The day after last December's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School we wrote that:
"The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., will surely spur pollsters to ask Americans again about guns, gun ownership, gun laws and the Second Amendment.
"If recent experience is a good guide, public opinion may not shift too much."
A small herd of European bison will soon be released in Germany's most densely populated state, the first time in nearly three centuries that these bison — known as wisents — will roam freely in Western Europe.
The project is the brainchild of Prince Richard of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. He owns more than 30,000 acres, much of it covered in Norwegian spruce and beech trees in North Rhine-Westphalia.
For the 78-year-old logging magnate, the planned April release of the bull, five cows and two calves will fulfill a decade-old dream.
But the aristocrat's neighbors aren't all thrilled about his plan to release wisents, which have been living in an enclosure on his property for three years. They are slightly taller than their American cousins and weigh up to a ton. Questions remain about who will foot the bill if the European bison damage property or injure someone.
"We were skeptical because we weren't given enough information," says Helmut Dreisbach, a cattle farmer and vice chairman of the Farmers' Association of Siegen-Wittgenstein. "How will the animals react? Will they stay in a particular area or will they move onto working farmland?"
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When fortunes rise in the housing industry — as they currently are — it tends to lift sales for other businesses, too. Home construction, sales and prices are all improving. And according to many analysts, the market is gaining steam.
For nearly two decades, Scott Gillis has owned his own moving company, Great Scott Moving in Hyattsville, Md. Moving high season is just around the corner, which means Gillis is hiring.
"I'm doing it right now, I'm calling up all my old employees. Basically, I'm doing as much as possible 'cause I'm anticipating we're having a good summer," Gillis says.
That's in contrast to several years ago, when Great Scott moved more people into rental apartments than houses — as its sales and staff plunged by a third. Gillis says things have improved. But they're still very hard to predict.
'The Mood Is Much Better'
"I think the mood is much better than it was five years ago. I think we are heading in a better way," he says. "But nobody knows the forecast."
The federal spending cuts known as the sequester don't help. And there are pockets of housing weakness. Still, overriding all that, he says, is a sense that things are fundamentally better and improving.
"When you start seeing larger offices going to smaller offices, it's an indicator that everybody's cutting back. Now I see offices getting larger. And that's usually a good indicator," Gillis says.
Part of what's driving the urge to move is that people are spending again.
"This housing market recovery is a tremendous boost to the economy," says Lawrence Yun, a chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.
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Technology Upends Another Industry: Homebuilding
I was out of the house, as it happens, for most of the first half of yesterday's Louisville-Duke game, and when I got home and looked at Twitter, before I turned on the TV, there was a huge stack of stuff to read, and the first thing that caught my attention about the game was this:
The amazing thing is that the other Louisville players are freaking out, but Ware's disturbingly calm.
— Daniel Fienberg (@d_fienberg) March 31, 2013