Let's see: 1) I have to ride the bus while, 2) reading amateur poetry. Pretty much my idea of hell:
For the next year, people riding on IndyGo buses will be able to enjoy “Shared Spaces/Shared Voices,” an innovative public art project that pairs public transportation with poetry written by Hoosiers.
[. . .]
The project will kick off with live poetry readings on the buses Aug. 25 to Sept. 3.
Oh, even better. I get to listen to it, too.
Good lord, almost 43,500 deaths last year alone. Somebody call the CDC. Urge Congress to hold hearings. Get the lawyers together for a class-action suit. If somebody doesn't stop this, there'll be half a million dead in the next 10 years.
Oh, wait, it was just the highway death toll:
The fatality rate grew slightly to 1.47 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, an increase from 1.45 in 2004. That was the first increase since 1986.
If you're giving out free hats, better make sure the lawyer gets one:
Long before the Baltimore Orioles passed out lipstick and the Red Sox and other baseball teams began selling pink hats, ``ladies-night" giveaways have been a fixture of America's pastime.
A little ray of sunshine from Bob Dylan before he stops off at our Memorial Stadium in a couple of weeks:
Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."
It was bad enough when the perverts found sites like Facebook.com and MySpace.com. Now the politicians are flocking there:
Look up Evan Bayh in the Congressional Directory and you'll find he's a second-term senator from Indiana who serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees.
Check out Bayh on Facebook.com, and you get something akin to a politician channeling his inner teen.
This isn't just a "dog found after 16 days lost in the wilderness" story. It also makes Paxton, Ill., sound like a pretty good place to live. It sounds like a lot of people in town spent their spare time looking for the couple's dog:
And you thought only senior citizens and reclusives who hide their money under the mattress were susceptible to scams:
1. You are innocent until proven guilty.
2. Oops, that was before the war on drugs.
3. So don't carry large sums of money; that means you must be guilty, so the state gets your money.
You can come out from under the bed now; the West Nile "crisis" seems to have passed:
As humans and animals develop immunity to the West Nile virus, the number of confirmed human cases of the mosquito-borne disease has seen a dramatic decline in California, a trend that is expected to continue, health experts said.
[. . .]
This is one of the most useful articles I've seen lately -- "10 things you should never buy new." Some, such as books, are obvious. Some, such as cars, take some thinking; it was once accepted wisdom that to buy a used car was to buy somebody else's problems. A useful corollary for saving money is "Don't think you need something right now." Today's hardback is tomorrow's paperback.
According to this rather dismissive critique, regular network news is "like the New York Times," and cable news is more like the tabloids:
So far, it looks as if the experiment to allow cameras into a few Indiana courtrooms is going well. The feared grandstanding by attorneys or witnesses being intimidated hasn't happened -- in fact, people seem more prepared, and there is more civility. Of course, there is a downside or two:
OK, Big Red, I know this is 2006, not 2061, but let's get the ball rolling: How may entropy be reversed? And don't give me any of that "There is insufficient data for a meaningful answer," stuff, or I'll just start asking the Internet, which is probably going to end up being Multivac anyway.
With 6,000 teens killed on the highways each year and more than 300,000 injured, this seems obvious:
Driver's education has long been an afterthought on the academic agenda. As the school year begins, federal and state leaders are rethinking how much sense that really makes.
Gary teachers, apparently overwhelmingly in favor of a strike, say they get no respect:
". . .They feel nobody cares about them and that officials question their intellect by sending in people to tell them how to teach,” Irons said.
Everything-old-is-new-again department -- a fascinating look at the evolution of the funeral industry, including the news that, because of escalating costs, some people are going back to the way our ancestors did things:
Thanks to the Internet, we're not seeing perverts just from the dregs of society but from all walks of life:
MUNCIE, Ind. - The growing availability of the Internet helps explains the child pornography arrests of a police officer, a community leader and a high school teacher in the Muncie area this year, an expert said.
I've been commenting on so many of these lame research efforts lately that I probably ought to come up with a regular "grants I should have applied for" feature:
Exercise may be especially helpful in reducing the size of fat cells around the waistline -- more so than diet alone, a study suggests. That's important, because fat specifically in the abdomen has been linked to the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Joe Biden is running for president -- Yes, I am! Yes, I am! How can you doubt me? -- which is sure to send shock waves of delight through the lethargic voting populace. And he comes up with a brilliant strategy for getting the millions of votes from people who would rather have an overreaching government than a place to buy things at reasonable prices:
