Also, my great-grandfather's first cousin was the first man in Trenton sentenced under Prohibition. (The conviction was later overturned, on the grounds that the prosecution hadn't proven that he planned to sell the alcohol. He was just the owner of a "tavern" receiving a huge shipment of it. Also, looking up pretty much every lawyer, judge, and police officer involved on either side of that case gets me references to corruption charges and mafia involvement. And, in a few cases, connections to the Lindbergh baby case.)

See, now I want to know all that stuff! All I know about anyone older than my grandparents is some half-information about inventing instant coffee. I was fascinated by the sad story from Tom Joyner's family about some relatives probably wrongly convicted and exectuted for killing someone.

For finding stuff within the US, the best resourse is ancestry.com. It's got all the census records (searchable and the original forms scanned) from 1930 back (though the 1890 ones were damaged in a fire years ago, before they were archived, so they've only got a few states for those), WWI and WWII draft cards, ship manifests from pretty much every ship coming into NY and a pretty good number for other ports, and a whole ton of other stuff. The transcriptions are sometimes pretty bad, so if there's a records like a census that you know ought to be there and isn't, it's sometimes helpful to search by something like first name and birth date, and then look at the last names that come up to see if something might be what you're looking for. (I've found a Hochman transcribed as Barkmu.)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar doesn't want to blow you up: [link]

I don't know if I care enough to pay for ancestry.com, but huh.

Old records on my mom's side of the family were destroyed by the Russians in their occupation of Finland during WW-II. The commie bastards....

Knowing what I know about the family I know...well, best to let it lie. Although who doesn't wish for a cool ancestor that could put you in some perspective, right? I so doubt it.

Oddly, for a place with no theater department or major, and very little in the way of facilities or encouragement, we've turned out quite a number of performing grads in the past ten years!

we had a theatre department, but it was very much a bastard child. Still, we produced Tina Fey, Shawn Patrick Thomas (Save the Last Dance), Jason George (Sunset Beach, Eve), and a slew of New York performers and actors.

[link]

British athletes selected for this year's Olympic Games in Beijing will be asked to sign a contract that forbids them from criticizing China's human rights record.

Graham Nathan, spokesman for the British Olympics Association (BOA), told CNN that "British athletes will have to sign a contract promising not to comment on any politically sensitive issues."

MMM...perfect day outside mid to high sixties -we walked to breakfast - visited some friends, went and spent a lot of money on bike helmets, went for a wandering bike ride through the neighborhood... it looks like we have a week of this...I love the false spring we seem to get out here in February...We had it back in CT, but it is way better out here.