No smoking…no skateboarding…WE ARE WATCHING YOU

That's what the signs on the bus station, the John Olver International Transit Hub, say.

Also, it was a dewy morning.

I'm fine with this but the part I don't get is…

…why are people who openly carry firearms considered more scary than people who conceal them? That just makes no sense at all. To me. Maybe to you, but not to me. (And this is my blog, so I'm right.)

Walmart, Kroger, Starbucks, Target all ask customers not to openly carry guns, as businesses wrestle with firearms issues - Chicago Tribune

http://bit.ly/2PSRPce

Why does this crack me up?

Nope, didn't

Editorial: Did repeal of this internet edict ruin your life? What, you didn't notice? - Chicago Tribune

http://bit.ly/2PG1liB

More back-to-school news

Starting This Week, 26,000 Unvaccinated Kids Have to Get Shots to Attend School in New York - VICE

Every state allows medical exemptions from school vaccination requirements, and 15 states allow exemptions for philosophical reasons, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. With the change in its law, New York joins four states that don't permit religious exemptions: California, Maine, Mississippi and West Virginia.

http://bit.ly/2zNdXda

An article about college fight songs…



…at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com this morning reveals lots of fighting, hitting (and one plunge from Wisconsin), battling and winning, plenty of victors and heroes…

But Minnesota? "Firm and strong." 

I think that's what they call Minnesota Nice.

There are a few outliers in all this, for example, Georgia Tech (I'm a ramblin' wreck), but our nomination for best fight song lyrics ever goes to the Oklahoma Sooners:

"I'm a Sooner born and Sooner bred

and when I die, I'll be Sooner dead"

Our Guide To The Exuberant Nonsense Of College Fight Songs | FiveThirtyEight

https://53eig.ht/2PCbYTv

Reading in the Trib this morning…

…about Chicago's annual crisis in education, namely, negotiating teachers' salaries for the upcoming school year, it occurred to me to wonder just how many public schools there are in the Windy City and so I looked it up.

Of public schools run by the Chicago School District, there are 515. Ninety-four of them are high schools.

Onward

Predictably, I spent a good deal of time yesterday watching college football and although the games weren't all that good (mostly, the good guys won, though) seeing all those tens of thousands of dopey kids with their faces painted in school colors jumping and screaming in the stands gave me new hope for the future. A country with that much energetic enthusiasm can hardly fail.