We keep learning—Shaw reports that the Texas “criminal justice” department has stopped listing last dinners on its web site. But, as a solid plug, he adds that a former Texas inmate who prepared last-dinner meals has written a menu cookbook. There we learn—for the very first time—that the meal of choice consists of anything available that night in the prison cafeteria!

Swine of the week—A final note on the last dinner: Shaw writes that a few listed on the web site expressed a social response to the offered last dinner. For instance, Odell Barnes Jr. declared that all he wanted was “Justice equality and world peace.” Shaw sneered: “Given that these men were all convicted murderers, you could be forgiven for thinking that their humanitarian impulses arrived a bit late in life.”

Plus tenacious fighters—“The [U.S.] Navy came and went from this Puerto Rican island [of Vieques]. Few developers have landed. Today, it remains isolated and serene, brimming over with lush greenery, clean beaches and underwater surprises.” — Travel section, Los Angeles Times.

Judge likes sludge?—The Kentucky Martin County coal company was fined for permitting some 306 million gallons of coal sludge to spill into waterways of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. The sludge was the consistency of wet cement. Irwin Schroeder, an administrative judge of the federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, reviewed the very modest $55,000 fine and reduced it to $5,500.

Food stamps?—“Indiana—House minority leader Brian Bosma is trying to get a salary increases for judges and legislators. Bosma said he isn’t worried about the state lawmakers who earn an average of $37,210. He says the real concern is trial judges, whose $90,000 base salary ranks among the lowest in the USA.” — News item.

They have different genes?—An extensive survey in the United Kingdom found that manual workers die earlier—as much as 20 years—than do professional and managerial folks. A grim note—In the Tucson, Arizona, area, 137 homeless people died in the streets, or in extreme poverty in a 12-month period. In the same previous period, the number was 87.

Pretty damn sensitive—A reader described an item from the newsletter of Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace movement. It reported that a peace activist was taken into custody because she sprayed a sentence on a wall separating Arabs from Jews in Abu Dis, a suburb of Jerusalem. Angela Gottfried was scooped up by border guards for writing on the wall, “Welcome to Abu Dis Ghetto.” At the police station, she was told, “This is incitement. If you say ‘ghetto,’ you say we’re Nazis.”  
 
 
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