Your Morning Sift

Good morning.

I got some extra sleep this morning so the Sift is running a bit late as a result. The good news is that I'm well-rested. I know. You don't care. But hey, check out the Weekend Widget that has risen to the top of the right sidebar and see what's happening this weekend. Here's your morning Sift....

A- The South Florida Beer Blog has the scoop on what beer will be served at today's Executive Beer Fest at the White House.

B- Did you know that all raindrops start out their lives as hail? Thanks to The South Florida Watershed Journal you do now.

C- Deucers has a bunch of photos from their recent raft trip down the Colorado.

D- Superbee finds relief from South Florida's impersonal lifestyle in a certain set of Publix checkout lines.

That three minutes I spend in line is sometimes one of the highlights of my day - I usually spend 11 hours arguing with other people, and preparing to argue with other people, so to have an interaction with someone where no one wants anything, there are no ulterior motives, and there's no acrimony - it's just nice.

It's also nice to make someone laugh while they're doing what could probably be a pretty boring job.

I sort of took it at face value in the beginning while speaking to the Checkout ladies (if they make the slightest effort to talk to me, I'll engage them) that everyone brightened at their "How's your day been?" opening line, but apparently not.

Alls I can say is, whenever I get to Angel's checkout line (we're on a first-name basis, now) she chastises me and tells me it's been too long since she's seen me.

E- South Florida Theatre Scene has his wrap up for the week.

F- According to The Eclectic Chapbook, when cigarette taxes go up smokers are forced to cut back spending in other parts of their lives in order to afford their blessed cigs...and that creates problems for local economies.

When they jacked up the price of cigarettes up North, people continued to buy cigarettes, but they no longer bought newspapers.

The circulation of the local metro-regional newspaper plummeted, and, in due course, they lost their newspaper. There are now entire communities up there which have gone dark - they get no news coverage whatsoever, as if they don't even exit.

Who benefits from this? Corrupt politicians benefit from the reduced or eliminated scrutiny. And the pharmaceutical companies hope to benefit by selling their patented versions of nicotine substitutes.

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