George Will calls on Edmund Burke, St. Paul and the ghosts of Fred Astire and Grace Kelly to denounce a great modern evil: Denim?
Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.
Omigod, who knew?
Unpredictable gas prices have sent car shoppers turning to small, fuel-efficient vehicles, but a crash study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is warning that saving money at the pump could come at a greater cost in the event of an accident.
Hey, Larry, are you one a them "Texas nuts" getting "riled up" to "dangerous levels?
From time to time, we feel the need to point out that the weekly poll we run on the editorial page is meant for entertainment only. It is not designed as a "scientific" poll, and we've never claimed it is. This is one of those times.
We can usually count on a couple of hundred votes for the poll, although we've passed the thousand mark a few times. We did a poll a few years ago about whether our newspaper should publish the county gun-carry-permit database online. Word was passed around on gun-enthusiast Web sites, and we got a few thousand votes.
I've written about "smart growth" movement before. That's the notion that "sprawl," which I would define as the byproduct of people living the way they choose to live, but which is now considered by Those Who Know Better For Us as a great evil, or, as they put it, "no longer in the long-term interest of our cities, existing suburbs, small towns, rural communities, or wilderness areas. Though supportive of growth, communities are questioning the economic costs of abandoning infrastructure in the city, only to rebuild it further out.
Heh, heh, heh. Look at that squirrel. He blowed up real good:
The squirrels at Finch Arboretum are becoming such a problem that they have called in for reinforcements. The city of Spokane has authorized the "Rodenator" to come and take care of the problem, in what is turning out to not only be a hot topic in the city, but a questionable one when it comes to animal rights.
It's nice to run across an editorial page cartoon occasionally that isn't strictly political. This is the one we have in today's paper. I don't know why it's funny, but it made me laugh out loud.
This should be the most interesting juxtaposition you encounter this month. First up, a production of "The Vagina Monologue" is generating controversy and even a little fear in Kyrgyzstan:
Central Asia is not known as a region where women have tried to assert their rights.
[. . .]
For the Little Lost Lamb Hall of Fame, today's nominee is -- Phil Spector:
“It hasn't been a very pleasant life,” Spector told writer Mick Brown in a rare 2002 interview. “I've been a very tortured soul. I have not been at peace with myself.”
Hooray for the Seals, and three cheers to President Obama for telling the military they could handle the situation, up to and including the use of deadly force. Obama will face tougher tests in dealing with Iran, North Korea, et al., but he seemed to have pretty good instincts in handling this one.
