum cleaner, not rush into a lifelong commitment. The way to figure this out is by spending time together without living together until he's ready to commit or you're ready to throw in the towel. But pick a date to take stock of whether progress is being made so you aren't hanging on endlessly. As they say in the fondue world, there comes a time when a guy needs to either dip or get off the pot. Amy Alkon all rights reserved NOV. 27 - DEC. 3, 2013 UCW 23