Spend some time learning from a real hero, either by listening to Penn Gillette's podcast or reading Ronald Bailey's interview:
Norman Borlaug, as the "Father of the Green Revolution," is the single human being who has saved more human lives than any other person in all of history. How many lives has he saved? My guess is easily more than billion. For his work in dramatically improving crop yields, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.
I've been thinking about a smaller house. I've been divorced for about seven years now but still live in the house we shared. It's too big and too old (I'm no Mr. Fix-it), so I've been thinking about something smaller and newer and on one level instead of two. Turns out I'm part of a national trend:
Diane Ramirez, president of Halstead Property, has seen downsizing pick up steam in recent months, especially among suburbanites in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Those dastardly federal officials are operating in secret again:
Chertoff's stealthy information-gathering was just one example of the U.S. government's secretive response to an emerging terrorist plot, in which at least 41 suspects were arrested in Britain and Pakistan in connection with alleged plans to blow up jetliners as they flew from London to the United States.
During the recent years of "declining crime rates," a lot of theories were expressed, most of them junk. Now that the rate seems to be going the other way, the experts are trotted out again, with equally lame theories. The one that rings truest for me is this one:
I saw Russ Feingold on one of the Sunday news shows yesterday, and he reminded me an awful lot of someone else. He looks more like Soupy Sales than Soupy Sales does.
This is an effort that probably has to be made, but I'm not sure how successful it will be:
The governor drops by for a northeast Indiana visit, but only for smaller newspapers -- the Fort Wayne media (gasp!) were not invited:
Two stories caught my eye yesterday:
Riding your little scooter isn't as responsible as you might think it is:
With temperatures rising like gas prices, scooters may seem the perfect mode of transportation.
You get up to 100 miles per gallon, on top of the hipster factor and the feel of the wind in your hair. But there's one imperfection to these sassy little two-wheeled machines: A March 2005 study by the Environmental Protection Agency shows most scooters on the road pollute more than SUVs.
There are a couple of people I know at work, different in philosophies, politics, religious outlooks. They each home-school their children. As different as those two people are, if their children were in the same classroom, they'd have different reasons for questioning the curriculum and how it would affect their children. As it is, they each know exactly what's important to teach their children, so it's easy for them to set a course of study and measure whether goals are being met.
How many public hearings do we have to have over something that isn't even there to discuss yet?
He suggested not inviting speakers to the Aug. 29 forum, instead organizing it like a public hearing, because he has received phone calls from people just now becoming interested in the issue.
“I think there are still a number of people out there who want to say something,” Smith said.
Council has hosted one public hearing already, on top of four by Allen County Commissioners.
(If you do not have time to read this entire post, just skip to the very last sentence.)
Print has long catered to our short attention spans. Remember the Reader's Digest condensed versions and Classics Illustrated and Cliff Notes? What's surprising is that film, which claims our attention even less than print, hasn't gone into this much more:
My goodness. Drinking sugar-laden soft drinks makes us fat. That expensive scientific research just keeps hitting us with shocking news:
Americans have sipped and slurped their way to fatness by drinking far more soda and other sugary drinks over the last four decades, a new scientific review concludes.
Sigh. The self-esteem movement just keeps rolling on:
AP) -- Penny Grossman cringes each time a student mentions a birthday party during class at her Boston, Massachusetts-area preschool. The rule there, and at a growing number of America's schools, is that parties and play-dates shouldn't be discussed unless every child in the room is invited.
So I guess Mr. Lieberman no longer has Joementum. Lamont made the war in Iraq THE issue, as Republican and conservative commentators have remarked over and over. But, since Lieberman voted 90 percent with Democrats, the war being his primary departure, and since those same Republicans and conservatives invested a lot in supporting him, it seems fair to say that the war was the issue for them, as well.
One more reason to give up your Indy Envy, if you are still suffering from it:
Thirteen people have been killed in Indianapolis in less than a week — a wave of bloodshed that has alarmed residents and civic leaders and led to stepped-up police patrols in the city's trouble spots.
It's a heck of a world when McDonald's burger flippers are telling us how to behave:
This editorial against the governor's desire to raise the cigarette tax could have used a little more thought:
There are plenty of reasons not to like smoking. It's dangerous. It's selfish. It's smelly. It creates messes because so many smokers can't seem to figure out how to properly throw their butts away.
Here we go. Many people, including the governor, say we need all-day kindergarten for all Indiana children. Now, this Indiana University report says we need a statewide program of pre-kindergarten:
Two octogenarians have been in the news with health-related issues. One has exerted total control over everything his country does. The other has preached that a total lack of self-control is the highest virtue. That would make them interesting companions in hell, I think, with lots to talk about.
