by Mary-Beth McLaughlin
Toledo Blade Business WriterA New York City consumer advocacy group wants the Federal Reserve Board to deny the latest acquisition request by Sky Financial Group Inc., alleging the Bowling Green company does not make enough loans to minorities or issues them at higher rates than those for whites.
Despite the fact that I work for Sky (and am a caucasian to boot), they turned me down for a car loan in 2003 and a mortgage in 2004. Guess I’m in good company, anyway.
I was worried about Mom and Gary for a while there, being that they live in Texas and were potentially in the path of Hurrican Rita, albeit several hundred miles inland. After all, a crazy-ass thunderstorm can be just as bad as an all-out hurricane. After checking weather.com this morning, though, I figured they’d be OK:
I added Fort Worth on the map, for all of us non-Texans who have no effing clue where anything is down there.
So, Mom, Gary, I’m glad y’all’re OK. Sorry I haven’t called to check on you, but I figured I’d better not call during a thunderstorm. 😉
A lot has happened in the world in the past week or so, and I’ve been pretty slow on the uptake. Strangely enough, a lot of the newsworthy items lately have been ones on which I have an opinion—which, honestly, is kind of strange. Sure, the ABC Evening News at my house can seem like MST3K, even though I watch it alone… but most of it isn’t worth blogging about, IMO.
So, in this marathon blog post, I plan to address Terri Schiavo, Pope John Paul II, and Peter Jennings. Perhaps some other things as they occur to me. Feel free to ignore this post if you’re sick of hearing about any or all of these topics; I won’t know any different, so I won’t be offended.
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Holy shit. I never had a teacher go off like this in high school, thank goodness. When Mr. Mantel wants you to stand up for the National Anthem, you’re damn well gonna stand up, or you’ll get your chair pulled out from underneath you.
Teacher freaks out about National Anthem, with Video
Edit: If you’d like to download the video, there’s a torrent here. Apparently all the sites hosting the video are starting to get bogged down. (Go figure.)
I found this idea fascinating: a prominent American geneticist, Dr. Hamer, apparently identified a particular gene that may predispose humans to be religious or spiritual.
Column found in kottke.org.
I’ve included the full article for posterity:
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