What a week! The Gators swept the NCAA softball championship, a first for UF. Congratulations to the kick-ass ladies of Gator softball: We’re incredibly proud.
With that, we give you this week’s
Darts & Laurels
Florida’s not nicknamed the Gunshine State for nothing, and this week, Stephen Colbert spotlighted Big Pine Key man Doug Varrieur in “The Colbert Report”’s “Difference Makers,” which celebrates “regular Americans who are out there making the world a better-ish place.” Varrieur is despised by his neighbors because he uses his backyard, which is completely open and looks over the canal in Big Pine with the highest boat and kayak traffic, as a shooting range. But it’s totally safe, he assured Colbert — his two elderly parents are his lookouts, and he parks his two trucks (which are full of fuel) next to the range as a shield in case he misses.
“Nation, I love every state in America equally,” he said. “I could never pick a favorite. But, gun to my head, I’d choose Florida — the state where I’d most likely have a gun to my head.”
So this week, we’re giving Colbert a thanks-for-the-shout-out LAUREL.
Oh boy. This week, Gov. Rick Scott signed the largest state budget ever on Monday, dubbing it the “It’s Your Money Tax Cut Budget.” Unlike past years, the Tampa Bay Times wrote in an editorial, there was no fanfare — he didn’t host a budget-signing ceremony.
“The silence leaves it for anyone to guess why Scott, who says he wants to increase Florida’s STEM economy, vetoed $750,000 for a proven program to teach algebra to middle school students started by SRI International in Pinellas County,” the editorial board wrote.
Which isn’t to say the budget is bad: He authorized a ton of funding for education, child protection and welfare, cancer research and Everglades restoration. But Florida still spends less per pupil than former Gov. Charlie Crist’s administration. We’re tossing a we-know-you’re-pandering-to-voters-and-being-generally-shady DART at Scott’s budget.
But hey, not all news that comes out of Florida is gun-, drug- or Rick Scott-related. Sometimes it’s about terrifying great white sharks.
Scientists have been following Katharine, a young 14.5-foot shark, since 2013 when they tagged her with a satellite tracking device in order to better understand shark migration patterns. So far, they’ve found that her route comes eerily close to heavily populated areas, and she apparently likes to surface often.
“Remember, they’ve always been doing that. We just know it for the first time,” Chris Fischer, founder of a nonprofit group that researches sharks, said.
Well, we can’t argue with that. We’re awarding an in-the-name-of-scientific-discovering LAUREL to Katharine the great white shark for being such an agreeable subject. Now if only she can help us figure out why Universal Studios thought three sequels to “Jaws” was a good idea.
[A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 6/5/2014 under the headline "Darts & Laurels"]
