In the mood for a doughnut, I stepped in a bakery this morning, and when the clerk rang up my two sour cream doughnuts, the kind that used to be buttermilk and not quite so sweet, I decided to pick up a Washington Post as well. $2.20 changed to $3.26. Surprised, I looked at the front page, and sure enough, in the corner where it used to say 75¢, it now says $1. Answering my question when that happened, the clerk said since Monday.

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So, Rick Santorum would like to triple the Child Tax Credit (WSJ), or in other words, he feels that a family with three children should have their federal income tax cut by $6,000. (more…)

The Sweetwater Award for Timely Exercise of Manhood in Freezing Water goes to . . .

Eight men who acted within seconds to pull three children from a car overturned in Utah’s Logan River. (link)

Lynn Margulis died a month ago, a woman for whom the important qualities of life were mostly found at the single-cell level. “People think the earth is going to die and they have to save it. That’s ridiculous. If you rid the earth of flowering plants, people would die, period. But the earth was without flowering plants for almost all of its history.” (link)

New Zealand’s Green Party will hold thirteen seats after Saturday’s election. Among their new Members of Parliament is expatriate Californian Julie Anne Genter. (more…)

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From the thoroughly enjoyable Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler:

“However, the only parts of the extensive territories claimed for France which received significant settlement by French-speaking colonists were the St Lawrence river area, known as la Nouvelle-France (New France), and the islands of modern Nova Scotia, then known as l’Acadie (originally la Cadie, derived from some Indian name). Here the original French policy had been to hope that ‘our sons will marry your daughters and we will become one people’. Unfortunately, this did not happen in a way that suited the French, since the early tendency was for arriving male settlers to go native, and bring up their children in their sauvage mothers’ languages. (more…)

Colby Cosh is back to form with the best thing he’s written in many months, a sweetly gentle piece of cynicism.

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[The paragraph below comes from Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard. The eclipse next May 20 will be annular, not total, so there will be no screaming.]

The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon. (more…)

Four months ago at this website, the warning was issued, “If you encounter a Swiss on the road this month, and you’re not driving in Switzerland, please exercise appropriate caution.” Alas, such caution should not have been confined to June. “SUV registered to Swiss Embassy in fatal accident.”

Over at the Grouchy Ex-Wives’ Blog, or whatever they call it, there’s another round going of the endless lamentations that Latter-day Saints might have a shared identity and expectations of one another. So uncivilized, and calling again to mind that description by Conrad: “The sympathetic and deserving creature that knows all about his rights, but knows nothing of courage, of endurance, and of the unexpressed faith, of the unspoken loyalty that knits together a ship’s company.”

Where will you be on Sunday afternoon, May 20, 2012?

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“We’re nearly done reading Ezekial together as a family.”
“And what exactly is this Easy Kill about?” [Eyes slightly narrowed with suspicion.]
“The Book of E-zek-i-al. In the Old Testament.”
“Oh!” [Synonymous with "Whew!"]

Also, how to get your children to never say “I don’t think the Lord would ever punish anyone; He might just withhold a blessing sometimes” as they vocalize repeatedly the visions given His prophet to tell people about their coming terrors after which they shall be no more, foretold so that they will know in their deaths that “I am the Lord.” The visiting teacher wasn’t so far off the first time.

Retired Rear Adm. Maurice H. “Mike” Rindskopf, who when he was 26 was the Navy’s youngest submarine commander, died last month (link):

Firing torpedoes is “all about mathematics,” and Adm. Rindskopf — who was known for his quick mind for math — played a critical role in firing 125 of them. He often volunteered for the night watch, drinking hot soup while decoding messages about the movements of enemy targets. Fellow crew members always knew when it was time.

“I would don a garish yellow aloha shirt I had purchased in Hono­lulu,” Adm. Rindskopf wrote in his memoir, “and lo! we went to Battle Stations.”

Not all who offer an aloha wish to have the greeting returned.

“Emmanuel Gambiri said an educated wife in his cattle-herding Mundari tribe in South Sudan costs 50 cows, 60 goats and 30,000 Sudanese pounds ($12,000) in cash. [. . .] Gambiri recalls a time when wives cost as little as 12 cows and tribal chiefs wielded enough power to call the parents and set an affordable bride price.” (link)