[imgcontainer] [img:65019745.jpeg] [source]Los Angeles Times[/source] This wonderful mural graces a building in downtown Selma, California, the raisin capital of the world. A miscreant stole the bronze plaque celebrating the artist who created the work. The town has lost several historical markers to people who are selling the bronze. [/imgcontainer]
The Washington Post reports that there appears to be growing opposition in Nebraska to the Keystone XL pipeline.
The pipeline would carry oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, cutting across the Ogallala Aquifer on its way. There is considerable fear that an oil spill could contaminate the prime source of water for much of the Great Plains. The Post reports:
Many in the public are hostile to the idea, too. When a pipeline company logo was displayed on a stadium screen during a recent Nebraska Cornhuskers game, boos rained down from the crowd of 85,000. The university agreed to stop running the ads.
Damon Moglen, a spokesman for the Washington-based environmental group Friends of the Earth, called Nebraska “the key battleground” over the proposal.
Both sides of the debate will have a final chance to make their case this week when public hearings are held in Lincoln and Atkinson, a small town in northern Nebraska. Similar meetings are scheduled in other states that would be crossed by the pipeline.
•Warren County, Kentucky, schools report a larger number of homeless students. The school system has 206 homeless students. Last year it had 90. The year before, 63.
Warren County isn’t the most rural place in America. It’s home to Bowling Green. But it’s not exactly urban either.
This is the second story we’ve seen reporting an increase in homeless public school students.
• Speaking of hard times, we’ve read tons of stories about people stealing copper — some, unfortunately, yank the wire before it has been disconnected from the electric grid. Now we read that people are swiping the bronze historical markers in Selma, California.
Selma is the central California town that is the “raisin capital of the world.” Recently, thieves have taken the bronze plaques telling that the elementary school was built during the Great Depression, recording that the women’s club was constructed in 1911 and naming those who donated for the still-standing St. Joseph’s Church.
They even took the marker on the town’s historical mural (see above).
• The AP tries to disentangle fact from propaganda in the ongoing debate over hyrdraulic fracturing in shale gas formations.
This has become one of those issues that has no nuance or middle ground. Then the AP finds some. We liked this quote:
“I think what’s happened with many of these controversies is that the issues have been framed as, is there a problem or not?” said Baruch Fischhoff, a professor at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University who studies risk and decision-making. “As opposed to, what kind of gambles do we want to take?”
• A $30 million project to extend broadband to rural counties in north Florida has been suspended after $7 million was spent without extending high speed Internet connection by even one mile.
The project was paid for with federal stimulus dollars and was managed by the non-profit North Florida Broadband Authority.
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