Hoosier lore

A romantic triangle ends in an unsurprising way:

LAKEVILLE, Ind. — An Indiana judge has sentenced a man to 64 years in prison for murdering his best friend and holding his ex-girlfriend captive after learning of their relationship.

Indianapolis is a big little city:

Ask people from Indianapolis how big their city is, and they'll tell you it's the 14th largest in the country.

More crack research from Indiana University. After observing 40 male and 40 female students (quite a sample there) watch videos of speed-dating sessions, the researchers concluded that "the opinions of total strangers" can greatly influence our "choice of ramantic partners." ("Watching," for the unitiated, merely invloves looking at something or someone. "Observing" means you got a grant to do it.):

Good new for porn fans in southern Indiana:

New Albany Mayor Doug England said Monday he's inclined to end the city's six-year legal fight to close an adult bookstore after the Supreme Court announced it won't take up the case.

The high court declined to hear the city's appeal in the six-year fight to close New Albany DVD, the business at 601 W. Main Street now known as Cleopatra's.

While my brother and I spent the week with our sister in Indianapolis, she started and nearly finished a long-planned project -- a long hallway wall filled with family pictures. There are three rows of them three or four frames deep, starting with a great-grandfather on our mother's side and ending at near-present time. There are several groups of three featuring my siblings and me at various stages of our life: barely out of infancy, grade school, high school graduation, adulthood.

If you had to guess which Indiana city would join the insane stampede to "boycott" Arizona, which one would it be? Right you are!

Fromer Bush administration official and Washington Post op-ed columnist Michael Gerson writes about the fall from grace of Mark Souder, for whom he once worked on Capitol Hill, and draws a dinstinction between sexual conduct and "less sensual vices":

There are different ways to respond to financial stresses. There is the outsourcing approach:

In an effort to cut $2 million from FWCS' budget, the board voted in March to look at outsourcing custodial work. Of 10 proposals, a committee chose Sodexo, an international company with U.S. headquarters in Maryland that serves 6,000 clients in Canada, Mexico and the U.S.

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Many small towns near metropolitan areas have identity crises. It's unusual for a town to want to create one:

The mayor of Indianapolis is urging that city's yoots to just say no to sloth:

"I will be active 60 minutes a day and eat healthy foods"

Those words are on the pledge card that Indianapolis youths can sign as part of a new, citywide Get Fit Indy! wellness initiative, launched Wednesday by Mayor Greg Ballard and 17 community partners.