Kentucky's annual budget looks to cut 1/3 of funding to libraries, which would force some to close.

"Kentucky is a cultural bastion of intellectual pursuits," said no one ever.

Which explains why Kentucky legislators have proposed cutting state funding to libraries from $7.8 million to $5.3 million, with additional language written into the bill that funding only go toward construction costs--mainly to support government bonds already committed to.

As the Lexington Herald Leader notes, many poor, rural communities that rely heavily on state aid to maintain a library might need to close.

"For the Hickman County library, state aid makes up 57 percent of the budget. For Knott County's library, it's 23 percent. For Livington County's library, it's 22 percent."

Republican lawmakers believe libraries have been receiving too much support while sitting on reserves of cash, as if librarians are Scrooge McDuck diving into a sea of gold coins.

"Some of them are sitting on quite a bit of cash, and I’ve been contacted from a lot of fiscal courts and county judge-executives saying our libraries keep raising taxes and we can’t do anything about it," said House Budget chairman Steve Rudy (R), Paducah.

Yes--those pesky libraries that somehow have the authority to just raise taxes randomly. Happens all the time.

A close approximation of what Kentucky lawmakers think librarians are doing

Some counties are cripplingly poor. As the Herald Leader notes, 22% of Powell County's 12,442 residents live in poverty. They only receive $13,000 in library aid from the state, which covers the cost of electricity, internet services, and programming for adults. Not salaries, not for new books. Just basic functioning of the building.

"In our area, quite a lot of the community doesn't have access to the Internet," one librarian told the newspaper. "You can come to us or you can go to the McDonald's or the Dairy Queen. But the difference is, we don't make you order anything to use the Internet. And not everyone has five bucks to spend around here just to go online."

That's right. The Dairy Queen in town in where all poor children should go to learn after school. Where else can they get internet access AND learn about the culinary delights that is soft serve?

Columnist joins The New York Times, then writes how the newspaper's power might be bad news.

Point #1:  Ben Smith used to work at BuzzFeed when it was a startup company.

Point #2:  The New York Times has more digital subscribers than the COMBINED subscribers of The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, and San Francisco Chronicle.

Point #3:  Ben Smith left BuzzFeed, joined The New York Times as a columnist, and on Sunday wrote his first piece about how his now-employer's consolidation of media power might not be so good.

He joined the very problem he fears.

The New York Times has become such a monopoly of information that it can hire people to criticize the company, publish it, play it as self-aware, and simply laugh as they watch more money roll in.

The Richard Nixon Presidential Library is offering free cherry pie. Because...hey, it's pie?

Being president of the United States doesn't necessarily mean the person holding the office has a discerning palate.

Ronald Reagan cherished jelly beans, while Bill Clinton never met a cheeseburger on the campaign trail he could pass up. Dwight Eisenhower loved his wife's homemade fudge, John F. Kennedy adored New England clam chowder, and Woodrow Wilson enjoyed a good chicken salad.

Today being President's Day, this leads to curious deals and promotions, including the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum offering half-priced admission. And for the first 1,000 visitors, they'll also receive a free piece of cherry pie.

Why cherry pie? Why pie at all? One wonders. You might think the library would choose apple pie (you know, the whole "American as..."), or you might draw a logical conclusion that Nixon must have been obsessed with cherry pie. Except the library doesn't say.

Indeed, as noted on Business Insider, Nixon's favorite go-to food was something far more curious--so curious as to border on the bizarre. Apparently Nixon loved cottage cheese and ketchup. Together. Often as breakfast.

Ketchup. On. Cottage. Cheese.

Try to get that gelatinous culinary horror erased from your mind right now. You can't. That's a visual no one wants to have. And yet here we were thinking Nixon's worst behavior was about Watergate all along.

Iran is in the process of building the world's largest ever bookstore.

484,376 square feet.

That's how big of a bookstore Iran--that beacon of freedom of speech you all know and love--is looking to build.

For perspective, The Guinness Book of World Records says the largest bookstore ever known was, of all things, a Barnes & Noble flagship store on New York City's 5th Avenue that measured in at 154,250 square feet. Even that couldn't survive and closed down in 2014.

Iran's desire to follow through with the bookstore is even more strange when, as Holly Dagres at Aeon notes, some publishers barely print 300 copies of a book in Iran these days--and that's if they're allowed to publish the book at all.

Will the bookstore survive? Will it work? Will it inspire a different kind of Iranian revolution? Or, perhaps, will Iran be able to say their stores are no different than a Manhattan Barnes & Noble and close up shop?

Because down deep, you'd be surprised how much Tehran channels its inner midtown Manhattan on a daily basis.

Parents throw DOWN at Brooklyn kindergarten graduation ceremony.

There are times in any small child's life where certain things need to be learned. Like counting, ABCs, and momma's secret ability at dropping 'bows.

When the tiny tots at Brooklyn's P.S./I.S. 178 in Crown Heights prepped to walk the stage for their graduation, things became tense between mothers who jockeyed for position to take photos. Pushing beget shoving...beget yelling...beget left hooks landing...beget cops being called...beget little Bobby and Suzy learning all about the nuances of the justice system.

According to The New York Post, although a school aide who only was known by Mrs. Nelson was clocked while trying to break up the fracas, no charges were pressed after police threw the unruly parents out.

Oh, the Boston Globe headline wasn't really that interesting at all.

Never mind.

The Boston Globe tweeted days ago they were going to reveal today the one headline they never wanted to publish. Some people wondered. Was the paper folding? Going solely online? The moon landings were all fake? What was it?

Instead, the Globe decided to try their best impersonation of The Onion and do a satirical front page.

Strike up the Yakety Sax music, because things just became rib-tickling here!

Dated one year from now, April 9, 2017, it creates a grim view of the nation and the world under a then-President Trump. Curfews, deportations, trade wars. Let the hilarity ensue!

This is the satirical equivalent of having Chips Ahoy! say they make chocolate chip cookies just like grandma makes. Sure, it sounds fine, but we all know grandma's cookies can't be beat.

Which is why satire is left to The Onion. Leave it alone.

And leave the cookies to grandma, too.

Tests reveal that...[[[extra long dramatic pause]]]...Maury Povich is the father of the newspaper!!

Jerry Springer would never exist without Maury Povich, and Maury Povich would never exist unless vast numbers of people with poor decision making skills decided to air their dirty laundry on national television. For twenty-two years, Povich has made a career out of unruly teenagers, abusive men, polygraph tests, and revealing paternity test results. In essence, the worst dinner party guests ever. People like this guy:

Sounds legit.

Despite all of the tabloid angles to what's made Povich wealthy, he still has roots in the newspaper business. His father, after all, was the famed Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich. This has led Maury to helm a rural, out-of-the-way newspaper, nearly unknown to the public for nearly a decade.

The Flathead Beacon newspaper serves the town of Kalispell, Montana, and the accompanying Flathead County, where Povich and his wife, former news anchor Connie Chung, own a vacation home. And in an era when many newspapers around the country fold on a monthly basis, the Flathead Beacon has actually seen readership increase--and with a total lack of paternity test revelations, too!

That doesn't mean Povich is ready to quit daytime television for newspapers just yet. As he told CNN Money, "After nine years, we're almost breaking even."

Apparently people in Montana don't make nearly as many bad decisions.

New York City's elite public high schools are not a hotbed of racial and ethnic diversity.

There are nine "specialized public high schools" in New York City for either the "academically or artistically gifted" student. Eight of those schools require an admissions test. One, LaGuardia High School, which is more arts-based, requires an audition.

According to a report, those nine public high schools have appallingly horrible rates of racial diversity representing the city of which they are a part.

Of the eight schools that require testing, students identifying as African-American or black made up 3% of accepted students. Those identifying as Latino or Hispanic made up just 5%. When you consider New York City is made up of 70% of people identifying from those racial and ethnic backgrounds, this would seem like a tiny, slight imbalance.

At lower Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School, considered the city's best public high school, nine African-American/black students were accepted for the next academic year, compared to 178 white students and 682 Asian students.

Time to pause. Those numbers might have blended in a paragraph for you, but this is important. Here it is again.

9 African-American/black students
178 white students
682 Asian students

...all accepted into next year's class at a public school.

If you're not sure whether grimacing, scowling, or awkwardly sighing is the right reaction to such a statistic, all three at once is acceptable!

Until you learn that Stuyvesant High School is a downright racial utopia. Why? At Staten Island Technical High School, another of the testing eight, not a single African-American/black student was accepted. Not one. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

0.

This is New York City we're talking about, not Salt Lake City.

This is a city where over 27,000 students took the specialized admissions test, a test with almost a 20% acceptance rate, better than most Ivy League and "second tier" colleges--and, this can't be noted enough, is still a public institution representing the city these schools exist within--a city that is 70% black or Latino. This is a city where the link to the city's specialized schooling website shows photos of six students on the page and four of the six appear to be either black or Latino. It's bad when stock website photography for a specialized school is more accepting than the actual specialized public school.

It's not just a New York City issue. It happens in every major city at their own "specialized" high schools. Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and so on. Despite the obvious statistics, the moral outrage (hey!), nothing will be done to solve this. Politicians and school administrators and colleges and universities will pay wonderful lip service to say a change needs to be done. Studies will be commissioned. A movement will begin.

And the cameras and microphones will be put away. And there's another story to cover. And we forget. And we move on.

And, still, barely a single black or Latino kid will be admitted to an elite public school in the city of New York.

Randomness Corner: Greece! Only the best in medical care!

This weekend, in Greece's second division of soccer, AEL Larissa beat Ergotelis, 2-1. There's no reason to watch Greek soccer. Ever. Like, ever ever. It's not that skilled. And the video below is of Greece's second division--even worse.

The real reason to watch Greek soccer is shown in the video, when medics came on the field to carry off an injured player in potentially the most amazing display of medical ineptitude possible.

Admittedly, the Greek economy is in tough shape, so maybe this is the best medical care money can buy these days.

Bonus points for the nonchalant stretcher plop once they get across the sideline. The whole exasperation of the medics, as if they've been put out, really sells it.

Minnesota college student survives night outdoors in below freezing temperatures, might lose hands from hypothermia.

According to reports, University of Minnesota-Duluth student Alyssa Jo Lommel had spent the evening downing upwards of 10 shots of tequila before being driven home by a friend.

After dropping Lommel off, the friend left before Lommel went inside any home--which was a problem, because Lommel passed out on the neighbor's front porch. Over the course of the evening temperatures in Duluth dropped to -17°F, with a wind chill of -36°F, and it would take 9 hours before anyone found her asleep on a strange porch.

Only wearing boots and a coat as an outer layer, yet lacking gloves, Lommel's hands swelled to three times their normal size, and doctor's fear that emergency surgeries to alleviate the swelling might not be enough to save her hands.

Friends tell reporters that 10 shots of tequila is about par for the course for Lommel and that she "wasn't falling down drunk."

No. Just passed out on the neighbor's porch in -17°F kind of drunk.

Yaaah, friends!

Soccer legend weeps over his own book.

This isn't any book you find on the clearance rack at Barnes & Noble. This is a 33lb., 500 page, $1,700 giant of a book about soccer legend Pele, billed as "the definitive work on the Athlete of the Century." (Muhammad Ali? Babe Ruth? Jackie Robinson? What did you accomplish?) Titled 1283, only 1,283 copies will be made--the same number of goals Pele scored during his career.

But wait--you say you have an unhealthy obsession with elderly soccer players? Good news! There's a luxury edition selling for $2,600 which includes an autographed picture of Pele and what the publisher vaguely describes as "a heart shaped patch of sweat." Potential scratch-and-sniff Pele BO? Hubba-hubba.

At the book release event, Pele became very emotional. "This really makes me well up. It is a legacy I left for Brazil," he told reporters while wiping tears from his eyes.

A legacy of ornate sweat stains.




photo: Getty, via Yahoo.

Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' banned by Edinburgh University's student union.

The song is not allowed to be played in any student union building on the university's campus after the organization said the song's lyrics fall under the banner of the Edinburgh University Students' Association 'End Rape Culture and Lad Banter on Campus' policy.

But can they also ban Robin Thicke's choice in fashion?

Russian man shot in grocery store during argument over the writings of philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Naturally.

Wall Street Journal Article: Should You Bring Mom and Dad to Your Job Interview?

Yeah...no.

The name of Target's sandals either means 'peaceful' or 'urine' depending on which language you prefer.

'Orina' means 'peace' or 'peaceful' in Russian, or so the branding experts at Target thought when they named a style of sandals after that. Sandals equal peaceful footsies, and all that good stuff.

Except 'orina' also means 'urine' in Spanish, which is a much less sexy proposition when you're trying to woo a diverse customer base.

So Target is desperately trying to relabel/rebrand those sandals into something less human waste-y inspired.

Because Spanish is such an obscure, little-used language.

Simon & Schuster wants its employees to WIG out.

Publisher Simon & Schuster has adopted the WIG mentality for its employees: Wildly Important Goals.

WIGs were decreed by CEO Carolyn Reidy (channeling an inner Office Space moment where soon she'll be asking about those TPS reports), who has been won over by self-help gurus where the WIG idea originated.

How does a WIG apply to Simon & Schuster employees?

Every department must institute a WIG for itself. Better yet, every employee--every employee--must create a WIG for themselves, too. This isn't a stick-it-on-a-Post-It-Note-on-your-cubicle-wall type thing. Employees must enter their goal into a database to chart their WIG. If they've made progress, the database shows a green icon. No progress is emblazoned with a red circle.

But it gets really precious beyond that. As MHPBooks notes,

[I]n fact, employees still have mandatory weekly department meetings at the S&S Rockefeller Center offices to discuss “lead measures” and “lag measures” — indicators of how their performance has progressed. As part of the training for the program, participants were informed that if someone came to the meeting and reported an inability to meet a task from the previous week, he or she would be “frozen,” which means that no one could speak to that person for the duration of the meeting.

So, you're ignored. Shunned. Treated like a three year old who scribbled on the wall with magic markers because you didn't eat your Cheerios.

I know, I know--you're wondering where you can apply for a job at Simon & Schuster so you, too, can be shunned like someone with tuberculosis just because you missed a goal.

Go WIG out here.

Homeless Connecticut woman enrolls child in kindergarten, is arrested.

Tanya McDowell is homeless. She often lives in a van when she isn't sleeping on people's couches. Her last known address was in Bridgeport, CT, a city not known for its wealth or high-quality public school system.

So when McDowell's five year old son was set to head off to kindergarten recently, McDowell decided to use the address of a babysitter she uses as her child's permanent address. The babysitter lives in the more affluent Norwalk, CT. This is a serious crime apparently.

When McDowell was found to be homeless--or, rather, that her last permanent address was in Bridgeport--her son was kicked out of his Norwalk school, and she was arrested and charged with trying to steal upwards of $16,000 in free education for her son.

Such a larceny charge isn't a small-time matter either, because that $16,000 claim equals a lot of jail time. McDowell faces 20-years in jail and a $15,000 fine if found guilty.

In case you're keeping count, here's the unofficial American Prison Tally as of December 4, 2012:

Number of homeless mothers trying to get their child an education potentially going to jail:   1

Number of bankers responsible for shady lending practices that partially led to a nationwide economic collapse potentially going to jail:   0




photo: Associated Press

Teacher charged with giving student marijuana.

An English teacher at Lynn English High School in Lynn, MA, was arrested and charged for allegedly giving a student marijuana while at school.

Gives a whole new meaning to high school, eh?!  (((rim-shot)))

Thank you, thank you. Don't forget to tip your waitresses.

What happens in Vegas...: Two Berkeley law students kill exotic bird in casino wildlife habitat.

According to Las Vegas police, two University of California-Berkeley law students allegedly visited the Flamingo Hotel wildlife exhibit, took a shine to a helmeted guineafowl, chased it up a tree...and then decapitated the bird.

Eric Cuellar and Justin Teixeira, both 24 years old and apparently unaware that Las Vegas is cased with surveillance, were caught by video cameras chasing the bird into a tree. According to police reports by witnesses, the two men allegedly came out of the tree with the exotic bird severed, laughed about it, and threw the bird's lifeless body around for awhile.

This is possibly the worst adaptation of The Hangover ever.

Both Cuella and Teixeira were booked on felony charges of conspiracy and the willful and malicious torture or killing of wildlife. They have a court date coming up where those law classes they took get put to experience.



Photo: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department

Man pulls gun on elementary school kids because they made fun of his Confederate flag bumper sticker.

Joshua P. Dalton was driving his pickup truck in Virginia Beach, VA, when he had to stop behind a school bus unloading children.

Some children who got off of the bus immediately turned around and told the driver Dalton was aiming a gun at them.

The driver returned the children to the school and alerted authorities.

According to police, Dalton aimed the gun at the children after they made fun of a Confederate flag bumper sticker on his pickup.

He was arrested, charged with two misdemeanor counts of brandishing a firearm, and released on bond.

No word on what exactly the students said, but something along the lines of we're actually educating ourselves  or  you guys lost might have done the trick.




As a fun game, re-read the above story and count how many stereotypes about the south you can detect. If by the end of re-reading it you aren't humming the Dukes of Hazzard theme song, you're not trying hard enough.