1. $10 BILLION IN SCHOOL STIMULUS RESULTS IN STUNNING JOB GROWTH OF NONE. The US administration gave $10 billion to schools to help compensate for massive teacher layoffs. In return, school boards are not using the funds to hire additional teachers. Governer Rick Perry of Texas has rejected the aid money because maybe Obama, you know, touched it or something.
2. GOODBYE DR. LAURA. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who last week barked out the n-word eleven times during an on-air conversation with a black woman, announced on Larry King Live that she’s leaving radio. Why? I guess that the resulting criticism really infringed on her First Amendment rights. That’s right: she’s free to behave like a boneheaded racist, and the rest of us are free to call her on it. She also suggested that the caller, who was tired of her white husband’s friends and family making racist comments, maybe shouldn’t have married a white guy in the first place. Anyway, she’s leaving radio for the civilized gentlemen’s paradise of the internet.
3. LET’S MAKE THAT $64 MILLION THEN. The $58 million plan for the Art Gallery of Saskatchewan may cost another $8 million, if the Saskatoon city council accepts a proposal for additional facility space and a second level of underground parking.
4. THE FIRST RULE OF REPORTING ON FOREIGN AID IS DO NOT TALK ABOUT FOREIGN AID. Aid is ‘flowing’ to ‘flood-ravaged’ Pakistan, where an unfortunate surplus of water is ‘affecting’ about 20 million citizens. Anyway, the article is mostly about terrorism, because it’s impossible for journalists to talk about Pakistan without automatically conjuring some lawless hellhole where insurgents steal all that aid and spend the afternoon smacking each other with nuclear weapons.
5. OFFICIAL THUMBS-UP GIVEN TO THIRD HILL CENTRE TOWER. The City of Regina gave their blessing to the proposed 20-storey Hill Centre Tower, which will appear on the northwest corner of 12th and Hamilton. The article suggests that the building will be a home for “Class-A” office space, but I have a feeling that the city’s Department of Wizards needs a better conjuring and sacrifice space than the basement of the old Legion Hall.
6. ALERT: NEW TRENDS IN WATERMELONS. Apparently the consumer portion of the public (ie. the public) is done with giant watermelons. Smaller “personal melons” with names like Precious Petite are set to be the new hotness. Which is not something that I find funny in the least.