On Tuesday, Christine Fahl won election to Athens City Council’s Fourth Ward seat, defeating Randy Morris. In an unofficial vote tally, Fahl beat Morris by 30 votes, in a race in which 722 votes were cast, and 39 provisional ballots remain to be counted.
On Wednesday, the Athens Messenger’s story on the outcome was headlined, “Looks like Fahl, but too close to call.”
Now, I don’t want to beat up on the Messenger in particular here; it may be that somebody over there just liked the almost-rhyme of “Fahl” and “call.” But my first thought on reading it was that if more reporters mastered the basics of mathematical literacy, we would see fewer headlines like this one.
In recent issues of The Athens NEWS, two successive writers have sent letters to the editor bemoaning the absence of “classical” music on Ohio University’s WOUB-FM radio.
I don’t want to jump into some brawl about the programming on WOUB (for one thing, I’m biased, being a volunteer jock on the AM side). But it has always seemed odd to me, this treatment of a thing called “classical” music as a particular, and especially high-toned, genre. It seems to miss the whole point of the concept of “culture,” which would seem to be, most of all, about discrimination.
In terms of the mechanics of music, I’m pretty much an illiterate. I could probably spot by ear a relative minor, or a dominant seventh, but if you start to talk about voice leading or parallel fourths, I’ll have to lie down with a cooling cloth on my head. So to be honest, I would have to say that I don’t really know the first thing about “classical music.”
When I talk to people about the murder trials (three so far) of the people who were involved in a drug-related shootout in New Marshfield Feb. 15, I get the distinct impression that a lot of folks around these parts are a little uneasy with the way the law seems to be working in this case.
For background on the trials, you can check out any number of stories I’ve written for The Athens NEWS. Here’s a link to the most recent one.
It has come to my ever-wandering attention that the headline of the Athens NEWS’ Aug. 13 cover story – “Adios, ol’ gas hog,” can be rearranged to spell – among other phrases – “O, had I glass goo,” “Lois – a good shag,” “Lo, a gash is good,” and “So hags oil a god.” I swear and/or affirm I did not use any type of so-called “computerized software” to generate these anagrams.
The meaning of the first variant seems almost entirely opaque, though it could refer to the fact that ordinary glass– despite its rigid appearance – is in molecular terms a fluid.
As widely reported in the media, new home sales showed an uptick in June that was their quickest in eight years, clearly signaling, in the words of one economist quoted by the Associated Press, that “the worst of the housing recession… is now behind us.”
And if home sales come, can spring be far behind? Signs point to yes, say top financial 8-balls. Take our president, for example, who, while speaking in Shaker Heights July 23, patted himself warmly on the back for the brave fiscal electroshock he gave the economy in the early weeks of his term.
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