City Pages

On the book trail with author Neil Gaiman:

“Gaiman owes a lot to his fans. Once shrugged off as merely goth kids who liked comics, they’re now as diverse as the characters in his stories.

“Gaiman spends a lot of time on Twitter forging relationships, albeit fleeting ones, with his nearly 1.9 million fans. He also regularly posts on his blog, answers questions on his Tumblr, and updates Facebook.

“‘I just tweeted at him,’ longtime fan Tania Richter says, showing off a photo from CONvergence of Gaiman’s poster with googly eyes pasted on. ‘I’m hoping this’ll get a retweet.'”

“Monsanto’s specialty is killing stuff.” A brief, outraged history of how the biotech giant took control of the world’s food supply, from pesticides to genetically modified crops. The promise was that GM crops would mean cheaper food around the world, but patents allowed the company to muscle out competitors, fend of regulators and steer the public away from questions about the environmental consequences:

“The first crack appeared in 1970, when Congress empowered the USDA to grant exclusive marketing rights to novel strains, with two exceptions: Farmers could replant the seeds if they chose, and patented varieties had to be provided to researchers.

“But that wasn’t enough. Corporations wanted more control, and they got it with a dramatic, landmark Supreme Court decision in 1980, which allowed the patenting of living organisms. The decision was intended to increase research and innovation. But it had the opposite effect, encouraging market concentration.”

[GLAAD’s 2013 “Outstanding Newspaper Article” Winner] How Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe became “football’s most aggressive straight ally to the gay rights movement”:

“Kluwe says he doesn’t see the issue of gay marriage as political. His philosophy on the subject goes back to the Golden Rule, and he believes an amendment that would constitutionally criminalize same-sex marriage amounts to institutionalized segregation.

“‘You see all these arguments against gay marriage, and they all kind of logically boil down to: “It makes me feel icky,”‘ says Kluwe. ‘That’s not a valid logical argument! Like, tell me that gay people getting married is going to cause someone to steal your garage door opener, or it’s going to cause your dog to poop in your front yard. I can argue against that!'”

More than 100 police officers from 18 different agencies accessed the driver’s license records of Rasmusson, a former officer. She’s now suing for invasion of privacy:

“Rasmusson’s lawsuit, which will be filed in the coming weeks, alleges that not only was her privacy compromised, but that her story is merely a symptom of a larger culture of data abuse by police. Her attorneys charge that while police are trained to use the driver’s license database for official purposes only, in reality it’s more like a Facebook for cops.

“The agencies involved have maintained that this is an isolated incident. But one officer, who would not use his name for fear of further discipline, says that the practice is commonplace.

“‘I get Anne’s side of it,’ he says. ‘But every single cop in the state has done this. Chiefs on down.'”

Ruettimann had visited Hereaux at a time when he knew his friend would be alone. In the modest but cozy living room, Ruettimann handed Hereaux a heavy brown accordion file. He wrote a name down on a scrap of paper, the name of a local journalist.

“If anything happens to me,” Ruettimann said, “give this to the reporter.”

After Ruettimann’s death, Hereaux took the file down off his desk. Inside was a thick stack of loose-leaf documents, a manila folder stuffed with letters, and a catalog-size clasp envelope labeled “Reports.”

Written in black permanent marker in the margin of the envelope was the reporter’s name: mine.

To fight back against the warring gangs and violent offenders, the tribe has revived an ancient form of punishment: banishment. Legally called “exclusion,” it forbids the offender from entering the reservation’s trust land for at least five years.

When it was used centuries ago, banishment was a thinly veiled death sentence. Without the rest of the tribe’s support, an exiled member rarely survived for long in the wilderness.

But modern banishment means something entirely different.

“Where are they banishing them to?” asks Clyde Bellecourt, an Ojibwe civil rights leader. “They just come down to Minneapolis.”

Then came the question from hell out of Louisiana: “What are the qualities of a good leader?” One student wrote, “Martin Luther King Jr. was a good leader.” With artfulness far beyond the student’s age, the essay delved into King’s history with the civil rights movement, pointing out the key moments that had shown his leadership. There was just one problem: It didn’t fit the rubric. The rubric liked a longer essay, with multiple sentences lauding key qualities of leadership such as “honesty” and “inspires people.” This essay was incredibly concise, but got its point across. Nevertheless, the rubric said it was a 2. Puthoff knew it was a 2.

With no monitor, the original version of Oregon Trail was played by answering prompts that printed out on a roll of paper. At 10 characters per second, the teletype spat out, “How much do you want to spend on your oxen team?” or, “Do you want to eat (1) poorly (2) moderately or (3) well?” Students typed in the numerical responses, then the program chugged through a few basic formulas and spat out the next prompt along with a status update. “Bad illness—medicine used,” it might say. “Do you want to (1) hunt or (2) continue?”