“Avoiding insects completely is impossible,” according to a university news release describing U. of I. eintomologist May Berenbaum’s new book, Bugs in the Systme: Insects and Their Impact on Human Affairs, “because four of every five creatures on Earth – some 800,000 species with an estimated population of 10 quintillion – are six-legged.”
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“The attitude of the Chicago Police Department displaces people,” argues veteran housing activist Bob Brehm in the Network Builder (Winter). “There’s been a campaign for years to empty Cabrini. Their standoffish attitude about the gangs – the gangs didn’t just [happen to] flourish there, or control certain vacant floors in certain buildings from which they had good sniper angles – somebody had to let them get away with that. You don’t see any snipers in Winnetka…. There’s this widely accepted notion that it sucks to live in Cabrini and we’re doing them a favor to tear it down’ People have designs on that land, and they want those black people out. And if it sucks to live there, it sucks in part because the powers that be have helped to make it suck. And that becomes a good excuse to move them out and tear it down.” Wouldn’t mixed-income developments be an improvement? “Give me a guarantee that everybody will get a permanent, decent affordable place to live in, not some five year voucher, and then ask me that question. But until then, that’s not the issue. Right now, we’re talking Cabrini or the street.”
I guess it depends which page you’re on. From page 1 of the Illinois Association of School Boards’ News Bulletin (February 28): “Schools have improved over the last 20 years, concludes a new study by the Rand Corporation.” From page 7: “A majority [of U.S. college graduates] would have a hard time deciphering a bus schedule or writing a creditor about a billing error, according to a recent report” by the Educational Testing Service.
