Life sorts. Time levels.
I have no idea what a "moderate liberal" is, but this Indiana University graudate claims to be one. He has discovered, you know, that we all live in cages -- poor people have small ones and rich people have big ones -- because we are all, you know, "prisoners of our culture."
The majority of the world is content within their cages. Most are able to fly from one branch to another, eat plenty of food, and drink to their hearts' content.
Oh, the poor stadium authority. Because it let a private company actually keep some its property, continuing the family business, it's in so much trouble:
The agreement leaves the authority with about 500 fewer parking spaces than were promised to the Indianapolis Colts, which will call the stadium home.
I'm like most people, I suppose; we look at stories about wretched excess and think, this is ridiculous:
CEOs at larger U.S. corporations on average earn $430 for every $1 earned by the average U.S. worker.
Twenty-six years ago, CEOs received an average of $10 for every $1 earned by a U.S. worker.
Somewhere in that quarter-century, something went terribly wrong.
If you're driving around the country, this map will help you decide when to stop for gas. Or you can just stare at it and get an overview of who is paying what. Just look at all that green out west -- we hate them out there. Right click to get county information (zooming in first helps). Here's what you get if you click on the Allen County link.
The therapeutic culture has gone one step too far:
Anger management courses for convicted armed robbers, wife beaters and stalkers are being axed by the prison and probation services following an official inquiry into the murder of the city financier John Monckton.
This poor senior citizen can't walk because he can't afford the gas to drive to where he likes to walk. The headline sort of says it all: "High gas prices keep me from exercising." His solution: Seniors should protest by observing "Slow Mondays' and slowing down to 22 mph. It will save gas, and get everyone else's attention. I think I've already been behind some of these people.
Oh, it's going to be a long, loooong summer. I'd hate to even think about the 10 movies they can wait to see.
Just For The Record notes Mark Souder's recent radio ad and wonders if we can now draw the conclusion that he is, heh-heh, a one-issue candidate just like William Larsen, the only difference being that his issue is the War on Drugs rather than Social Security. I heard that ad, too, and something else struck me about it.
This might be the future of journalism:
I decided to try a little experiment. Instead of lining up an assignment from an editor to cover Northern Iraqi Kurdistan, I struck out on my own without asking permission from anyone. Almost all my material was posted directly to this Web site. I wanted to see if the amount of money I can raise from readers competes with the industry's going rate.
It does.
Just in case you doubted that college sports was big business, check out this database of Division I schools' sports revenue collected by the Indianapolis Star through Freedom-of-Information requests. You can do some interesting searches there, discovering, for example, that Indiana University leads the Big Ten in men's basketball ticket sales. Big shock, huh?
Nothing new here, I'm afraid, or arguable, about the inefficiency, shallowness and lack of immediacy of the paper medium. The only thing noteworthy, as Jeff Jarvis notes, is that " newspaper is willing to print the first draft of its own obituary."
So, are you willing to pay $9.95 to see the seance at which it was claimed the spirit of John Lennon was reached? I'll think I'll let John answer for me: Imagine there's no heaven/It's easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us only sky.
Thou currish rude-growing coxcomb! Insult your friends with Shakespearean wit.
I am told by a source I trust that a rumor spread like wildfire* through the Hispanic community yesterday to the effect that "the government" was going to do a sweep through Fort Wayne to round up Mexicans -- not an unreasonable rumor given the raids nationally over the last several days. People stayed home and called in sick -- one family apparently even hid in their basement. A couple of restaurants had to close over lunch, and several others spent most of the day trying to find people to cover their hours.
The Stadium Authority vs. NK Hurst Co. case -- watched closely by all of us eminent-domain foes -- has ended with a settlement. Mike Kole isn't that thrilled with the deal:
Poor Julia Roberts; makes her Broadway debut and becomes the star the critics love to hate. Remember when she stopped off in Marion for her surprise and short-lived marriage to Lyle Lovett? Everybody wanted to know what it was she possibly could have seen in the goofy-looking singer. But I'd been listening to a lot of Lovett's music, and I wondered what in the world he saw in her.
Concerning the Duke lacrosse team rape allegations:
1. Dumb idea No. 1: Inviting strippers to your drunken debauchery and thinking nothing could possibly go wrong.
2. Dumb idea No. 2: Stripping in front of drunken college students and thinking nothing could possibly go wrong.
3. Dumb idea No. 3: Using your position as prosecutor to keep shooting your mouth off before there were any charges or the grand jury had even convened and assuming no one would ever think badly of you for it.
Now that I think about it, have you every heard of anybody who was illegally blind?
Good lord! It appears that drivers who are distracted are involved in the most -- gasp! -- automobile accidents:
Those sleep-deprived, multitasking drivers - clutching cell phones, fiddling with their radios or applying lipstick - apparently are involved in an awful lot of crashes.
Distracted drivers were involved in nearly eight out of 10 collisions or near-crashes, says a study released Thursday by the government.
