(FORTUNE Magazine) – In which your correspondent, who hates to throw away anything and especially a fact, parades a few details he was never able to work into Keeping Up during the year just completed even though their basic facticity was never seriously in dispute and they offered solid clues to the nature of reality: ) An official of the U.S. Agency for International Development estimated that the Ethiopian Communist regime ran up a $500,000 Scotch bill when it celebrated the tenth anniversary of its takeover, these festivities occurring while the country was experiencing one of the worst famines in modern history. ) The notion that thieves are essentially victims of their environment was somewhat harshly dealt with in an article in Science (May 25), which never once mentioned the phrase ''role model'' but instead surveyed the records of 14,427 adoptions and found ''a statistically significant correlation . . . between the adoptees and their biological parents for convictions of property crimes,'' while finding no correlation to speak of between the adoptees and their adopters. ) Evidently seeking to say something more astounding than the judgment delivered years ago in his China Passage, which was that he had personally observed a certain country's economy being ''highly effective'' during the Cultural Revolution, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in the New Yorker (September ; 3) that the big problem confronting Soviet economic planners nowadays is the country's ''affluence, or relative affluence,'' which according to Ken requires that Russian consumers now have access to essentially all the goodies listed in the Yellow Pages of the New York phone book, although the article does not reach the question of when they will be allowed to own telephones. ) The NBC exit poll showed that Geraldine was a net loser of votes for the Democratic ticket among men, also women. ) The New York Times has again been wondering editorially whether it could support the U.S. invasion of Grenada. On the one hand, now says this great paper, critics of the invasion (who have included the Times) must admit that the recent democratic elections there give the story a happy ending. On the other hand, the U.S. must respect other people's frontiers before it can accuse the Muscovites of doing anything naughty. On the other other hand, the possibility that Grenada might have drifted into the Soviet orbit has to be viewed as a ''compelling reason'' for the invasion. On the other other other hand, the Reaganites never cited this reason (instead emphasizing the students' safety). Ringing conclusion: ''justified or not,'' the episode ends on a welcome note.