Good morning, everybody. Charlie Sheen says it never happened, and A.C. Slater is having a baby. Now, enjoy your morning constitutional: The Virginia General Assembly has moved to make it illegal for the government to require people to buy health insurance, a move clearly in response to current health reform efforts in Washington. Girl in Mississippi wants to bring her girlfriend to the prom. School\’s response: Cancel prom. Ezra Klein gives an interesting history of the filibuster. It even involves Aaron Burr, a personal hero of mine. Chile inaugurates a new president today, conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera....
Continue reading...March 2010
1,000 lawyers in a deep sea trench…
I think I’d like to make basketball the subject of my inaugural post. You see, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the negotiations leading up to agreeing on a new collective bargaining agreement. There a lot of points of contention, lots of issues to be hashed out, but the gist of it is that the owners are feeling pinched by decreased revenues owing to the recession, and are looking to cut their personnel costs. This, to sort of stop before I even start, is total nonsense, see here. But what’s interesting to me is the owner...
Continue reading...and I don't like Star Wars
Every year, when the weather is just warm enough to ditch the jacket and sweater for a few hours in the middle of the day, I get nostalgic for bicycling. I was never a competitive biker, or even particularly good at it, but I love it. It has been a few years since I lived in a bike-friendly city, but D.C. looks promising. This post was going to lament the lack of bike lanes in the city, but today the Post reported that L, I , additional bits of 15th and parts of Pennsylvania Ave. are getting...
Continue reading...Reader response time
Got a very nice email from a reader: I read your recent post about the possible fraud in Togo’s 2010 election, and your insight of the importance of democracy and deep concerns really impressed me. I think you might find this video interesting. Along with the point you mentioned in your post about how this election could be fraud and how this process could be really hard to challenge in such a political climate, this video covers from many perspectives about the current battle for power and people’s protests, it also briefly touches on Togo’s political history,...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Good morning, everybody. Nomar\’s retiring as a Red Sox, Lindsay Lohan is suing, and De Niro\’s going to play Vince Lombardi. Now, enjoy your morning constitutional: Teen star Corey Haim died of an apparent overdose in Los Angeles last night. An Associated Press-GfK poll shows the President is still more popular than Congress. In Wichita, a man paid a crack dealer with Monopoly money. Unsurprisingly, the dealer wasn\’t happy about it. The arrest of a Pennsylvania woman in October for trying to recruit Islamic terrorists on sites like YouTube raises questions about homegrown terrorism. Bike directions have...
Continue reading...Crack Rock or a Jump Shot
In the school where I work, there’s a fifth grader who wears a Notorious B.I.G. jacket. There are a few staff who covet it. Though I don’t say anything, I’m one of them. The boy is 11. Biggie Smalls died 13 years ago, today. He doesn’t know anything about Biggie. Couldn’t name an album or even a track, couldn’t give me any 16 bars, let alone 16 Bars. I want to talk about it with him, to school him on Biggie, to get on his level in a way I can’t with their hip-hop idols. God knows...
Continue reading...Happy Gay Marriage Day, D.C.
Today’s the day that equal marriage really begins in D.C., and the Associated Press predicts that up to 150 same-sex couples are eligible today to wed. So, the best from us at V+V to all of you in D.C. finally being able to say your vows to those you love today. (Same-sex marriage was made legal last Wednesday, but there is a three-day waiting period from applying for a marriage license to getting one. Hence, today’s the first day.) Update: DCist has more about the first few same-sex wedding around the city today: The Post reported earlier that...
Continue reading...Process stories
Interestingly enough, today’s New York Times front page contains only two mentions of “health care.” One is a letter to the editor, while the other is a link to a Paul Krugman blog post. I mention this, mostly because I discovered this odd fact while looking for yesterday’s piece which did appear on the front page (as well as page A1 of the print version): “Obama Turns Up the Volume in Health Care Bid.” And I mention this because the story, probably the most important story of the day on an issue that is arguably the most...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Good morning, everybody. Betty White\’s going to host SNL, T.I. drops a new single, and Sean Penn might hope you die screaming of rectal cancer. Now, on to your morning constitutional: In California, Republican state Sen. Roy Ashburn, arrested for drunk driving this weekend after leaving a gay nightclub, admitted Monday that he is, in fact, gay. The Christian Science Monitor asks where gay Republicans fit among conservatives. Elizabeth Green, in The New York Times Magazine, asks what makes a good teacher. Despite a Texas Republican primary last week that drew the most GOP voters in at...
Continue reading...How the scurvy cure was lost
Over at Idle Words, a fascinating story about the history of scurvy, and how the cure, which was basically discovered in 1747, was somehow not well-known even as late as Robert Falcon Scott\’s 1911 expedition to the South Pole. Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician James Lind proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. From that point on, we were told, the Royal Navy had required a daily dose of lime juice to be...
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