That saves the gods of Valhalla, eliminating the need for Richard Wagner’s fourth Ring cycle opera “Gotterdamerung” (Twilight of the Gods) saving attendees a lot of money and several hours of sitting. … And in an effort to lure a less highbrow crowd, the promoters are planning to revive the “Miss Rheingold contest.” In a modern adaption to Wagner’s operas, they will be skimpily dressed and perform a pole dance. Patrons will be enticed by ads that picture "Das Rheingold" as the first opera totally devoted to beer drinking,  which reminds me that over the course of the next week my wife and I will be heading upstream from Amsterdam to Basel. The trip includes a visit to Strasbourg where Gutenburg perfected his printing technology.  What is not well known is that his first effort, Printing Press 1.0, was a slow seller with most customers waiting for the bugs to be ironed out in Version 1.1..… Sign wielded by a scruffy looking panhandler in Manhattan this week: “Let’s do lunch. You buy. .. It’s a nearly perfect world,, well close when the Yankees lose a playoff series 4-0. If you have to have a sport in which nothing happens for most of three hours, at least it needs some redeeming qualities like this one. …. I don’t like to call my 21-year old daughter scatterbrained. I prefer to term it minimally-invasive thinking. … It is always interesting when executives at a company talk about raising the bar for performance. I was once at a place where they raised the bar, but had to put it back down because many customers couldn’t reach their drinks. … Remember the dead never really leave us, especially in Hudson County, N.J., where they vote with great consistency.