First of August Weekend Links

Beautiful weather in the middle of the Dog Days gives you a chance to check out these pieces on the front porch:

A Portrait of Priests and Nuns, Watching the Decline of Catholic Culture - Wired.  As my faith has been slipping away, stories like this have less pull on me than in the recent past.  I can't decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it seems kind of sad.

 A punter on Ray Guy finally making the Hall of Fame - SBNation.  First punter ever inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

36 Hours in Green Bay, Wis. - New York Times.  If you squeeze baseball into this sentence, I think this describes most of what I think of when I consider vacation: "Perhaps not surprisingly, given the ready access to fine dairy, fish, beer and produce, eating and drinking figure prominently among pastimes."

Reanimating Bertha, a Mechanical Behemoth Slumbering Under Seattle - New York Times

The Man Who Delayed D-Day - Nautilus

UCLA flood from water line rupture is a red flag for L.A. infrastructure - LA Times.  Get used to this:  "Officials have long known that hundreds of miles of city water lines have deteriorated and need replacement, with many past the century mark. But in recent years, L.A.'s elected leaders have been unwilling to hike water rates enough to fix them more rapidly. As it stands, the city-owned Department of Water and Power is on track to replace main water lines only once every 300 years....Councilman Paul Koretz said he had been informed that replacing the lines more quickly — every 100 years instead of every 300 — would cost roughly $4 billion. It would take a decade to accomplish, and require a 4% water rate increase every year, he said." We have more infrastructure than we can afford, and that will hurt us badly going forward.

The Great Forgetting: Where Do Childrens' Earliest Memories Go? - Aeon

 How California Could Power Itself Using Nothing but Renewables - Pacific Standard

Beyond Energy Efficiency - Slate

A Republican Victory By a Nose, Not a Wave - The Upshot.  It's still way too early to tell, but it sure feels like the Republicans have come really close to jumping the shark.  They are so far out there that this may be their last hurrah.  They won a lot of races in 2010, and took maximum advantage when it came to attacking government workers and gerrymandering state legislatures and Congress.  If they can't win big this year, they will have to change or die.

Florida legislators have two weeks to redraw the state's gerrymandered districts.  Here's how that might play out - Wonkblog.  Geez, compared to district 5, district 10 looks pretty reasonable.