These are some images of German shopping bags pulled from Google images– The first of these was very common, and perfectly suited to the traditional German shopping practice of many small trips rather than one large weekly trip.  The second is one that was fairly practical, since it clips to the cart so you don’t really need to pack your groceries; they just land in there (again, assuming you don’t have that many).  The third is rather similar to a... Read more

So we spent Easter weekend with my parents. Dad’s in the hospital.  He fell, once again, and (rather than breaking a hip as we’d feared) he hit his head.  He’s now getting physical therapy (walking with a walker) as well as occupational and speech therapy — mom says he just doesn’t seem to be able to focus on tasks and is periodically confused about what’s going on, and she (and the doctors, too, maybe?) doesn’t know to what degree this’ll... Read more

Thinking through a couple items on marriage, things I’ve written about before but am trying to assemble again: First, a post on the Volokh Conspiracy site at the Washington Post, about the question of whether you can oppose gay marriage and keep your job.  Or, rather, the comments to that post.  Maybe it’s just a few people, but there was an argument running through the comments that went like this (paraphrased): The science is settled.  Judges have ruled that marriage... Read more

So according to the Tribune’s “TribLocal” section, my local high school district, which my son will attend next year, is at the vanguard of the schools rejecting the National School Lunch Program due to it’s increasingly burdensome requirements. The school district is looking at giving up $900,000 in federal funds, and providing the free/reduced price meals on its own dime, while at the same time trying to revamp its cafeterias in general to make the food more appealing to students... Read more

Forgot how I ended up at this story:  “Mother of brain-dead Jahi McMath says daughter is ‘still sleeping’” but  I am still following this and curious as to how it ultimately plays out.  In her latest interview, the mother said, I don’t use the word ‘brain dead’ for my daughter. I’m just waiting and faithful that she will have a recovery. . . . She is blossoming into a teenager before my eyes.  Of course, the article gave no specific... Read more

1)  This was in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, non-paywalled: “Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families; Intellectuals fretting about income disparity are oddly silent regarding the decline of the two-parent family.”  They authors write: Suppose a scientific conference on cancer prevention never addressed smoking, on the grounds that in a free society you can’t change private behavior, and anyway, maybe the statistical relationships between smoking and cancer are really caused by some other third variable. Wouldn’t some suspect that the scientists... Read more

(Sorry, I again failed to observe the “bottom line on top” dictum.  Please read to the end!) So earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal editorialized on “What’s the Matter with Illinois?“; the site Reboot Illinois provided significant excerpts as well, and all the bloggers had fun with mocking Illinois and pointing to its neighbors with Republican governors, most notably Michigan and Wisconsin. Meant to comment on it when it appeared.  My immediate reactions at the time that Illinois is... Read more

Here’s an AP article, linked to from Drudge: “Immigration Activists Urge Obama to Act Boldly”  The bottom line is this:  immigration activists, emboldened by Obama’s executive-order amnesty for those illegally brought to the U.S. as minors, are now calling on him to repeat the process for others:  “Activists want it expanded to include more immigrants, such as those who have been in the U.S. for at least five years or who since their arrival have had children.” This isn’t new:... Read more

This is an excerpt from a letter-to-the-editor in today’s “Trib Local,” the weekly local news supplement in the Chicago, referencing an earlier article in which the author described her mother’s death, in which the author was somewhat shell-shocked at her mother’s last several hours being ones of pain and the embarassment of incontinence, rather than the peaceful deathbed scenario that we all imagine (and see portrayed in movies and books). So the letter-writer says, Last year, Vermont became the fourth... Read more