Lest we forget. University of Illinois entomologist Gilbert Waldbauer in his new book, What Good Are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life: “If all the insects, or even just some critically important ones, were to disappear from the earth–if there were none to pollinate plants, serve as food for other animals, dispose of dead organisms, and do other ecologically essential tasks–virtually all of the terrestrial ecosystems…would unravel. There is no way to predict what would replace them. But there is no doubt that without insects the world would be radically different and far less friendly to us humans, assuming that we could survive at all.”
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True professionalism. “At press time, the Coalition of Illinois Counseling Associations was drafting a bill to remove the requirement that [school] counselors hold a teaching certificate,” writes Maureen Kelleher in Catalyst Chicago (March). “Some research indicates that school counselors with a year of experience and no teaching certificate perform just as well or slightly better than counselors who have teaching credentials, says Scott Wickman, president-elect of the Illinois School Counselors Association.”
Stop me before I gamble again. In the case of Mark Merrill v. Trump Indiana, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled in late February that the casino can’t be sued for letting a compulsive gambler in, even if the gambler has placed him- or herself on the casino’s exclusion list. “Trump is required by [Indiana] regulation to maintain an exclusion log and to add to that list individuals who request to be put on it….If Trump violates regulations [by letting someone on the list gamble], it must answer to the [state] gaming commission” and be fined or lose its license. But Merrill, who admits he’s a compulsive gambler, can’t sue for damages. Evidently neither can the Florida banks he robbed in order to pay his gambling debts.
