Fairfax County and Fairfax City, Virginia, affluent suburbs of Washington, DC, boast some of the highest life expectancies in the nation, ranking 17th out of 3,150 localities. A baby born in Fairfax in 1999 can expect to see 80.89 years. Fairfax’s neighbor to the north, Montgomery County, Maryland, ties for the nationwide lead with 81.31 years. Just a short drive south on Interstate 95, however, and the picture grows bleak. The city of Richmond, about 100 miles south, ranks 3,131st, only 19 slots from the bottom. A baby born in Richmond will, on average, live a decade less, with 71.05 years expected. Drive another 25 miles south, and life expectacy falls even further, to 69.55–ranking 9th from the bottom. For males, the picture grows bleaker. A baby boy in Petersburg can expect to live to see 65.84 years–a baby boy in Fairfax will see 79.22, a gap of roughly 13 years and 8 months.

What’s more remarkable about these numbers, depressing as they are for some of the state, is how little progress jurisdictions at the bottom of the rankings have made in the last few decades, even as higher-ranked jurisdictions have seen steady increases in lifespan. Life expectancy in Petersburg since 1979 has been stagnant–in fact, it has fallen a few weeks from 69.67 years. Meanwhile in that timeframe, Fairfax County gained 4.15 years.

At the very least, a modern, industrialized nation should make its citizens live longer–but it doesn’t always work out that way.

[PLOS]

Everyone hates drunk drivers, we know that. However, I couldn’t help but to chuckle at this item in the Fairfax Times.

During the late evening of April 12 and early morning of April 13, officers from the West Springfield District Station conducted a sobriety checkpoint, issuing four traffic summonses for the 893 drivers pulled over.

Which is great–893 drivers were stopped at a roadblock with no probable cause, resulting in four whole summonses (that’s batting .004). Of the four, none were actual DUIs. You’d think we’d have found a better way to find drunk drivers (such as actually looking for them) instead of plunking down a roadblock and hoping one will swing your way.

It’s as if I decided to go hunting, but instead of looking around for game, I decided I’d point my shotgun a bit to my right, close my eyes, and start firing. While a minor inconvenience for the 889 drivers who ended up without tickets, don’t we have better things to do with our police than send them on random sobriety checkpoints? Don’t we have better things to do than pulling over every car in sight without any regard to probable cause*?

*Yes I realize it has been ruled constitutional. That doesn’t mean that random sobriety checkpoints are a good idea.

Is anyone really baffled as to why young voters don’t turn out? Might be because other voters told them not to. Jim Joseph, chairman of the Williamsburg “Neighborhood Council”, eviscerated the newly-minted voters at William and Mary for having the temerity to field one candidate for the May 6 City Council elections because they were “using the vote not a civic duty but as a weapon.” Keep in mind, up until this year, students had their voter registrations outright rejected by the voter registrar. In other words:

You whippersnappers are never satisfied! We gave you the right to vote already, we didn’t say that you were supposed to use it! Spoiled brats! Back in my day, young voters were seen and not heard! This is what happens when you stop spanking your children and…moral decay…bork bork bork…kids these days…get off my lawn!

And so forth.

You see, last time I checked, voting as a weapon beats, say, armed insurrections. It’s terribly ironic that the voters of Williamsburg–a city swimming up to its neck in our colonial history–can’t see why we fought for the right to vote in the first place. It was a means to either validate the status quo or incite change without turning to weaponry.

Sheesh!