In case you hadn't noticed,

The Quincy Pilgrim is blogging again after a long hiatus. Good news!

It seemed like a good idea at the time.....

The St. Louis newspaper's entertainment section ran a bunch of fake news stories today about Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Angelina Jolie, etc., as if they were attending St. Louis weekend events. Gotta admire the desire to shake things up a little. But:

There's already enough stupid celebrity obsession in this country without having to manufacture more of it.

Too many people are already relying on fake news sources for their information. Why contribute to the blurring of truth and fiction even with the "Imagine what would happen" pretext?

The implication is that the events aren't interesting enough in their own right to attract people, so they have to be pumped up with imaginary attendees. It's a little insulting to the events, really.

Well, I guess this officially classifies me as a sour old grump.

Copy Editors' Headaches

Either there is a window-washing amoeba in Quincy or the photo in yesterday's city/county section was badly cropped. I could make out a shoe, a bottle of window washing fluid, and what might have been a hand, but beyond that all was a blur. His grandson has human form, however.

The dropped "not" is a copy editor's great bugaboo, as in the trash pickup story, which tells us "There will be collections on Monday, Sept. 3," followed one sentence later by "Monday collections will be made Tuesday." The intervening sentence is a cryptic "There will be a one-day this week only," which I suspect is actually a coded instruction from Osama bin Laden to his Quincy sleeper cell.

Page 1, Top Center

QND's enrollment down for 8th straight year....I guess that puts a dent in the theory that the Whig is biased toward QND with its negative coverage of the public schools.

Interesting comparison

Saw this statistic in the Nashville newspaper over the weekend. Teen driver mortality rates:

Illinois 8th best in the country.
Missouri....47th.

Wonder why that is?

Cookie Cutter Time

It's official....no individuality is to be tolerated in the Quincy Public Schools.

Some notable quotes from yesterday's Whig:

"(The study) has really been interesting and eye-opening on my part," Viniard said. Looking at the district's practices, "we found out ... that we had a real range of grading scales being utilized ... and that we had a wide range in terms of approaches to grading practices."

Apparently having a wide range of approaches is considered bad.

"Half the time when parents call, they want to understand why a student will do well in one class and not in another. ... (Now) I don't have to figure out why each teacher grades differently."

Heavens, we wouldn't want to have to make the counselors figure things out.

"They'll have a chance to redo their work, retake major tests," Viniard said. "Many opportunities in life follow that guideline, such as taking a drivers test."

And many other opportunities in life DON'T. If a teacher wanted to adopt this as a policy, fine and dandy. But to mandate it for all teachers seems like a bad practice for me.

If I thought this policy change would lead to a cutback on "gut" courses and social promotion, I'd be in favor. But I don't think it will have that effect. In fact, I'm afraid it will have the opposite effect. Don't turn something in and still get half credit? You gotta be kidding.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.....

A very interesting feature on a family dealing with autism in Sunday's front.....the second Sunday in a row for a really good-looking package.

A terrible headline over Wednesday's story about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The story was not told by "Mormon ancestors".....they are descendants, not ancestors, and they are descendants of the victims of the Mormons, not the Mormons. Still, it was nice to see something about Mormon history other than the pap the Nauvoo people dish out.

A great photo of a bulbous "Elvis" at the Old Settlers festival in Saturday's paper.

Well, heck

I had something snarky to say about WGEM's website, but they went and improved it. Don't you just hate that?

August

Terrific package on homelessness in Quincy. Gives a good understanding of the complexity of the subject and helps us realize that simple "solutions" aren't really solutions at all....they're just slogans.

Interesting contrast between the editorial approaches of the Whig and the Post-Dispatch over the last couple of weeks to the subject of capital projects. The Whig responded to Congress' passage of the huge water projects bill with utter glee and then yesterday called for more capital spending at the state level including the Macomb bypass and the "Trans Iowa/Illinois freight corridor," which is a fancy name for Iowa 163, U.S. 63, and U.S. 34 between Des Moines and Galesburg. The P-D half-heartedly welcomed the water bill for the jobs and money it would bring but admitted that if the project were headed for any other part of the country, the newpaper would be condemning it as pork, pork, pork.

And yes, those highway projects are pork. Anyone who's traveled I-172 or Ill. 336 lately knows that those are not high-traffic highways. It would be nice to have four-lanes everywhere you went, but priorities have to be set. Sorry, Macomb, but your bypass is not essential to public safety. And if the goal is to get freight from Des Moines to Galesburg, I-80 and I-74 are perfectly fine for the job. The collapse of the Minneapolis bridge reminds us that infrastructure maintenance is a vital job of government, and spending money on less-than-essential projects just because they "provide jobs" only takes money away from the essential ones.

Meanwhile, our friends in Missouri take the opposite approach....cut taxes and propose toll roads. A toll road proponent in the legislature actually cited California as an example for Missouri to follow....hoping I suppose that few Missouri legislators have ever tried to drive California highways.

Absurdity of the Week

Some guy trying to sell Ozzfest tickets in the classified ads for $70. Dude, that's a free concert.

Yeah, Right

John Grossmeier, president and chief executive officer, says that effective Wednesday, 25 physicians who already are employed by the hospital will join together as the Hannibal Regional Medical Group.

"This is not meant to be a competitive (entry) into the physician community," Grossmeier said.