2005 fremont solstice parade goers at the lenin statue

• The Lenin statue in Fremont is privately owned, and is for sale. But nobody apparently wants to buy it.
• Minorities: Bellevue’s got a lot more of ’em these days, sez the Census. Seattle’s got a lot fewer.
• Art Thiel wants you to know the big Husky Stadium rebuild, to begin this winter, involves no taxpayer funds. Just private donations and bond issues to be repaid out of UW Athletics income.
• Ex-State Rep Brendan Williams wants Washington state’s progressives to “get some backbone” about preserving vital services in the state budget.
• Starbucks boss and Sonics seller Howard Schultz’s latest big idea: Big election-campaign donors like him should vow to boycott funding election campaigns. Of course, if Democratic donors like Schultz are the only ones doing the boycotting….
• There’s a plan to create a “Jimi Hendrix Park,” next to the African American Museum at the old Coleman School. It would be the fifth Hendrix memorial of one type or another (not counting the Experience Music Project, which parted ways with the Hendrix heirs during its development). Cobain still has just that one unofficial park bench in Viretta Park and a city-limits sign in Aberdeen.
• Rolling Stone put out a reader poll declaring the top punk acts of all time. The list put Green Day on top and included not a single female. FlavorWire has come to the side of justice with its own in-house listing of “15 Essential Women Punk Icons.” The NW’s own Kathleen Hanna, Beth Ditto, and Sleater-Kinney are on it, as is onetime Seattleite Courtney Love.
• Many, many indie-label CDs were in a warehouse that burned during the London lootings. Some labels might not survive the blow.
• Mike Elgan at Cult of Mac sez Apple’s invented all the big things it’s going to invent for a while. We’ve heard this one before.
• And for those of you heading back into the working life (you lucky stiffs, you), take heed Peter Toohey’s thoughts (partly inspired by the late David Foster Wallace) on “the thrill of boredom:”

Boredom should not be abused, exploited, ignored, sneered at, rejected or talked down to as a product of laziness or of an idle, uninventive and boring mind. It’s there to help, and its advice should be welcomed and acted upon.

• Among the Plan Vs, Plan Ws, and Plan Xs to resolve the Republican-invented “debt ceiling crisis” (which, as pundit Eric Byler notes, is “as fake as professional wrestling“) is a joint House/Senate committee that would have extra-ordinary powers to shape legislation that the full bodies would not get to amend. Huffington Post calls it a “Super Congress.” Now if we only had a “Super President,” like the one in a 1967 TV cartoon of the same name. (Yes, I am old enough to have seen the show during its one network run, and yes, I did.)
• Speaking of fantasy entertainments, Hong Kong scientists claim their tests with photons prove nothing can go faster than light. Then, they extrapolate from that to claim that therefore, time travel is impossible. Well, there are any number of Whovians who would argue about that.
• The King County Council failed to vote on Monday about the utterly necessary plan to save Metro Transit. Let’s hope the delay means enough votes are being attained.
• Who (heart)s, or at least partly defends, the Oslo terror killer? There’s Glenn Beck. And there’s a Wall St. Journal op-ed imploring its readers not to let a little thing like a mass murderer dissuade them from the true paths of racism and Islamophobia. Andrew Sullivan, meanwhile, identifies the shooter as an example of “Christianism,” which he defines as “the desperate need to control all the levers of political power to control or guide the lives of others.”
• Good news for all of us who’ve been totally bummed out by the Mariners’ record dive—turns out there will be pro football this year after all.
• If you’re going to the UW campus, don’t masturbate in public. Leave that to the profs.

• Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer said he’d like to be involved in an effort to bring men’s pro basketball back to Seattle. But, he claims, there’s a “real estate problem.” This problem can only be solved with a new arena, which would cost $300-500 million. KeyArena, Ballmer asserts, is too small; though it’s actually well in the range of NBA arena capacities. What it lacks are more luxury boxes and an NHL-friendly hockey configuration. Ballmer also apparently didn’t mention that as long as the City of Seattle owns KeyArena, it won’t subsidize a new building that would compete for concerts and other bookings. Even if the city had the money, which it doesn’t. (Question: Could KeyArena be expanded again without knocking down the nearby Northwest Court complex?)
• For decades, University of Washington administrators have chafed at the presence of all those pesky college students walking around, diverting time and attention away from the world-class-research-institution stuff the administrators would much rather focus on. Now, the current UW bigwigs have come across a solution, in the form of a whoppin’ 20 percent in-state tuition hike. Students plan to protest.
• The federal government has indeed sold the former Rick’s strip club building. And yes, the new owner will probably open another strip club there.
• Howard S. Wright, the construction giant that built the Space Needle and Columbia Center, was sold off to a Texas company.
• Could it really rain more at airports?

After months in the making, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has finally issued forth its paid-subscription based (albeit free for the first two weeks) online “newspaper,” christened The Daily. It’s only available via an iPad app, though I suspect versions for other platforms will roll out in time.

First complaint: I am a veteran of, and remain loyal to, the Daily of the University of Washington. To me, no other enterprise will ever deserve the name “The Daily.”

Second complaint: After all this planning by one of the world’s biggest media companies, the thing’s a flimsy mess.

It feels like an awkward mix of USA Today and the New York Daily News (archrival to Murdoch’s own New York Post). It’s full of stunning color wire-service photos, but its news stories are short and superficial; many are rehashes of stuff an online news geek would have already read.

Mitigating factors: It’s not as rabidly stupid as Murdoch’s Fixed Noise Channel, nor as puerile (or as fun) as his NY Post. The opinion section has a few intriguing, and eminently readable, guest essays. There’s no overt political agenda.

But overall, it’s an over-processed, over-formatted, over-packaged hunk of commercial middle-of-the-road blandness, being sent out into an online America that seems to not like that sort of thing.

A UW prof published a study blasting military recruiting at inner city high schools as “abusing” parental trust. Naturally, Bill O’Reilly’s all up in exaggerated arms about her. And, naturally, he’s got his facts as well as his “patriotism” all wrong.

Last week, the UW football squad won its first game in more than a year. Today, it won its first important game in an even longer time.

And what a game it was.

The dreaded USC, longtime 500-lb. gorilla of the Pac-10 Conference and current #3-ranked team in the nation, was expected to trounce the lowly Huskies. Instead, a last-second field goal created one of the biggest upsets in Husky history.

I love it, I love it, I love it. (Did I tell you I love it?)

…poses the musical question: What if our planet wasn’t such a benevolent mother after all?

“Better diets more costly.”

…your UW taxes don’t pay off. Why, a research at the grand old You-Dub’s working toward hi-tech superhuman vision!

…discover the shocking fact that skiers like snow in the mountains. In other nooze:

• The UW’s latest big fundraising campaign hit its goal five months early. No word whether they’ll just keep going to fund that new stadium remodel.
• Capitol Hill activists hope to prevent another spate of gay-bashing crimes this next summer.
• Driving in snowy mountain passes is tough. Attacking a snowplow driver sure doesn’t help.

…anxiously awaits the long-threatened but still nonexistent Snowstorm ’08, here’s what else has been going on:

• That plan to restore the boarded-up, aluminum-clad windows at the King County Courthouse? Not gonna happen.
• That plan to channel state money for a Husky Stadium remodel? Not dead yet.
• Seattle’s finally getting a new strip club; sure enough, it’s situated right alongside the unofficially-named South Lake Union Trolley.
• The many human services groups based at First United Methodist Church are packin’ up and movin’ out. The last church service at the classic sanctuary: Easter, 3/23. That building’s being saved for commercial use, but the ’50s-era annex building’s going away.
• There’s good news for music lovers: Capitol Music, the city’s top vendor of orchestral instruments and sheet music for more than 90 years, has reopened in Roosevelt, a year after development consumed its last downtown location.
• Caucus or primary? Wash. state’s got both.

…if any of you find these morning headline thangs useful. I find them useful, at least. So without further ado:

• There’ll be another Sound Transit referendum. We just don’t know when or for how much.
• But there won’t be legislation to provide state funding for a Husky Stadium rebuild.
• There’s a heartwarming human interest story about several local radio vets and legends who’ve put together an online radio station with the aid of Seattle Community Colleges, streaming the sounds of Seattle airwaves’ past.
• More Port of Seattle shenanigans were recently unearthed, including a sweetheart deal to cover up cost overruns on the Sea-Tac third runway.
• Seattle’s homeless population is up 15 percent from the last “one night count.”

• The UW wants $300 million for a Husky Stadium upgrade, half of that from pubilc sources.
• Clay Bennett’s people claim nobody would miss the Sonics.
• Mt. St. Helens: gathering a second wind or tiring out?
• Washington Mutual lost nearly $2 billion last quarter.
• Sensational media stories aside, crime in Seattle is its lowest in 39 years.
• What’s on the rise: The oceans, and therefore Puget Sound.
• What’s on the swift decline: Those silly stock prices.
• Did a Fed. Way judge try to cover up her affair with a defense attorney whose cases she was trying?
• My ol’ hometown of Marysville might get its very own UW branch campus.
• The feds’ great idea for preserving Columbia River salmon stocks: Kill the sea lions who gather at the dams for all-you-can-eat fish dinners.

• Some Washingtonians got beautiful, beautiful snow this morning. We don’t. Oh well.
• A small-town mayor in Oregon was caught posting underwear pix on her MySpace page. Some humorless citizens want her to resign. I say to these citizens: Don’t you believe in open government?
• Big UW donor (and ex-Everett mayor) to UW execs: If you fire the football coach, I’ll donate a hundred grand.
• The “passenger” dolls used by carpool-lane cheaters are getting quite artistic.
• A state senator wants to repeal the Port of Seattle’s taxing authority. As if that would solve anything; they’d just waste the money they get from airlines and shipping lines.
• Gov. Gregoire has a new plan for a new 520 bridge, with “road deck narrower than some earlier designs” above “smaller pontoons.” There’s no joke here; I just like typing the word “pontoons.”
• Seattle Center can go ahead and regulate street performers. Remember: When clowns are outlawed, only outlaws will throw pies.
• The state Legislature will debate whether to force school districts to buy more locally-grown lunch ingredients, presumably not including pot.
• There’s another lawsuit over alleged Catholic boy-abuse, this time involving O’Dea High School.
• Apparel chain H&M (not to be confused with K&G) will open three area stores this year.
• And Bill Richardson may quit the Presidential race, while John Kerry hearts Obama.

• There’s been another Saturday-night Belltown shooting, this time near Fourth and Stewart.
• Trees: We all love ’em. Let’s keep more of ’em around. After all, a city without trees isn’t fit for a dog.
• Pit bulls: There are more of ’em around than ever, even though they’re less universally loved than, say, trees.
• Seattle’s Chinatown is getting a brand new “historic gate.”
• The University of Washington: One of your best higher-education values, even with a sucky football program.