For those of you who are keeping score....

Today, a judge in the State of Maryland rejected a ban on same-sex unions, ruling that defining marriage as only between a man and a woman unconstitutional. You can listen to a story on this by following this link to the story on NPR. If you go to the link you'll see that there are currently eight states that have some sort of same-sex marriage law or case in that states court system. In my lifetime, I have been a resident of five states in the US. I found it an interesting fact that all five of those states are in the list of eight that are at the forefront of the same-sex marriage issue. Washington State, New York, Maryland, New Jersey and California, the five that I have lived and paid taxes in, are joined by Iowa, Massachusetts and Connecticut. To bring Statistics into the discussion......correlation? Yes! Causation? Questionable at best.

...and not just because the Seahawks are winning

When I decided to write about my recent self-observation, I had to temper myself from my initial desire to say that A sucked. Instead I made the effort to try and explain why B is more satisfying to me in comparison to A. Enough of the mumbo-jumbo. I'm referring to the fact that the first newspaper website I check in the morning is not the San Francisco Chronicle. In fact the Chronicle is on average the fifth new site I go to in a day, sometimes not until the evening. Remember, I'm not going to say that the Chronicle's website sucks. I'm going to try and point out why the sites of the other papers are more informative, at least for me.

Who's up first? Well, surprisingly, and not surprisingly, it has become The Seattle Times. The Times lists one line summaries of what appears to be ALL stories from all of it's sections. Since I grew up in Seattle, I am drawn in my stories that reference things, people and places I have known since childhood which gives them a sense a soap opera quality. To use the easiest example when it is mentioned that the last playoff victory for the Seattle Seahawks was back in 1984, no longer is this true by the way, it has personal resonance for me since I remember that playoff game when I was a freshman in high school. Another thing that I find really useful about the Seattle Times page is that on the major stories, they list all the related stories, graphs, charts, pictures right under them, but most importantly, they tell me whether or not it's a .pdf or simple link. More information is good.

Then I usually quickly go to the NPR site because I like their national political correspondents, such as Ken Rudin and Cokie Roberts. Plus it gives me a chance to think about Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and Peter Sagel, sigh. But the NPR site allows me to multitask by listening to a story while I'm reading another.

The New York Times comes next. I particularly like the Education and Real Estate sections of the Times, but I also find the this venerable paper finds angles on stories that other media outlets don't. Things always seem more interesting when written about in the Times.

Then it is off to The Washington Post. The reason isn't because of news but because their online Crossword works well and doesn't require anything beyond a simple registration to the paper's website. I know there are probably many other crosswords online, but I'm a creature of habit.

Then I'll hit the Chronicle, when I have the time, to read about local stuff.