Current Affairs

All you lousy people should just stay home -- your galavanting ways are screwing up some of the world's great treasures. So says Newsweek magazine in its "The Rush to See It Before It's Gone" piece of Rocky Mountain High Environmentalism (in honor of the John Denver song in which he praises the beauty of the Rockies, which he unfortunately can't get maximum pleasure out of, because they've also been discovered by all those other nasty people, "more scars upon the land").

New York City, of all places, is leading the nation in trying to legislate away rudeness: bans on everything from cell phones in theaters and resting feet on a subway seat to dogs that bark too loud and fans who spit on baseball players, usually with serious fines and sometimes even jail for those who break the rules. Certainly, behavior that can harm other people should be regulated, but the further the city goes into the "right not be annoyed" territory, the more skeptical and resistant we should be.

Cool that drive-in movies might be making a comeback. Given our car culture, I'm not sure why they went out of favor in the first place. No talky neighbors, no crying babies, nothing sticky on the floor that you didn't put there. The one thing that might make this a fad instead of a true resurgence is that technology is letting us have the theater experience in our own homes.

Gotta hand it to Oprah. Miss touchy-feely uses her head for once and gets it right:

If you're a school teacher or administrator who wants to teach your kids gun safety, do not invite the Drug Enforcement Administration agent who accidentally shot himself in the foot before a group of students and parents. To watch a video of the incident, go to The Smoking Gun and click on the image. An accidental shooting is serious, so you'll hate yourself for laughing. But you will laugh.

Hat tip to Bob Gaul.

It's good to know there are still some people who prefer an old-fashioned newspaper to the newfangled electronic version.

OK, here's a good thing the federal government does. Every year since 2000, the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress has chosen 50 records worthy or preservation. The 2006 list is out, and I don't think this is much of an exaggeration:

Boy, here's a stunner: When our kids get out of school, they want to head for the bright lights of the big city. Everyone in Fort Wayne who has been talking about Hoosier "brain drain" should read this article, just in case they think they already know how complicated the issue is. Among the more perverse findings: Having an educated workforce doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how good your schools are.

Well, hooray for Notre Dame for letting the play "The Vagina Monologues" be put on there, despite the fact that it's not exactly in tune with the school's Catholic essence:

“To be a university means that we engage in diversity of viewpoints that are vigorously debated, some of which will challenge Catholic understanding,” the Rev. John I. Jenkins said. “I don't think we should be afraid of that. That's what it is to be a university.”

This country's retreat from nuclear power has been sheer idiocy -- talk about turning our backs on science and letting myopic environmentalists and paper-shuffling bureaucrats combine to hold back our growth and hurt the environment at the same time. Believe it or not, things are looking up, and there's a chance common sense might ultimately prevail.