March 30, 1994

New York City Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines caused a stir when he recently discovered that the Board of Education's central bureaucracy has about 7,000 employees, 3,000 more than anyone had thought. But there's a more fundamental problem: No one knows how many schools there are in New York City.

One week after the assassination of its presidential candidate, Mexico's long-governing party today announced that its new standard-bearer would be Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, a former Cabinet minister who had been managing the slain nominee's campaign. The choice of the new candidate was made by the departing Mexican President, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In selecting Mr. Zedillo to replace Luis Donaldo Colosio, who was shot to death in Tijuana last week, Mr. Salinas turned to one of the American-trained economists most closely associated with his own effort to modernize Mexico's institutions and strengthen its ties to the United States.

It could be a marriage made in techno-geek heaven. Big banks and other trading institutions are venturing ever deeper into derivatives -- exotic financial instruments like "equity-spread call options" or "guaranteed performance bond options" that can be as complex to monitor as a space shuttle flight.

POOR April Fools' Day. Other holidays are linked with time-honored foods: turkey at Thanksgiving, roast ham at Christmas, caviar on New Year's Eve. But April Fools' Day, the perfect time for culinary pranksterism, is oddly bereft of a single signature dish. Over the years, I've collected a stack of weird but wonderful recipes that would astonish any dinner guests on the first night of April. It all began when I was poring over some old cookbooks and I discovered a recipe, of mysterious origin, for a cake baked in a shoe box. A woman's size 9B produced a luscious dessert for 24.

It wasn't about winning, and it wasn't about money. Instead, the high-profile owner-coach relationship that helped build the Dallas Cowboys into a two-time Super Bowl champion ended today in a Texas-sized clash of personalities and egos. Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson, friends since their days as football teammates and roommates at the University of Arkansas in the 1960's but feuding rivals in recent weeks, parted ways when Johnson announced he was stepping down as the Cowboys' head coach.