Business Week scores yesterday's WaMu shareholders meeting, "activists three, bank zero." The Seattle Times settles for "contentious," while the P-I has this leading question for CEO Kerry Killinger from Lee Lannoye, a shareholder and former WaMu executive vice president: "You have destroyed the company--why are you not being held accountable?" MSN Money captures the executive team in action at Benaroya Hall like so:"I just want people to calm down and have a little faith," said......

You can spot people working in the investment sector more easily these days because of that tell-tale bulge from their adult diaper. As the subprime mortgage crisis expands ("from beneath it devours"--yes, now it's clear) to implicate ratings agencies ("The risk is sliced so thin it actually vanishes!") and banks' off-book SIVs (more powerful but prone to rollover in accidents), people who had no idea they held risky investments are finding that out at about......

Amazon released an eBook reader today, it's three years in the making. They call it Kindle. Here's a big 'ol Newsweek piece about it. Barnes and Noble has seen its stock drop 5% today (as of 3:01 EST), as investors ask and answer the question--is print dead? (Note--you aren't reading this in print.) News of the Kindle launched a spirited discussion amongst various Seattlesters touching on the merits of eBooks, of iPods, book history, and......

Click-YAY! Click-YAY! Click-YAY! That's the Call of the Amazonian today. Amazon.com stock closed up 10%, at 100.96, after the company announced profits have quadrupled. It's not just well-wishers that are buying in on the stock, it's also panicked short-sellers. There's a 36.8 million share short interest that comes due at the end of September, and those who own a big or even small part of it are buying now so they don't lose their shirts.......

Last week was a bad one for pioneers and philosophers of our favorite beverages. On Thursday, beer (and liquor) guru Michael Jackson passed away at 65. A day earlier, Alfred Peet, founder of Peet’s Coffee, died in his Ashland, Oregon home. He was 87. Had we known Peet lived in the Pacific Northwest, we would have made a pilgrimage to his home. We would have loved to pick his brain on bean-growing regions and roasting......

SELL!......

Before we get to today's boat, there's a half-assed explanation of the Empress of the North's Alaskan accident online as of yesterday--apparently they were making a turn and hit a rock... Well, cruise passengers should certainly slumber easily in their berths now that that whole thing has been exposed. There's also (another?) entirely fictitious accounting of the accident at The Spoof. Vision of the Seas Royal Caribbean's Vision of the Seas is another standard ship......

The financing bill that would pay for a new Sonics arena in Renton will be changing a bit in hopes that House Speaker Frank Chopp will actually read the thing. From the PI: According to the new plan, no state sales tax would be used to finance the new arena. Currently, King County keeps part of the state sales tax to help pay for pro baseball and football stadiums. The revision means the Sonics are......

If you want to repair the aging 520 bridge, you'll have to pay tolls. We knew that. But State Treasurer Michael Murphy says you'll need tolls both on I-90 and 520 to pay for the project--and he won't issue bonds needed to finance construction without them:"I will not authorize the debt to be issued for a project that can't pay for itself," Murphy said. "In order for the thing to work, both bridges --......

Ding dong NASCAR's dead. The ISC came a'knocking with promises of garbage bags full of tourist's cash if only the state legislators would agree to a tax-payer-funded track on the Peninsula. It seemed like kind of a longshot from the beginning, and NASCAR's local guys failed spectacularly at judging the state of things in the Puget Sound region. "Hey, guys, they just voted down a tax-funded basketball venue and it looks like they're gathering in......

Monday WOMEN & MONEY: Personal finance expert and author, Suze Orman talks about the complicated and dysfunctional relationship that women have with money in her book, Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny. 7:30pm // Town Hall // $5 AGORAPHOBES TAKE HEART: Everything you’ve been told about dating is wrong. Love Will Find You is a new approach to love from dating expert Kathryn Alice. It may be the first dating......

--Northwest stocks weren't immune from yesterday's stock downturn. The market is up so far, though. --The state 4A boys and girls tournaments tip off at 9am today. Garfield plays at 10:30am, Franklin at 8:30pm. Webcasts here. --I Make Things visits the Museum of Telecommunication on Marginal Way, which we're ashamed to say we didn't know about. --Popular councilman Peter Steinbrueck won't run for reelection, he'll form a coalition to support a surface/transit option to replace......

Because our last car threw itself a Viking funeral while we were driving it, we're clearing some space on our new dashboard for St. Barbara. "O Beautiful Maiden once imprisoned in a high tower, protect us from the fire that rages in our engine." St. Agatha, St. Catherine of Siena, or some other fire-retardant saint may work, but we've got a sentimental attachment to Barbara. She's invoked against fires that come as flaming bolts......

--KCJ is already down and now the Kitsap Sun looks like it might be in jeopardy. --Seattlest drove down to a Renton parking lot the other day and paid some guy cash for a Nintendo Wii, so we don't need Bill Gates to tell us the platform's a Microsoft killer. --Storm water drainage is a concern in Seattle, particularly lately, and there are good and bad ways of handling it. --It's freezing and there's......

There's a national transportation bigwig in Seattle today pledging flood relief and the like. Transportation secretary Mary Peters is a Bush appointee, though, so if the rebuilding of NOLA is any indication Rainier will probably erupt before the flood-damaged areas around it are repaired. The cool part is that she's expected to say something positive about light rail in Seattle, particularly about the UW-Capitol Hill-Downtown line that we have high hopes for. From the P-I:......

Wednesday, September 27 >>>Town Hall, 7:30pm. Science and medical writer Thomas Hager tells you all about the drug that you won't hear about on House, M.D.: "The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered disease, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics." But does it make you feel like hugging strangers? $5 at the door. >>>Bella Cosa Foods, 4:00-6:00pm: Federico Bibi lets you taste two organic olive......

-Some people loved the new Pride for what it was and some people loved it for what it wasn't. And some people weren't that impressed. -The Gates Foundation hit the jackpot courtesy of Warren Buffet. Check out this hot video of bridge partners discussing philanthropy (NSFW!). -If only things were going so well at Bill's day job. EU officials are recommending a daily fine on MS and the vaunted file system that was cut from......

You know those radio ads? The ones with the excruciatingly earnest song: You love her soooowowo/ This sheeiiiee must knowow/ Straight from the heart/ (Weisfield Jewelers) We always wondered about that song--it seemed a little out of the competence of a local jewelry store to write music, hire a singer, etc. As it turns out, the ad is a knock-off. A friend heard the same song in an ad for a jeweler in Lexington, Kentucky.......

A couple of national heavies just blew through town to promote either side of our coming senate race and the most interesting things to come out of both visits was the dissent. Maria Cantwell got called out for the Iraq war votes that she's sticking to while she was sharing the stage with Barak Obama. John McCain's finest Seattle moment happened on the radio after his McGavick event. A caller asked about the shady background......

As reported on the slog earlier, eclectic zine/book/underground comix shop Confounded Books will be closing forever Saturday April 29th, with shared retail-mate Wall of Sound expanding to take up the soon to be vacated space. In its seven year history, Confounded has changed ownership once and moved twice, from Fremont, to Belltown and then finally to Capitol Hill. Seattlest's sense of the store's history was foggy enough to merit contacting Confounded owner and operator Brad......

This post may have nothing to do with Gasworks or the Friends of Gasworks Park. But you'll have to read it to find out. Diabolical! So here's the question: Have you ever wondered where "free" parking comes from? Well, it comes out of your pockets, with all that lint. It's estimated that the average parking space costs more than a car. When you shop, dine out, or see a movie, you pay indirectly for parking......

Maybe the Sonics' problem this season has been the lack of a good lobbyist presence in the middle. Unable to find success on the court, the team is fairing better in Olympia, where it is seeking financial help to remodel Key Arena. Some lawmakers have agreed to help the team out by extending the current hotel and motel tax currently in place in order to pay off bonds used to finance Safeco and Qwest......

Bombs Away: We've always been pretty impressed with the huge starling clouds that appear from time to time downtown, but apparently they piss some people off. Haters. Orcas Endangered Officially: Seattlest will comment on this more extensively, but the short of it is that the NOAA announced Puget Sound Orcas to be an endangered species under the federal Endangered Species Act today. Dude, Buy My Gold Record: The Stranger's reporting that former Sub Popster Jed......

While anyone working under the title "former police chief" could reasonably be expected to endorce throwing the book at drug users, actual former Seattle chief of police Norm Stamper wrote a book entitled, "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing." Read an excerpt at AlterNet.com: I say it’s time to withdraw the troops in the war on drugs. For a jaw-dropping illustration of drug enforcement’s financial costs, take a......

Seattlest remains pretty much out of the loop when it comes to the snowboarding due to the fact that we havent even seen any snow since February... of 2004!... so we were a little surprised to read the following rant from friend and former Lib-Tech employee "S!R ONE" reacting to the recent news stories about the departure of the snowboard-related program activities manufacturing concern (insipid "humor" links provided by Seattlest): Quiksilver is closing down a......

Paul Allen is a billionaire, so it's probably okay if some things don't always quite succeed. The Experience Music Project may be one of those failures. Seattlest has already compiled the latest media outlook on the inauspicious history and present state of the museum. The Seattle PI's latest story asks people what would they do with an empty EMP. In the meantime, Seattlest and many of our fellow camera-toting citizens will take lots of pictures......