Samsung Pays Apple $1 Billion Sending 30 Trucks Full of 5 Cents Coins

With the price of precious metals on the rise, nickel enthusiasts are hoarding their coins in hopes of a windfall.

It’s a common recession-era trope: hard-hit Americans are “clutching every last nickel.” But there’s good news for these frugal nickel clutchers: they may be buying into the investment opportunity of a lifetime.
That’s because the U.S. nickel, melted down, is now worth more than seven cents, thanks to soaring metals prices. And with the coin’s value rising, an eccentric group of investors is quietly working to cash in before the rest of the country catches on.

Brother can you spare me a nickel?
By Jack Farchy in London
It may not command the attention of oil, gold or even copper but nickel is on a roll: it has outperformed almost every other commodity so far in 2010.

Nickel, used as an alloy in stainless steel, has jumped 42 per cent since the start of the year compared with gains of less than 5 cent for aluminium and copper.

It’s clear from the outset of The Last Nickel that Something Has Happened. A bed floats in the blackened void of TNC’s dank, eerie cabaret space, projecting a sense of loneliness, of being cut off from the natural world. And while this feeling increases exponentially over the course of this play by Jane Shepard, the material has been treated so hamfistedly by Living Room Arts that what begins as a promising exploration of the bond between sisters in the wake of a traumatic experience ends up no deeper than an After-School special, a melodramatic take on death and the scars it leaves behind.

Without divulging the specific event that brings together sisters Jo and Jamie, it suffices to say that the nature of the event isn’t made manifest until later in the play, allowing for clever clue-dropping throughout. Jo, the younger sister, attempts to wake Jamie through a series of increasingly histrionic actions, such as singing, dancing, and (in the play’s best comic flourish) playing a slide trombone. Jamie is initially annoyed by Jo’s ranting, but as mentioned, something is wrong with this picture, and Jamie’s irritation with Jo soon turns to frantic concern. Supplementing the main action is a chorus of hand puppets who emerge intermittently from behind the headboard to provide running commentary.

While there is merit in plumbing the depths of sisterly relationships in the shadow of life-changing events, Ms. Shepard’s play strives for poignancy, only to descend (inevitably?) into bathos. It’s difficult to determine who’s more at fault here, the playwright or director Melanie S. Armer, whose overly stagy direction has the sisters bouncing insanely around the set in a re-creation of childhood abandon. Reyna Kahan’s shrill Jo (whose age is never clear) becomes tiring a few minutes in; the relatively understated Lori Brigantino fares somewhat better, despite being saddled with a character who can’t decide whether to commit suicide or embark on an eating disorder. Worst of all are the puppets, a staggeringly artificial device that seems to have been devised merely to spoon-feed the audience unnecessary subtext and backstory.