Archive for May, 2006

It’s been a long, long time since I followed the National Hockey League, so I couldn’t tell you whether Colby Cosh is right or not, but he thinks Swedes fall curiosly short of reasonable expectations in the playoffs: Swedish players have long since demonstrated that you can build an NHL team around them–at least Lidstrom [...]

This is how a good brothel-bust newspaper article should read: “They were hot on this thing for a while,” [Somerville Police Lt. Paul] Upton said of the prostitution probe It’s interesting to note that while Upton is introduced in the second paragraph of the article, in the sentence reproduced above, his title and full name [...]

When it to comes to seating and public transportation, I’m hard-core old school: Men should stand up for women, and the young stand up for their elders. Last night was a pretty good commute for us hard liners. In my third of the Green Line trolley car that I was in there were 15 seated [...]

The Boston Herald‘s Michele McPhee has a piece on Boston’s police shortage. As Boston’s police department has lost strength, violent crime has soared. In the mean time, the number of public school students in Boston dropped to 58,000 in 2005 from 63,000 in 1995, while the number of teachers increased from 4,300 to 5,200 over [...]

Boston Gal of Boston Gal’s Open Wallet reviews her Roomba vauum robot. To ensure I was giving my Roomba a difficult cleaning situation I refrained from vacuuming under my bed or dresser for a two year period. Only for science would I make such a cleaning sacrifice! To push the difficulty meter up yet another [...]

The June issue of monthly magazine Family Circle has an approving review of Kaavya Viswanathan’s “How Opal Mehta…” (p. 81). It even quotes a paragraph from the book, but sadly not one of the plagiarized ones from what I can tell.

Metro Boston headline today: “Snelgrove remembered at Northeastern commencement.” Victoria Snelgrove was a junior at Emerson College when she was killed by Boston police during a rowdy celebration of the Boston Red Sox 2004 American League Championship Series victory. Ms. Snelgrove was remembered at Emerson’s commencement. Northeastern’s was on May 6.

In his big speech on immigration last night, President George W. Bush included the following patriotic-sounding lines: [W]e must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one nation out of many peoples. The success of our country depends upon helping newcomers assimilate into our society, and embrace our common [...]

Wall Street Journal has a story today on the hoped-to-be flagship show for NBC, “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” a show about a show and all the shenanigans surrounding it. Another show that NBC is pinning its comeback hopes on is based on the bestselling book Friday Night Lights. Now, you’d think I’d be [...]

Adam Gaffin has an interesting post on Universal Hub on how “natural flood control” has reduced flooding along Charles River. The idea was that the various parcels of land would act as giant natural sponges during floods, absorbing vast amounts of water quickly, then releasing it slowly as the river receded. And it seems to [...]