Former UPI reporter Barney Lerten tracked down U.S. District Judge Ted Goodwin at his summer home for an interview. Read it here.

A couple of enterprising reporters tour some of Las Vegas’s 283 miles of drainage tunnels. Spooky. Good piece.

The Supreme Court ruled today that school vouchers, which allow parents essentially to opt out of the public education system, are constitutional. That may be as it is, but “constitutional” is not the same thing as “good.”

I will make out very well with school vouchers, which will allow me to apply a significant amount of my tax money — which would otherwise have gone to our local struggling publc school — to tuition at one of the very excellent private schools in our neighborhood. By the time our six-month-old twins are old enough, I’ve no doubt that New York City’s voucher program will be in place.

My kids will therefore get a great education, because we can afford to make up the difference between the voucher and tuition. But the local public school — with its low test results, high “minority” enrollment, and dedicated principal — is going to get slammed. It’s not that the other affluent white kids will leave the school; none go there now. But any incentive for the neighborhood’s educated parents to get involved in the public school is now gone, and it’s frequently parental involvement that makes the difference between a good school and a bad one.

From the Denver Post (passed on by David Hakala):

A 12-year-old seventh-grader has been summoned to Littleton Municipal Court on a charge of unlawful retention of library materials: She had an overdue library book…

Delinquent borrowers aren’t hauled into court right away, Smith said. Books at the Bemis Library are loaned for three weeks. After that, overdue fees begin accumulating at 10 cents a day. A first overdue notice is mailed after two weeks. Two weeks later, a bill for the materials is mailed. After another two weeks, if the borrower doesn’t respond, the library calls.

A citation is mailed if the borrower still doesn’t respond.

Yeah, that’ll teach the kid to patronize her libary. I’m sure the problem will be solved by having her recite the unexpurgated Pledge of Allegiance every day during the summer.

Added a couple of new entries to the Blogrolling list over on the right.

Corante is the parent company of Microcontent News, previously cited here. It’s an interesting collection of tech news-oriented weblogs. And if you really really really can’t get enough of online journalism, I’ve put a link to a large list of what they insist on calling “cyberjournalist’s” pages.

From CNN:

A study published in this week’s edition of Nature says that snail and slugs can be repelled and even killed by a solution of 2 percent caffeine.

The findings “aren’t something that surprises me,” said Campbell. “There’s data in frogs, fruit flies, and mosquitoes” that suggest caffeine may be toxic to these animals. The researchers found that large doses of caffeine slowed snails’ the heart rate and made contractions irregular.

If you think that drinking enough coffee will keep the skeeters at bay, remember: a cup of coffee is only 0.05 percent caffeine. But a commercially available snail repellent might not do badly at Starbucks, too.

From the AP:

 PAW PAW, Mich. (AP) — Pigs can’t fly, after all — at least not in the passenger cabin.

The story’s about Northwest Airlines sudden refusal to treat Vietnamese potbellied pig — named Pork Chop, incidentally — like a small cat or dog. The pig’s part of a ventriloquism act that was destined for the Fox network. Yeah, that figures.

• 
  
  Can’t be worse than some of the actors flying First Class.


• 
  
  Are they afraid Pork Chop might be traumatized by breakfast?


• 
  
  Has someone watched too many episodes of <echo>Piiiiiigs Iiiiiiiiin Spaaaaaaace?</echo>

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — which has federal judicial authority over Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — says the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. Seems the words “under God,” which were added in 1954, constitute an establishment of religion.

Whatever do the judges do with their coins, every one of which says “In God We Trust”?

The court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has said students cannot hold religious invocations at graduations and cannot be compelled to recite the pledge. But when the pledge is recited in a classroom, a student who objects is confronted with an “unacceptable choice between participating and protesting,” the appeals court said.

“Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the pledge,” the court said.

It’s worth noting that the 9th Circuit is considered the most liberal of the appellate courts. Anyway, I bet talk radio is having a field day with this, and I can’t wait to see what Ernie the Attorney and LawMeme have to say.

Wanna bet The Supremes weigh in on this? The line to place bets on the outcome starts to the right.

bOing bOing scores another. This one’s a keeper.

Some of you may know that private wireless network nodes have a habit of leaking signal out into public spaces. Some companies, like Starbucks, have built rudimentary businesses out of selling public wireless Net access. Other companies just seem to let their bandwidth leak. Bryant Park, just west of the New York Public Library, apparently has a good strong signal from no one knows where.

The trouble with this is finding the wayward signal, short of walking the streets with a live laptop or a signal meter. Matt Jones has a brilliant and simple idea: create a kind of hobo sign language to tell other computer users about access that they’ve found.

Very interesting item on bOing bOing this evening. Seems that this first wave of broadband users is as interested in — if not more interested in — creating content than consuming it. This might have ramifications for the architecture of the Net itself, which is based on having (comparatively) fewer servers and (comparatively) more clients. If broadband users, with their always-on connections, want to be transmitting as much as they receive, DSL and cable providers will have one big whomping problem any day now.

Broadband *doesn’t* need content!. This amazing recent study (warning: it’s a big PDF) of broadband adoption shows that content is irrelevant to the broadband experience. Broadband uses crave the ability to contribute to the Internet’s distributed conversation and want nothing more than end-to-end connectivity. The online surfing patterns of high-speed users reveal two values that policymakers, industry leaders, and the public should bear in mind:

1. An open Internet is appealing to broadband users. As habitual posters of content, broadband users seem to desire the widest reach for what they share with the online world. As frequent searchers for information using their always-on connection, broadband users seek out the greatest range of sources to satisfy their thirst for information. Walling off portions of the Internet, which some regulatory proposals may permit, is anathema to how broadband users behave.

2. Broadband users value fast upload speeds as well as fast download speeds. They not only show this by their predilection to create content, but also by their extensive file-sharing habits.

It’s like I used to say: The Net isn’t about consuming information; it’s about sharing information.