Blogroll

A state judge in Kentucky has ruled the use of lethal injection constitutional in that state but made a pretty fine distinction on what is "cruel and unusual" punishment. It is not cruel and unusual, he said, if the injection is administered through a vein in the arm or leg, but it IS if the injection goes through a catheter stuck in the prisoner's jugular vein.

For someone who is being so coy about whether he'll run for president, Indiana U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh is spending a lot of time in New Hampshire. And he's being fondly mentioned in, of all places, Hollywood. According to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, there is surprising opposition to Hillary Clinton on the left coast.

Some of you people just aren't trying. According to  a new survey conducted by America Online and Salary.com, Indiana is ranked only second in the nation when it comes to wasting time at work. That means Missouri workers, ranked No. 1, waste 3.2 hours each in an 8-hour work day (not counting lunch, of course), costing companies $28.1 billion, while Hoosier workers waste only 2.8 hours a day each, costing a mere $25.1 billion.

Fort Wayne doesn't have a full-fledged blogosphere yet, but one is developing. An interesting conversation has been taking place on a couple of local blogs, for example, about this area's "brain drain." Gloria Diaz, a guest blogger at Fort Wayne Media Notes, kicked it off with a post discussing the departure of college graduates because, among other reasons, of a lack of good jobs.

I have cats, so naturally I'll be posting photos of them from time to time. Get used to it.

Let's mourn the passing of Salvatore Lombino, a writer whose influence on American popular culture is far greater than most people realize. Under the pen name Evan Hunter, he wrote quite a few novels, including "Blackboard Jungle," which became the 1955 movie of the same name. That's the film that featured the song "Rock Around the Clock," which had been released earlier but not done too well.

I skipped the Three Rivers Festival parade again this year, and I doubt if I'll go to many of the events. The festival long ago stopped being a true celebration of Fort Wayne. Now, it's just a week-long series of crowds in search of amusement, with a lot of beer. Certainly there are some things any of us might find to like if we went to look, but you could say the same thing about a shopping mall. Maybe it's time to rethink the whole thing instead of just adding or subtracting attractions year after year. It can be done.

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