Move over Crazy Cat Ladies of New York, a West End Avenue tenant may just have you beat. The Post reports that court papers have been filed by a building owner against 71-year-old tenant Jacqueline Bartone, calling her apartment a "zoo" and listing the pets that reside with her -- including three dogs, several reptiles and cats, "and as many as a dozen birds, including an African Grey parrot and a macaw parrot." Bartone and......

Radio shock jock Don Imus was suspended for two weeks by CBS, which owns WFAN and Westwood One (the radio outlets his show is broadcast and syndicated on) and MSNBC, which broadcasts a televised simulcast of the radio show, over remarks he made towards the Rutgers women's basketball team. MSNBC announced that Imus would be suspended first, then CBS announced a similar suspension. The suspension will begin on Monday, as Imus has a series......

It's so funny, we were watching WNBC 4 yesterday and there was a segment about engagement rings. If a woman receives an engagement ring on a holiday (Christmas, birthday, etc.) and then later breaks off the engagement, she can keep the ring because it was be considered a gift. So experts suggest that women request their engagement rings on holidays and that men not give them on holidays. And now there's this instant classic NY......

Once in a while, there are Ethicist columns in the NY Times Magazine that are immediate classics. Like yesterday's column, in particular the second item about an item found on the subway:I found a video camera on the subway. I could not get to lost and found that day, and the manufacturer had no record of the owner. When my mother lost a camera, the finder located her by viewing the pictures. Trying to do......

An off duty police officer stopped a man from carjacking him by shooting him in the face. Officer Kenneth O'Connor had been sitting in his Ford Explorer SUV when Daniel Arroyo apparently threatened him with a gun early Sunday. O'Connor used his off-duty - and licensed - revolver and shot him in the head, but didn't realize that Arroyo had been wounded until he saw blood on the ground. The cop called the police and......

NY Times Ethicist Randy Cohen announces to readers (Gothamist assumes he means all NY Times readers, though he just mentions "Book Review" readers) that he wants their suggestions to make a literary map of Manhattan, places where literary characters walked, brooded, or traipsed. Email suggestions to bookmap@nytimes.com (there are more rules and regs, like having page numbers and quotes, here), credit will be given to the first person who sends in a submission for a......

Randy Cohen, The Ethicist...

This week's Ethicist column contains, in Ask Gothamist's opinion, one glaring mistake. Vicki Pope from Tennessee writes in with this question: I am a 50-year-old woman who lives in the suburbs of a medium-size town. Several times a week, a neighbor (whom I've never met) stands at his front door naked and watches me leave for work. At first I was shocked; now I just ignore him. I'm reluctant to call the police for......

Thanks for sending us great questions this week! We got quite a few over the weekend and we'll try to answer them all. Meanwhile, if you've got a burning question, take a look at what we've tackled in the last week to see if we've already answered it. Otherwise, ask away! This week, we bravely investigated: People: We become the armchair Ethicist and take on a question posited to Randy Cohen about a roommate who......

Gothamist absolutely loves the Ethicist. Randy Cohen's weekly column in the Sunday New York Times magazine is the first thing we read when the paper is delivered Saturday morning and many an argument ensues as a result of Cohen's topic du jour. Case in point is this weekend's first question. E.L. of New York asks: Sometimes when my roomate is on the phone and does not want me to know what she is saying, she......

Randy "Ethicist" Cohen was faced with a blog-related question yesterday on NPR (listen to the June 22 segment): Guest host Joe Palca and Cohen discuss the dilemma of a man who has stumbled across his friend's very personal Web log. Is a blog considered as private as a diary is? If so, should he refrain from reading it any further? What the blurb fails to mention is that the man, "Sean from the Midwest," feels......