This must be my day to pick on Bloomington -- here's another nutty idea from the town that complements IU's gown:
Bloomington - Joie Canada has been keeping shop on the south side of the Bloomington square for almost forty years.
She and her father are pictured in a book, "Goodbye Mom and Pop." The book preserves in print the vanishing locally owned and operated store.
A bit of mystical, New Age, ersatz Eastern-religious, bubbleheaded crapola from -- surprise, surprise -- Bloomington:
A new club in Bloomington doesn't feature standup comedians or funny improv sketches, but the audience still roars with laughter.
At meetings of the Bloomington Laughter Club, folks gather to laugh for no reason.
Another oppressed minority* demands to be heard:
Two Indiana men have declared Monday "National Man Day" and have rallied thousands to their cause on the social networking Web site Facebook.The event's Web page listed more than 260,000 attendees as of Thursday for the event, which the site says is "about being a responsible man and having fun doing it!"
Good luck with that:
"We have proven that money is not the answer to great education," says Dr. Tony Bennett (R) Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction. Since taking office in January, Bennett has pushed schools to spend more efficiently, "We put a lot of money in education over the last 4 or 5 years in terms of increases and we've really had negligible results."
[. . .]
One of the benefits of federalism is that states can act as "laboratories of democracy" and the things that are found to work in one or a few of them can then be adopted by many or all of them. Of course, there is the danger that states might copy each other's bad ideas, too. Kentucky proves the point by following possibly the worst example ever provided by Indiana:
Hey, kids, better polish up those math skills, or at least dust off the calculators:
Purdue University's recent announcement that incoming Boilermakers will need a fourth year of high school math will raise the minimum bar for admission to the highest in the Big Ten conference.
[. . .]
Indiana University will also increase its math requirement for 2011 to the second highest in the Big Ten, behind Purdue.
So far, there is $7 million in Gov. Mitch Daniels' budget proposal for virtual charter schools. Given the state's financial problems, the money probably won't stay there this time around, which is understandable. But some of the rhetoric being used by the opponents of such schools shows why change is difficult:
Most of the stories I've seen about the Supreme Court at least temporarily holding up the Chrysler/Fiat deal treat Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock more than a little dismissively. How dare this little twerp threaten the deal woth billions that could save thousands of jobs just because a few pension funds might end up a few million short? This piece, headlined "Chrysler's Bankrupcty Hiccup," is typical:
Many state politicians have complained in the past about Indiana's relatively poor return on the money Washington takes from Hoosiers. But it turns out the state is not much better in returning money to the places that spend the most on the lottery: Because of the 1996 move to reduce auto excise fees by using state lottery money, the counties with the most assessed value of motor vehicles, which tend to be the better-off ones, get the most money back.
