When local school boards and state departments of education drop the ball, it's nice to know that the federal government can still step in and make sure our children get the critical education they need:
VESTAL, N.Y. — The federal government is telling several New York school districts that girls' sporting events should have cheerleaders, too.
Here's some really good number-crunching from the Lafayette Jouranl & Courier on how much Indiana's congressional races have contributed to local economies:
Russ Pulliam of the Indianapolis Star does a profile of Mark Souder under the headline "Incumbent doesn't walk the party line."
Once upon a time, only American social climbers and posers like John Kerry could aspire to have soulmates in Europe. Now, even those in trailer parks can claim spiritual cousins across the ocean:
In the West, gradual de-industrialization has created a new underclass of the unproductive and intellectually depraved. The spiritual cousin of the American phenomenon of "white trash," these strangers in their own land have become a serious threat to democracy.
One of the great tragedies of modern life:
I love to nap. When after-lunch grogginess hits and my eyelids start to droop, nothing makes me happier than finding a comfortable spot and drifting off to sleep for half an hour.
But to my wife, my napping is the sign of a basic character flaw.
Eugene White, who was in Fort Wayne Community Schools for 19 years and is now superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, actually seems to think adults should be in charge of schools:
The Christian Science Monitor focuses on Indiana's 2nd Congressional District in a piece explaining that, the voters' displeasure with Iraq notwithstanding, "the economy" is still a powerful force in the upcoming election:
Meagan McArdle, who writes under the name Jane Galt at the Asymmetrical Information (that's an economics term) blog, has become one of my favorite bloggers because she honestly speaks her mind without snarkiness or worrying about what either her detractors or philosophical fellow travelers will think about it. A case in point is her unflinching look at young people and addiction and why DARE has a dishonest message:
You want to see what the future looks like?
According to figures released by the Internet Advertising Bureau earlier this month, online now accounts for more than 10 per cent of overall advertising spending, up from 7.2 per cent a year ago, and is expected to match spending on television campaigns by the end of the decade.
Now, this is a truly interesting twist in the smoking-ban debate:
After a hearing that was at times as theatrical as any play, a Denver District judge refused Monday to exempt Colorado's theater companies from the statewide smoking ban.
But Judge Michael A. Martinez's ruling in favor of the Colorado Department of Health could open the door for a larger battle over what constitutes freedom of expression.
Great news for northeast Indiana. It looks like Fort Wayne's David Long is going to be the next president pro tem of the state Senate:
The practice of tipping waiters and waitresses -- such a routine part of our lives that it is far more than a custom -- remains a strange way to do business. It enables restaurants to pay their servers minimal salaries, which probably helps them stay open. But that requires the decency and common sense of customers to give those people what might approximate a living wage. Some of us, of course, are better tippers than others, so there are periodic efforts to require a uniform tip:
Is there really any doubt what John Kerry thinks about the military?
Kerry then told the students that if they were able to navigate the education system, they could get comfortable jobs - "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said to a mixture of laughter and gasps.
A few weeks ago, I did a post that mentioned, among other things, the "stubbornness of the people who live in Brown County's Nashville in wanting to keep their town a certain way." While I was on vacation, I got this e-mail in response:
I know we want our state colleges and universities to have better reputations and standards. I know they can be tools for economic development. But does this seem the right way to do it?
Students who might easily have made it into Indiana's public a few years ago are receiving rejection letters due to changing admissions standards.
Look, I know what you're going to think, so let me make it plain: I am not AFRAID of a bunch of trick-or-treaters, OK? I know that under the costumes are just ordinary little kids, so sheltered and overprotected by their parents that they have only this one chance to get a pitiful few morsels of candy.
It's beginning to look like the "we are just doing what's best for you" crowd won't give up until everybody lives to be 150 years old, during which lifespan they will be carefully monitored to make sure no one is having fun, which as we all know, leads to higher expectations, which can cause stress, which is even more harmul to health than trans fats:
Never mind that Brick, N.J., and Amherst, N.Y., have been rated the safest two cities in the country and that St. Louis and Detroit the two most dangerous (the two World Series cities; go figure). Fort Wayne is No. 169 on the list (which goes from No. 1 as the safest to 371 as the most dangerous). That could lead to an interesting mayoral debate, depending on who wants to downplay crime and who wants to highlight it.
In next Tuesday's election, Wisconsin voters apparently get to "advise" legislators whether they should consider instituting the death penalty. This does not seem a good course to one newspaper editor, who offers one of the most dishonest arguments you will ever hear, using an ad posted by the Indiana attorney general's office for a death-penalty specialist as his case in point:
As Wren noted in his e-mail to me:
In addition to a class on UFOs, IPFW's Division of Continuing Studies also offers something called "Ghost Hauntings and Ghost Huntings":
Just listening to many of his stories with brushes from spirits on the “other side” is enough to send chills up a person's spine, but for Weides, it's all in a day's work.
