Congress, like many state legislatures, seems to think it has found a magic money source in order to fully fund SCHIP: expanding the cigarette tax. The heart and lung associations and the American Cancer Society have long supported an increase in the cigarette tax. They do so because they have evidence that shows that an increase in the cost per pack results in a corresponding decrease in smoking and a decrease in smoking is a Good Thing. Their position makes... Read more
Amanda Marcotte introduces us to a new hero: Hannah Lindquist, 14, a freshman at Tri-Valley Central School in Grahamsville, N.Y. According to the local chain paper, the school started out by banning all school bags. This decision, they said, was supposedly partly to protect students from the burden of carrying heavy bags (because, I guess, carrying stacks of books bound with twine is ergonomically better for them). And it was to prevent the possibility of students carrying concealed weapons. The... Read more
If you lose 12 out of your last 17 games, you don’t deserve to keep playing. This must be how Ralph Branca felt, or maybe these guys: Read more
Teresa Nielsen Hayden has a long post about “Lying in the name of God, surveying several instances of scholars who were misrepresented in sleazy, dishonest “creationist” DVDs. You should go read the whole thing (and, as always over there at Making Light, you should read all the comments as well). Realizing that “go read the whole thing” might not prompt you to actually go and read the whole thing, here are the magnificent final two paragraphs: Lying about evolution is... Read more
I’d rather be working for a paycheck Than waiting to win the lottery … “First Chapter’s Last Page,” Jeffrey Gaines “First Day of My LIfe,” Bright Eyes “The First Five Times,” Stars “Fisherman’s Blues,” The Waterboys “Fitter Happier,” Radiohead “Five O’Clock World,” The Vogues “Five String Serenade,” Mazzy Star “Five-O,” James “Flake,” Jack Johnson “Float On,” Modest Mouse Read more
The paper today ran an item in the national briefs about a new White House report on Social Security: The Bush administration said in a new report Monday that Social Security is facing a $13.6 trillion shortfall in coming years and that delaying reforms is not fair to younger workers. The full-length AP report doesn’t provide much in the way of supporting evidence for that claim of a “$13.6 trillion shortfall,” except to say this number was arrived at by... Read more
See, this really isn’t that complicated. If you told me your life story and I responded that you really didn’t understand what you were talking about as well as I did, you would (rightly) think I was an idiot. But for some reason, sportswriters are eager to exhibit exactly this idiocy whenever some black athlete speaks candidly of his life story. Consistent with the claims of dozens of black athletes before him, Donovan McNabb* has said that he has experienced... Read more
It happens every spring. And every summer, fall and winter. Some black athlete accidentally gives an honest and accurate answer to The Question, and then it’s off to the races. The Question in question, which gets asked on an almost daily basis, is some variation of “How is your experience different from that of a white quarterback/coach/hockey player/golfer? Ninety nine times out of 100, the athlete dodges, ignores or jokes away The Question. Every black athlete in America has gotten... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 332-337 When last we saw Buck Williams, he was rushing off to the airport to meet Hattie Durham even though he doesn’t really even remember what she looks like. He remembers that she is “drop dead gorgeous,” but nothing more specific. It’s hard to fault Buck for this fuzzy mental image, since that three-word cliche is nearly all we readers were told about what Hattie looks like. We’ve also been told she is “attractive” and “beautiful,” but... Read more
When I worked in the bookstore, we played this long-running game with book titles. The game, which was shamefully juvenile but endlessly amusing, was simply to add the phrase “in my pants” to the title of any book. (Similar to Demetri Martin’s observation that anything you say sounds sleazy if you just add the word ladies.) Once a year, the chain would conduct an inventory of its stores. The staff from the various locations would gather at each store in... Read more
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