Wal-Mart University

Employees of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores can receive college credit for restocking shelves. Wal-Mart has arranged a higher education program through a big-box online college, American Public University. Employees may be awarded “life experience” credit that can be applied towards an Associate Degree.

Wal-Mart imports much of its stock from Asia, so it is fitting that the store’s university has “more than 600 faculty members teaching from around the world ….” Perhaps the Chancellor is Professor Rollback.

Rush Limbaugh’s Traditional Marriage

Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh believes in traditional marriage so much that he’s had four of them. The staunch defender of marriage celebrated his fourth nuptials in Palm Beach on June 5th with music by Elton John. We do not know if Sir Elton’s partner David Furnish was in attendance.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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D-Day’s Matchbox Fleet

 

(Re-posted from June 6, 2009)

Sixty wood-hulled boats made in Brooklyn were carried across the North Atlantic to England on the decks of Liberty Ships sixty-six years ago. The cutters, each 83 feet long, were designed for anti-submarine patrol and coastal search and escort, but had been modifed as rescue craft.

The group of small wooden gasoline-powered cutters, vulnerable to incendiary shells, was called the ”Matchbox Fleet.”  On June 6, 1944, these boats crossed the Channel as U.S. Coast Guard Rescue Flotilla One, part of Operation Neptune/Overlord.

BP Caps Oil Well

BP cut a pipe 5000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico and put a cap on the valve that has been leaking oil for the past month. “Cap” sounds much less formal than the Top Hat BP tried to use a few weeks ago.

Some oil is being recovered, but crude oil is still gushing into the water, fouling  sea life, birds, and the shores of four states. The rate of the oil spill may have been slowed, but estimates vary. To get an idea of the scope of this ongoing disaster, use the PBS Oil Spill Ticker.

More:

Hopocalypse!

We warned you but you were too busy ranting about BP to listen. Now the plague is nearly upon us, a grasshopper infestation of epic proportions. The critters are poised to devour rangeland and crops in Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, all across the American West. It will be the worst grasshopper outbreak in 30 years. Stockpile food now.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Shadow Congress

172 former congressmen and senators currently work as Washington lobbyists, according to a perceptive report by Justin Elliott and Zachary Roth of  Talking Points Memo. They work for trade associations and large law firms and as independent influence shapers for industry and monied interests. Not all are officially registered as lobbyists, but they use their influence to shape legislation nonetheless. Former members of Congress have access to Capitol and federal offices denied other citizens.

Retired legislators from 41 states are working as DC lobbyists, and Texas has the most (17). TPM has an interactive map with a list by state, but it is easier to name states without an ex-congressional K Street contingent: Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wyoming, and West Virginia.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Kudzu Causes Air Pollution

Kudzu vines kill trees, smother native species, bury barns and houses. A new study says they cause air pollution, too. Invasive Pueraria lobata is infamous as “the weed that ate the South,” burying the countryside in tough, fast-growing vines with roots that can weigh up to 400 pounds.

Those roots fix nitrogen from the soil quite efficiently, which might be a good thing if microbes didn’t release much of that nitrogen into the air as nitric oxide, one of the gases that comes out of your car’s tailpipe. This nitric oxide reacts with sunlight and elements in the lower atmosphere to produce ozone and other components of smog, just like in the big city.

DC Food Blogger Happy Hour Wednesday, June 2nd

DC Food Blogger Happy Hour
Wednesday June 2, 2010 – 6 to 8 pm
ZENTAN
Donvan House Hotel
1155 14th street NW
Washington, D.C 20005

RSVP on Facebook.

More at: Capital Spice, Dining in DC, Girl Meets Food, Gradually Greener, Johnna Knows Good Food, Modern Domestic, Thrifty DC Cook, and elsewhere in the DC foodie Blogosphere.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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Food Fight

In the beginning was the pea shooter. Boy-men of the late Neolithic placed dried peas in hollow reeds and propelled them by breath at wild beasts — each other. Curious kids may have tried large-bore chickpea models, but the weapon remained virtually unchanged until the Twentieth Century, when bored schoolboys constructed long-range, accurate, non-pneumatic peashooters from mechanical pencils or Bic pens and elastic bands. The Alimentary Arms Race had begun.