Babies, Bigotry and 9/11

· "Strange Fruit" by Abel Meeropol and performed by Billie Holiday. "Chilling protest against lynching. Maybe the greatest protest song of all time." (Meeropol, a New York City schoolteacher, later adopted the children of executed spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.)

· "Lift Every Voice and Sing" lyrics by James Weldon Johnson; music by J. Rosamond Johnson. These accomplished brothers wrote what is "known as the 'Black National Anthem' -- the antidote to 'America, the Beautiful.' "

Striking Out

Here's more evidence that, when cities play ball with professional sports teams, they end up losing big.

Economists Bruce K. Johnson of Centre College in Kentucky, Michael J. Mondello of Florida State University and John C. Whitehead of Appalachian State University found the city of Jacksonville paid far more to attract a National Football League franchise to the city than residents say the team is worth to them.

These researchers surveyed local residents and found taxpayers were willing to spend about $25 million in taxes to keep the team in town -- only about a fifth of the $121 million in subsidies that the city actually spent to renovate the local stadium for the team.

That makes Jacksonville the third city in a row, after Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, where researchers have found that city fathers overpaid for their pro teams, they concluded.

Will the District make it 0-for-4?

Who Would Have Thought? Birthday Blues, Alphabet Bias and Gangsta Wannabes

" The 'Birthday Blues' in a Sample of Major League Baseball Players' Suicides" by David Lester in Perceptual and Motor Skills, Vol. 101, No. 2. An examination of the 74 major league baseball players who took their own lives found they were more likely to do so within a month of their birthdays than would be predicted by chance alone.

"Admission to Selective Schools, Alphabetically" by Stepan Jurajda and Daniel Munich. CEPR Discussion Paper. Prague researchers find that qualified but not exceptional students with last names that begin with the letters W, X, Y or Z are less likely to be admitted to selective Czech universities than those whose last names begin with A, B, or C, all other factors being equal.

"Damn, It Feels Good to be a Gangsta: the Social Organization of the Illicit Drug Trade Servicing a Private College Campus" by A. Rafik Mohamed and Erik Fritsvold in Deviant Behavior, Vol. 27, No. 1. University of San Diego researchers profile the privileged and predominantly white drug dealers who sell dope to privileged and predominantly white college students at a privileged and predominantly white university in Southern California.