If you were traipsing by Northrop Auditorium on the U of M campus on your way to class yesterday, perhaps you saw the camel brought in to celebrate Israel’s 60th. From The Daily website:

Gopher Israel and Hillel, the University’s Jewish student center, observed the 60th anniversary of Israel’s establishment with Israeli music, a kosher buffet, a piñata and a camel on the Northrop Auditorium patio.

According to the article, Gopher Israel received $6,000 in grants for the celebration, which was considered by some to be an “educational opportunity” for students not familiar with Israel and/or Judaism. I’m wondering what percentage of that grant money was animal care and transportation costs. A clever PR move to attract attention, but I don’t really see how a live mascot helps educate students about the Israeli nation.

There have been a couple things going on around school down at the ol’ State Capitol.

First, they’re in the process of trying to raise the legal high school drop out age from 16 to 18. Now, I don’t have any statistics in front of me about how effective the law is in deterring dropouts, but it seems to me that any of the following would work better:

1) Funding after school programs
2) Smaller class sizes
3) Smaller school sizes
4) Better funded/expanded curriculum choices
5) Performances measures not based on standardized tests
6) Hotter, looser teachers

So yes. Let’s ignore the difficult root causes and make the symptom illegal. Up next: it’s illegal to get talk about condoms. That’ll get those teens to stop doin’ it.

Yep. The legislature is hearing about why talking about sex in school is how kids get clued into the fact that boy part fits into girl part quite nicely (I’m turned on just by that phrasing alone!). So, no talking about condoms or STDs or how, if God didn’t want women to masturbate, why do they have an orgasm button? Again, if we outlaw the symptom, the problem will fix itself.

The award for Best Quote Ever on abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education goes to Rick Olseen:

The back-and-forth exasperated one proponent, who told Prichard to get his “head out of the sand” and realize people aren’t getting married until they’re in their 30s these days.

“I wish you would come at this with a little bit of reality,” said Sen. Rick Olseen, DFL-Harris. “If you don’t want people to have sex until they’re 35 or 40, just say so.”

Also, I’m sure by “sand” he meant “ass”

• twin_cities: ISO grassy metro parks for a guinea pig festival! “The grass has to be chemical free as dozens of hungry guinea pigs will be snacking on and simultaneously fertilizing it.” OMG SO KYOOT!
• MPR: College of St. Catherine to become a university. “The new name hasn’t been determined, but will include ‘St. Catherine’s’ and ‘university.’”
• Minneapolis Issues Forum: Do Idaho’s bike safety statutes make more sense?
• MinnPost: How we’re doing so far. Joel Kramer reports in on the first six months of MinnPost. “MinnPost.com has more than 100,000 absolute monthly unique visitors, as measured by Google Analytics. This makes us the most-visited local-news website in Minnesota that is not driving traffic to itself from a legacy medium, like TV, radio or print.”
• Minnesota Monitor: Congress studies wrong city for RNC disaster preparedness. “The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee found that Minneapolis’ Hennepin County Medical Center did not have sufficient capacity to handle a terrorist attack. The committee completely overlooked St. Paul’s Regions Hospital, which would be the first responder in the unlikely event of a terrorist attack on the RNC.”
• Southwest Journal: Neighborhood organizations are adjusting their fundraising strategies in preparation for the loss of NRP funding. They mention Bryn Mawr Neighborhood Association; Elliot Park Neighborhood, Inc.; and East Harriet Farmstead Neighborhood Association.
• City of Minneapolis: Sustainability Initiatives
• City of St Paul: Sustainable Saint Paul
• The Deets: Ed looks at recent reports on the link between local food environments (i.e., stores/restaurants in your neighborhood) and obesity and diabetes. Ed’s theory: “The distance you drive to buy groceries effects how you shop.”

My favorite foodie (and Flak Radio co-host, and ex-Metblogger, and book author) James Norton is giving a seminar on food writing at the Mill City Writers’ Workshop.

Food is one of the most universal of topics, and among the most challenging to tackle as a writer. The vast dimensions of the gastronomic world can be daunting to those seeking to gain a foothold. In this two hour seminar, food writer James Norton offers suggestions and advice for writers looking to master the practical basics of food and beverage writing, including both the artistic and the business aspects of the craft. Norton also offers practical insight into research, writing, and pitching feature stories, restaurant reviews, and longer projects, such as books.

All for the low low price of $40. [register]

Saturday, May 3rd, 12-2pm
6 Sixth Avenue North, Suite 3
Hopkins, MN

Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience is coming to Saint Paul’s Xcel Energy Center June 11-15.

The show, featuring nearly 90 minutes of life-sized animatronic robot dinosaurs, spans the three major periods of dinosaur evolution (Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous).

Here’s a 6 minute clip from Brisbane Entertainment Centre last year. Here’s another video of the making of the dinos.

Whether you’re a fan of the CGI tv-show of the same name, 8 years-old or just 8 years-old in your heart, I bet you’re going to love it.

Tickets go on sale April 12 at 11 a.m. at at Xcel box office and Ticketbastard. Prices range from $29.50 to $74.50.

UPDATE: Read Julio Ojeda-Zapata’s take.

Meredith Johnson, a student at the U originally from Chanhassen, will be competing in the Jeopardy! College Championship. The competition will tape at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in early April.

What I didn’t know was that everyone that makes it to the College Championship takes home a little money. So Meredith is guaranteed at least $5,000 even if she goes out in the first round.

Sign up for mobile alerts from Jeopardy! so you don’t miss it.

Man, I used to watch Jeopardy! on the daily. These days I’m usually not home or else I’m busy when it’s on. I’m not inclined to just veg in front of the tv for no real reason, either. Jeopardy! is not one of those shows you can just have on in the background. You have to pay attention.

Does anyone else that does not qualify for AARP membership still watch it?

(via)

The Mayo Clinic has blogs dedicated to Alzheimer’s, nutrition, pregnancy and stress. The first three seem like reasonable and obvious choices, but I never would have guessed that of all the topics they could blog on that stress would be one of them.

Unfortunately you can’t subscribe on a per-blog basis, but they do have further information available via RSS, including a ton of articles, “Ask a Mayo Clinic Specialist,” and the podcasts.

(via Leah Jones)

You may remember when school administrators at Eden Prairie High School used Facebook photos to suspend more than 100 students from sports and other extracurricular activities as a result of candid partying photos as the sole evidence.

Then it happened in Woodbury.

Yes, it was idiotic and naive of students to put these photos on a social networking portal, but there’s a fine line between online privacy (only user friends should have been able to view photos) and the extent of a school’s reach after the bell rings.

But here’s a well-duh example of naïveté I can get behind:

Maybe promoting an underage drinking party online wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Cottage Grove police busted a house party early Sunday after receiving two anonymous tips that it had been announced on Facebook, a popular social networking site.

Police found 60 to 75 people at the party and cited 21 adults and 12 juveniles for underage drinking….

Authorities were alerted midweek that a Facebook group that calls itself the “Alleygators Dance Club-Teen Night” had sent an invitation about a Cottage Grove house party. The group has nearly 900 members, and most of its officers — or “promoters” — are identified as students from various high schools across the Twin Cities area.

And here’s where the your local police are using their investigative smarts to track down these vile underage drinking criminals.

The invitation was “just explaining that they were having this party, and it gave vague directions,” McCarthy said. Anyone interested in attending the party was supposed to text a point person or reply via Facebook.

Because police didn’t have a specific address, officers had to search for the party. About 2 a.m., they found it in the 1100 block of Lockridge Avenue South.

For the record, I’ll argue all day long that school administrators don’t have a right to follow kids’ lives 24/7 via Facebook, but when you do something illegal, I do believe the police have a right to uphold the law.

Bonus quote: “Party attendees initially wouldn’t let police inside the home. Some hid, while one person stood at the window and flipped his middle finger.”

Geniuses, I tell ya.

Minneapolis Saint Paul students are the star in a new study that shows American teenagers who skip breakfast are more likely to be obese than those who eat a morning meal.My mom is going to be super psyched that she’s been right about the importance of breakfast all of these years.

Apparently 2,216 students in Minneapolis and St. Paul middle and high schools completed diet and weight surveys from 1998 to 1999 and again from 2003 and 2004.According to a Bloomberg report:

“At first, girls were more likely than boys to skip breakfast. During the five years, the researchers found an almost 17 percent decrease in the number of boys who ate breakfast. At the end of the study, 18.9 percent of the boys missed the meal versus 13.8 percent of the girls… Teens that skipped the meal were five pounds heavier on average, ate less healthy during the day and exercised less frequently than those who ate breakfast, researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics. The study is the largest to follow the breakfast habits of teens over years and track whether they’ve become obese, researchers said.”

Of course, it doesn’t specify **what** these teens were eating, since Pop-Tarts and Mountain Dew eaten before 9 a.m. is technically breakfast.  Tasty!

Nine organizations received a total of $200,000. (pdf) The Minneapolis Foundation administers the Digital Inclusion Fund.

As a reminder:

The purpose of the fund is to bridge the digital divide in Minneapolis by providing financial resources to organizations that work with low-income people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants and refugees, displaced workers, seniors and other new users of technology.

Awardees are listed below.

(via Peter Fleck, who is on the Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Board and helped decide who to award the grants to)
(more…)