Men`s Health magazine has put together a list of the 10 least stressful jobs:
1.Forest ranger: The great outdoors and, if there`s no fire, the day is yours.
2. Craftsman: Your skills, your time.
3. Repairer of musical instruments: Quality, not quantity, rules your life.
4. Architect: Deadlines are widely spaced, your projects endure and you have a high satisfaction level.
5. Natural scientist: You plan your time, you`re outdoors a lot and, other than grant proposals, you report to no one.
6. Repairer of industrial machines: No one knows what the hell you do.
7. Actuary: The most challenging part of the job is explaining why it isn`t as boring as people think.
8. Librarian: Thoughtful and quiet.
9. Piano tuner: No quota.
10. Barber: You can`t take the work home with you.
AUTO ARMADA In an effort to ease traffic on London`s busy streets, economic summit organizers suggested a seven-car limit for each visiting delegation. So who shows up with 16 vehicles-more than double the limit? President Bush. The motorcade includes a presidential limousine, a spare car in case Bush`s breaks down, two ”war wagons” filled with security forces and weapons, a van with communications equipment, a press van, an ambulance and nine staff cars. The hosts were not amused. ”Your cars are twice as long as ours,” a Scotland Yard agent told Knight-Ridder Newspapers, ”and your motorcades are too.”
RIGHT-THINKING COURT Comic Jay Leno had this view of the changing makeup of the Supreme Court:
”There was a near tragedy in Washington. All of the Supreme Court justices were lined up to have an official portrait taken, and the photographer said,
`Can you lean a little more to the right.` They all fell over.”
MANAGING TO GET BY Shortly after his team swept a four-game series from the Cincinnati Reds last weekend Pittsburgh Pirates manager Jim Leyland had to be hospitalized with chest pains. Fortunately, his problems were diagnosed as stress-related and not a heart attack. When Reds manager Lou Piniella learned of Leyland`s condition he told the Cincinnati Post: ”If he had chest pains (from beating the Reds four times), I should have been in a coma.”
NO FAN OF OLLIE`S Retired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, one of the bit players in the Iran-contra scandal, is not exactly a supporter of Oliver North, perhaps the lead character in the affair. In his new book, ”Hazardous Duty: An American Soldier in the 20th Century,” and subsequent interviews Singlaub says North lied to his own colleagues and ”proceeded to stab me in the back” in congressional testimony. ”To people all over the world Ollie North was a hero,” Singlaub said. ”But I knew better. There was a wide gap between the media image of Ollie North, the loyal, honest Marine, and the sordid reality of his true character and performance.” However, Singlaub says the continuing Iran-contra probe and related controversy over CIA nominee Robert Gates is only motivated to ”embarrass” the Bush administration politically.
GETTING IT RIGHT A reader with a scientific bent called to inform that Wednesday`s lead item contained the wrong Nobel honor for New Zealand-born scientist Lord Ernest Rutherford. He won the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry, not physics. The honor was for his work in the radio transformation of atoms. Rutherford was the first scientist to split atomic nuclei artificially.
