Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Schoolboy rescued by superhero

Thank you to RTBH reader Robert for sending in this lovely story from Thailand, as reported on Yahoo news. Apparently, a young autistic boy at a school in Bangkok escaped his frightening first day at school by going to sit on a quiet ledge - the only problem being that the ledge was outside a third floor window. Firemen and teachers tried to coax him back inside to no avail. When his mother revealed his love of cartoon superheroes, however, quick-thinking fireman Somchai Yoosabai saw an opportunity. He rushed back to the firehouse and changed into a Spider-Man suit he uses for school fire-drills, then returned to rescue the schoolboy from the ledge. This time, the boy was easily persuaded back indoors. All in a day's work, as they say!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

A very direct fiscal stimulus

Many thanks to RTBH reader Caroline, who sent this great story from The Charlotte Observer (by one of their columnists, who uses Blogger as a platform, which I thought was quite funny)... It's about an - as yet unidentified - individual who has taken it upon themselves to stimulate the local economy. Their unorthodox method entails putting $10 bills through people's letterboxes in plain white envelopes, with instructions to spend the money locally and wisely. As you can imagine, this act has stimulated a lot of chatter, as well as expenditure - witness the (sometimes hilarious) comments at the end of the story. Wonderful.