May 15, 2008
Even cops can't get a break
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Nice to know cops can't talk their way out of speeding tickets, either. Though not for lack of trying.
On her MySpace page, Baltimore City Officer Cynthia Sobotka recounts her efforts to avoid a ticket when stopped in Boydton, Va. for driving 80 mph in a 65 mph zone. By her own account, she was on a road trip to North Carolina, driving a van with a bunch of beer-drinking buddies in back.
"The Officer (a female) asked me for my license and registration," Sobotka wrote. "And hoping it would keep me from getting a ticket, I also gave her my Police Identification card from work. She smugly handed my ID right back and sneered, 'Here, I'm not gonna need this.' I knew right then that this wasn't going to turn out well for me.
"Tells me she understands that I'm a Baltimore City Police Officer, but they have a no tolerance policy and everyone gets ticketed. I promptly signed my citation and advised that we, my department, also have a no tolerance policy and asked if she planned to visit Baltimore City any time soon. She didn't find this nearly as funny as me and my cheering section from the back of the van. Then she asks me why I was driving 80 mph anyway. ... I couldn't resist and responded, 'Obviously because I didn't see you!' Again, the laughter from the chain gang in the rear of our 'short bus' drowned out any comment she may have made after that. Needless to say, I now have to appear in court and plead to the judge for no points."
She got a $75 fine, Virginia court records indicate.
Through a police spokesman, Sobotka acknowledged the MySpace page was hers but declined to comment. Spokesman Sterling Clifford had only this to say: "From what I gather, I'm pleased to see she was acting as a designated driver."
Lesson for the rest of us, who'd never dare get mouthy with a Baltimore cop: If it's Officer Sobotka, give it a try. She seems to have a sense of humor.
While the animal fat may be only slightly better for you than the hydrogenated stuff, it's said to be quite a treat. "Lipid of kings," says the foodie Web site Chowhound.
Naturally the Butchers Hill tavern would leap at the chance to promote this $9 starter, which comes with "a trio of aioli," right?
Well, maybe if the duck lobby weren't already outside, demonstrating against the foie gras on the menu. The owners declined to comment.
When he popped the question to Jessica Kim Quijano, the message was just 21 microns wide - about a quarter the width of a human hair and visible only under a microscope.
Luckily, as an experimental physicist researching nanotechnology at Johns Hopkins University, Wasserman had access to an electron microscope. Not to mention the "cleanroom" also required to write "Marry Me Jessica" in platinum - one atom at a time - on a transparent sapphire crystal the size of a quarter.
I'm not even going to try to explain the process, but Wasserman said it involved "thermally [evaporating] precious metals heated to over 1,000 degrees Celsius inside a specialized vacuum chamber pumped out to a pressure of one-billionth of an atmosphere."
Enough to sweep any gal off her feet, even one whose professional interests - she works with Hubble Space Telescope cameras and spectrographs - run toward the way big. The wedding is March 30.
Playing harder to get: the folks at Guinness World Records. Wasserman is sure he's created the world's tiniest marriage proposal, but the book denied his claim. It's not clear to Guinness if proposals should be classified as objects or actions, so it doesn't maintain records for them.
Wasserman had better luck with the Hopkins thesis defense committee.
"Just two days ago I successfully defended my doctoral thesis," Wasserman said. "In the final slide of the defense I showed the committee the pictures of the proposal, which they enjoyed."
Connect the dots
Milestone in WYPR's post-Steiner era: Gerry from Pikesville called in yesterday to Dan Rodricks' "Midday." ... Mayor Sheila Dixon's former spokesman, Anthony McCarthy, has resurfaced, as chief development officer for Health Education Resource Organization (HERO). The Baltimore nonprofit provides services to people with AIDS and HIV.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
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