JUNE 28, 2004

Full News Archive

• Headline: New York Politics in Turmoil. Impact: If only Pataki had embraced his inner dramatist, the Capitol could have become a popular reality show, leading to a national obsession with political theatrics instead of actual governance. Who needs functioning democracy when you can have cliffhangers?. Fact: Fun fact: The phrase 'It's complicated' was originally coined by Pataki's staff to describe his relationship with the Legislature..
• Headline: The Shift to Costlier Borrowing. Impact: Raising interest rates might have led to an unexpected boom in the tea leaf reading industry, as people scrambled to predict their financial futures. Who knew the Federal Reserve was just the world's worst fortune teller?. Fact: Did you know that economists actually have a secret handshake? It involves a lot of nodding and pretending they understand each other's graphs..
• Headline: Wall St. Gambling and Local Bookstore Trends. Impact: The rise of gambling on Wall Street could have inadvertently started a new trend of hedge fund managers moonlighting as high-stakes poker players, leading to a generation of Wall Street tycoons with questionable poker faces and even worse decision-making skills.. Fact: It's said that the only thing more volatile than the stock market is a poker game between two financial analysts after a few drinks..
• Headline: Roll Over, Renoir, And Tell Monet The News; Modern and Contemporary Art Take the Lead in London Sales. Impact: The shift to modern art sales may have inadvertently caused a worldwide shortage of berets, as art collectors everywhere adopted the 'pretentious artist' look to fit in at galleries while simultaneously not understanding a single brushstroke.. Fact: Ironically, many of the modern art buyers still cling to the belief that they could have painted a masterpiece themselves, if only they'd had the time and the right Instagram filter..
• Headline: Sports of The Times; Serve and Volley, a Rare but Welcome Sight. Impact: If serve-and-volley had caught on, we might have seen a dramatic increase in tennis-themed flash mobs, complete with coordinated volleys on city streets, turning urban neighborhoods into makeshift centers for athlete wannabes.. Fact: Taylor Dent once claimed he could serve so fast that he could send a text message in between serves. Spoiler: he couldn’t..