Diamond Jim: A $10,000 fish swimming in the Chesapeake Bay

Catch a Diamond Jim, net 10 grand. (Mark Gail — The Washington Post)
He is swimming in Chesapeake Bay. His name is Diamond Jim. Seen him?
He is a striped bass with a special tag, and if you catch him before June 30 you will have more than just a plate full of dinner.
You will have $10,000.
Catching Diamond Jim is part of the Maryland Fishing Challenge, which starts NOW — you should leave work and go fish, but don’t tell anyone I said that — with a special chartreuse tagged striped bass having been inserted Thursday into the Maryland portion of the bay.
I should pause to clarify something about Diamond Jim: There is more than one Diamond Jim.
The are three — sort of. Catch the first one by June 30 — that’s worth 10 grand. The prizes increase throughout July and August to as much as $25,000 if further inserted Diamond Jims aren’t caught within a certain time frame. (Read the somewhat overly complicated rules here.)
First warning: There are other specially tagged striped bass swimming in the bay, but the state’s Department of Natural Resources, which sponsors the contest, says those fish are “imposters” and are worth a minimum of $500.
Second warning: If you catch a Diamond Jim, DNR shouts: “DO NOT REMOVE THE TAG FROM THE STRIPED BASS. IF THE TAG IS REMOVED, THE FISH WILL NO LONGER BE ELIGIBLE FOR A PRIZES.”
And if you catch a Diamond Jim, let me know and I will tell your fish story on this blog.
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10:49 AM ET, 05/25/2012 |
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Demand for government aid in Md. hits record levels

The Baden Food Pantry at St. Paul's Episcopal Church Hall in Brandywine. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)Well, this isn’t good news:
The number of Maryland families who need government help to make ends meet has reached record levels.
More than 700,000 people receive food assistance, the most in state history. A record 70,000 people depend on emergency cash assistance. And the demand for the state’s child care subsidy program has caused officials to impose an indefinite freeze on new applicants.
Yet state and federal officials are budgeting less money for the safety net in the coming fiscal year. The move reflects the government’s confidence in the economic recovery, based in part on the fact that demand has plateaued for most state-administered assistance programs.
Others question whether it is overly optimistic to cut back at a time when state assistance programs are still swollen with unprecedented numbers.
Those scary figures came via a report from the Capital News Service and were published this morning on MarylandReporter.com. CNS sifted through piles of data to paint a gloomy picture for many Marylanders, even though the state’s unemployment rate remains relatively low at 6.6 percent.
Agencies and organizations providing aid to those in emergency situations are seeing off-the-charts need.
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11:23 AM ET, 05/23/2012 |
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Banned license plate words in Md.: PIMP, TOILET

Not too much wrong with this Maryland license plate — unless you're a Nationals fan.
According to some funny and etymological reporting by the Baltimore Sun, the following are words you will never see on a Maryland license plate, as specified by the state’s Objectionable Plate List:
HEROIN
TOILET
FBI
CIA
KILLALL
SAFESEX
PIMP
CHUMP
BUNS
The paper notes that it could not print a list of all the banned words for a reason that seems rather obvious: Many of the words are really, really bad.
How does a word get banned from the plates? Explainer: “State law allows the MVA to deny tags that have a scatological or sexual meaning; use curse words, epithets or obscenities; carry a ‘fraudulent or deceptive purpose’ (FBI and CIA are banned); refer to illegal acts (sorry, no HEROIN or KILLALL) or convey messages about a group’s race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or disability,” the paper says.
Vanity plate censorship is apparently not a precise art. The Sun notes that the following words are allowed, and several, as you will see, have relationships to the banned words that may or may not be noted by Oxford English Dictionary:
THEPUKE
FATPIMP
FATAL
BUTTS
SUX2BU
PHATAZZ
BAD AZZ
WTF
What would your vanity plate read in a perfect world? Leave them in the comments or tweet them to me at @PostRosenwaldMD. Mine would say TUMS.
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11:07 AM ET, 05/22/2012 |
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A G-8 protest: Speeches and fair trade coffee

Jeremy Weyl, one of the speakers at the Occupy G-8 People's Summit, addresses a few dozen people in the audience.
(Michael Rosenwald - The Washington Post)
What I’ve seen so far of the protests surrounding the G-8 Summit at Camp David:
About three dozen people and one dog occupied a community room at the Frederick County Public Library early Friday morning for a daylong series of talks entitled the “People’s Summit.” Nearly a dozen reporters and photographers joined them, either staying or quickly leaving.
“People all over the planet are waking up and joining a global movement,” Margot Flowers, one of the organizers of the summit and the co-leader of the group It’s Our Economy, told the group. The world, she said, was waking up to the notion that “human needs are more important than corporate greed.”
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11:08 AM ET, 05/18/2012 |
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Alongside G-8 protests, a dispute over prom
I got to Frederick early this morning to park myself in town before the alleged G-8 protests begin. Picked up a copy of the Frederick News-Post: “County gears up for G-8 deluge,” a front page headline blared. Another: “Tension in the air as summit convenes.”

(Lisa Bolton)
Could be an interesting day. I didn’t pack my gas mask.
But buried down in the bottom righthand corner of the front page I found news of another protest, this one not exactly connected to the ire aimed at 1 percenters: “Brunswick seniors to stage Prom 2.0,” the headline said.
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10:18 AM ET, 05/18/2012 |
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