New statewide test scores released this week paint a picture of, at best, stagnation in student achievement.

This is a big day for Tacoma kids – and for the community. It’s dedication day for the new $8.5 million Donald G. Topping Regional HOPE Center, home of the Henry T. Schatz Branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound.

What a mess in Morton, where school’s back in session this week and the community is already in an uproar over a problem teacher.

It’s safe to exhale now, Pierce County. Chambers Bay seems to have passed its first big test with flying colors.

‘Mad Men” just won its third Emmy for “outstanding drama.” If there were a gold statue for “best nostalgic portrayal,” the AMC series would have walked off with that one, too.

WASHINGTON — Various figures denote vexing social problems. They include 10,000 (the number of new baby boomers eligible for Social Security and Medicare every day), 10.2 percent (what the unemployment rate would be if 1.2 million discouraged workers had not recently stopped looking for jobs), $9.9 trillion (the Government Accountability Office calculation of the gap between the expected revenues and outlays for state and local governments in the next 50 years), $76.4 trillion (the GAO’s similar estimate of the federal government’s 75-year fiscal shortfall).

On a typical Tacoma Friday night at 10:45, before my neighborhood supermarket closed its doors, I found myself face to face with corporate greed.

News Tribune writer Rosemary Ponnekanti wrote (“Design Dilemma,” 8-22) that building design review is not usually a sexy topic. That may be due to the Marriott Residence Inn design depicted in the article. It is ugly and uninspiring.

When I was in the military in the 1970s, I heard two white soldiers talking on the rifle range. One soldier asked the other how he learned to shoot so well.

Forget the “ground zero mosque,” Michelle Obama’s Spanish holiday and even the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. When future historians look back to the summer of 2010, the event they are most likely to focus on is China’s emergence as the world’s second-largest economy.

Eighteen years ago, I sat in a courtroom facing my assailant, who was about to plead not guilty to attempted rape with intent to kill. At the last minute, he decided to plead guilty and take his chances on a lenient sentencing.