nojo

“A group that raised more than $5,000 to fight a $30 million bond referendum for a new Franklin library gave those on the other side a reason to snicker. ‘Citizens Apposed to the Library Project’ filed their official financial disclosure documents April 20 with the Johnson County clerk.” [Indianapolis Star, via @Pres_Bartlet]

“I love the fact that there are women out there who don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids. Thank goodness that we value those people too. And sometimes life isn’t easy for any of us.” —Ann Romney, attempting to show empathy for women whose husbands aren’t vulture capitalists. [BuzzFeed, via ThinkProgress]

“My guess is you’ll see a dramatic difference in the youth vote this time — part of it is you have a younger, more dynamic Republican candidate.” — Romney supporter Hank Brown, 72, touting the virtues of a 65-year-old candidate with sixteen grandchildren. [TPM]

  • “Would Jerry Sr. of had mr morman at graduation?” [Nate Johnson]
  • “I’m a native of Lynchburg and I just want to say, I cannot believe a Christian University is having governor Romney speak at your commencement. It’s hard to believe a conservative Christian School would support an obvious moderate/liberal. I knew Jerry Sr and I am sure he is turning over in his grave at the decision.” [Donna Driskill Keyser]
  • “Yes, he is not a Christian, but we also had Ron Paul and other poiticians come that were not christians as well. Commencement is not church.” [Audrey Hammond]

Read more »

“An actor portraying the apostle Judas in a play about the final moments of Jesus Christ’s life has died after accidentally hanging himself onstage in Brazil.” [WND]

“The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants — more than half of whom came illegally — the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped — and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.” [Pew]

We used to live in awe of our recent ancestors. To have lived a life encompassing the Wright Brothers and Apollo 11 was to have witnessed Humanity’s Great Leap Upward. We were lucky enough to have caught the tail end of that era, but really, watching the first moon landing at ten is to lack all the context. Pretty cool, but so was Batman.

We lived in awe, but not resentment. We also missed a couple of world wars and an influenza pandemic, and benefited from the polio vaccine. It all evens out.

And besides, the future wasn’t done yet. We’ve lived the computing revolution, from mainframes to minis to micros to Macs to modems to cable modems to no modems to iPhones to iPads. Only twelve men have walked on the moon. More than two billion people travel through cyberspace. We’re writing this on something we would have seen on Star Trek growing up.

And maybe we’re luckier than we thought. There’s a quarter-century gap between Apollo 11 and the Web. That’s a long time to marinate, if you lived from ten to thirty-five during those years — a lot of context stored up for the Big Cyberbang. If, on the other hand, you’ve just turned thirty, you might find yourself posting something like this:

Read more »