Hot off the Press: Slow week edition

I was bad this week and didn't read much news. But here's what I have.

Many veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have developed health problems they blame on huge burn pits near bases, where the US military burns trash, which has included medical waste, plastic, hazardous chemicals, and possibly amputated limbs: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-burn-pits18-2010feb18,0,1455676.story. Nasty.

“Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women.": http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19evict.html.

A UCI professor weighs in on the "Irvine 11," a group of Muslim students who disrupted a campus speech by Michael Oren, the ambassador to Israel: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oew-levine23-2010feb23,0,7951829.story.

Michael Gartner, an Iowa Regent, calls the tuition increases for the next academic year a mistake: http://www.dmcityview.com/2010/02/11/columns/guest.html.

By the universities’ reckoning, the total cost for an Iowa resident to attend undergraduate school at the University of Iowa next year will be $19,815. At Iowa State, the figure will be $19,079.70. At UNI, $18,608. Those figures assume only slight increases in room and board and travel and books, and they’re probably on the low side. The median household income in Iowa in 2008 was $49,007, according to the United States Census Bureau, and it was far less in counties in southern and northeastern Iowa. Put another way, it now takes about half the pre-tax household income of an average Iowa family to send a son or daughter to a state university.

Basically, there's no way I could have worked my way through college now.