Archive of entries posted on 20th April 2012

The First Detective Story

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From The Writer’s Almanac:

“It was on (April 20,) 1841 that the first ‘detective story’ was published: The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe.  

“In the story, C. August Dupin reads about the murder of a mother and daughter in a Paris street. The police are baffled and Dupin decides to offer his services. He finds a hair at the crime scene that he realizes does not belong to a human and, eventually, he pieces together enough evidence to solve the case.

“The story is narrated not by Dupin but by his slightly less competent sidekick — just as [....]

April 20 is a National “Day of Silence”

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Friday April 20 is a national “Day of Silence” sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

For 12 years, the group has sponsored this event, which asks college, high school and middle school students to take a day-long vow of silence to peaceably “protest the discrimination and harassment – in effect, silencing – experienced” by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.

The event “ exploits anti-bullying sentiment to silence people who oppose homosexuality based on morality,” counters the Capitol Resource Institute, a Sacramento-based organization that says it defends “conservative moral beliefs.”

Parents should keep their children at home on April 20, the resource institute [....]

A Constitutional Right to Capitalism?

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By Nathan Tucker “[This case] reveals an ugly truth:  America’s cowboy capitalism was long ago disarmed by a democratic process increasingly dominated by powerful groups with economic interests antithetical to competitors and consumers.  And the courts, from which the victims of burdensome regulation sought protection, have been negotiating the terms of surrender since the 1930s.” [...]