I stopped at the infamous Vince Lombardi Service Area on the Jersey Turnpike (click the link for an awesome article on the history of the Turnpike, including how, in 1967, the “famous summit between Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin and President (Lyndon) Johnson…was almost held at the Howard Johnson at the Grover Cleveland service area in Woodbridge”) while driving back to D.C. While there, I noticed that, beside selling these rad green-on-white NJTP T-shirts — which Urban Outfitters should totally stock, and whose camp value was so high I had to get one myself — there was a whole section of New York tourist memorabilia.

Now, I don’t imagine that many people stop at Vince Lomabardi on their way out of the city and think, “Hey, what I really need is a commemorative decorative plate.” So maybe there’s been a slow turnover in their city trinkets deparment, and they’re working off of old stock. But virtually all the New York memorabilia on sale had pictures of the Twin Towers on them, as if 2001 had never happened.

It was a little weird.

Most trinket shops in the city have Sept. 11 commemorative doo-dads showing the towers, but very, very few of them just sell the unrevised pre-9/11 items. But that’s Jersey for you.

Not much has changed:

A 17-year-old girl was fatally shot early yesterday at a nightclub crowded with teenagers near the U Street corridor, a rapidly transforming area of the District that has drawn a sometimes volatile mix of young people who flock to the bars and restaurants at night.

The shooting of Taleshia Ford set off a rapid response from city officials. Acting Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier ordered that the club be closed temporarily. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) called for more aggressive policing of underage clubs. And D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) said he would introduce legislation barring minors from nightclubs where alcohol is served.

Ford, a senior at Booker T. Washington Public Charter School, had begged her reluctant mother to let her go with older family members to Smarta/Broadway, also known as Club 1919, at 1919 Ninth St. NW. Although it caters to teenagers, Smarta/Broadway has a license to serve alcohol to adults. On Friday night, a go-go band was playing the rhythmic, percussive dance music that defines the D.C.-based genre.

Ford, a bystander, was shot when a gun brought to the club by another patron went off during a scuffle with a bouncer.

Licencing teen dance clubs to serve alcohol to adults is a terrible idea, especially in this city, since the only adults you’re going to find at a teen dance club are either looking for chicken or looking for trouble. The whole point of having age-based drinking laws is to divide adult spaces from those visited by juveniles.

There ought to be some kind of neighborhood-wide evaluation of the local night clubs, since they’ve been such venues for violence in recent years, before something like this happens again at the next badly run, poorly monitored facility:

Ford’s death marks the fourth killing associated with dance clubs in the U Street area in less than three years. The previous incidents eventually led to clubs being closed permanently. City officials closed Between Friends after a stabbing in 2004, Kili’s Kafe after a patron was shot in 2005 and Club U after a stabbing in 2005. All had operated as restaurants by day and dance clubs after hours.

Via Soulstrut, via a friend, the very scary Faces of Meth from the Oregon Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. This is why we can no longer buy allergy medications without being monitored by the government.

Today’s New York Times report that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rebuked by the country’s even more powerful leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his push for an Iranian nuclear program just adds to the complex picture of Iran that Americans not in thrall to axis-of-evil rhetoric are starting to get of that country and how its politics are far from monolithic. There was also this fascinating piece recently in The Forward about the Jews of Tehran, and their refusal to leave Iran:

A campaign to convince Iran’s 25,000 Jews to flee the country has stalled, with most opting to stay in their native homeland despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and anti-Israeli speeches.

In recent months, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Israeli officials and some American Jewish communal leaders have urged Iranian Jews to leave. But so far, despite generally being allowed to travel to Israel and emigrate abroad, Iranian Jews have stayed put.

According to the statistics compiled by HIAS, 152 out of 25,000 Jews left Iran between October 2005 and September 2006 — down from 297 during the same period the previous year, and 183 the year before. Sources said that the majority of those who have left in recent years cited economic and family reasons as their main incentive for leaving, rather than political concerns….

HIAS declined to comment on its efforts to promote emigration, but some observers claim that the main reason Iranian Jews have chosen to stay is that they are, for the most part, free to practice their faith. “Iranian Jews have a comfortable Jewish life,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born Middle East analyst now living in Israel.

At a time when Tehran and Jerusalem trade barbs and threats, the 25,000 Jews of Tehran, Shiraz and Yazd attend packed synagogues, send their children to Jewish schools, buy their meat in kosher butchers and are even exempt from prohibitions on alcohol. This modus vivendi is the result of a compact between the leadership of the Jewish community and the Iranian authorities, whereby Jews are permitted to practice their faith as a community on the condition that they remain out of politics and do not speak out in favor of Israel.

Some Iranian expatriates dispute the assertion that Jews are staying because conditions are good. Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Los Angeles-based Iranian American Jewish Federation, asserted that the majority of Jews remaining in Iran are elderly and only speak Persian, and are naturally less inclined to emigrate….

The situation for Jews improved in the years after the revolution, and Judaism is one of the recognized minority religions in Iran. Jews, Zoroastrians and Christians have rights enshrined in the Islamic constitution, and they each elect their own member of parliament and are entitled to worship freely but not to proselytize….

Some criticism of the regime has proved to be unfounded. A few months ago, several conservative media outlets in Canada and the United States published reports claiming that the Iranian government had approved legislation requiring religious minorities to wear a distinctive sign, invoking charged memories from World War II. The reports turned out to be wrong.

“Some people are trying to use the climate created by Ahmadinejad and the nuke issue,” said William Beeman, an Iran expert and professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. “But Iranian Jews have a fairly vibrant communal life, and they can even criticize the regime within the constraints of the Islamic regime.”…

For all his inflammatory rhetoric, Ahmadinejad has been careful not to single out Iran’s Jews, and his office even donated money to Tehran’s Jewish hospital.

“The government goes to extra lengths to differentiate between the government of Israel, with whom they have fundamental issues, and the Jewish people, especially Iranian Jews,” said Amir Cyrus Razzaghi, a Tehran-based commentator who is not Jewish. “There is a genuine interest to keep the Jewish community in Iran to demonstrate to the world that the government is anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish. This is especially important to a government that strives to be not only the leader in the Islamic world, but also a key regional and global player.”…

The result is the only Jewish community living under an avowedly Islamic regime. In Tehran, where the majority of the community lives, there are six kosher butchers and about 30 synagogues….

Iranian Jews travel to and from Israel via a third country with the full knowledge of the authorities. Both sides had kept quiet about such journeys, but recently acknowledged them.

“It might seem strange,” said Javedanfar, the Israel-based expert, “but they can travel to Israel and other places, come back [to Iran] and have a comfortable Jewish life, as long as they keep quiet about Israel.”

Given everything the Jews went through last century, the fact that Iranian Jews are chosing to stay in Iran has to be taken as a sign of something.

Apparently the public is allowed to buy names for storms in Germany:

The storm, called Kyrill by German meteorologists, generated pelting rain in Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands….

“This is the worst storm since 2002,” said Burkhard Kirsch, a meteorologist at the German Weather Service, noting that a gust of 123 m.p.h. had been recorded in the mountains of central Germany.

The name Kyrill stems from a German practice of naming weather systems. Anyone may name one, for a fee. Naming a high-pressure system costs $385, while low-pressure systems, which are more common, go for $256. Three siblings paid to name this system as a 65th birthday gift for their father, not knowing that it would grow into a fierce storm.

“We hope ourselves that we’ll get out of it lightly,” Rumen Genow, one of the three, told a northern German newspaper on Thursday.

Given the amount of razzing Katrina vanden Heuvel got after Hurricane Katrina, it’s a good thing we don’t have open bidding to name weather systems in the U.S. Can you imagine the political controversies people would try to create?

Reuters reports:

Parts of the North Atlantic are setting winter heat records, allowing species ranging from swordfish to jellyfish to thrive beyond their normal ranges in a shift linked by many scientists to global warming.

Temperatures in Arctic waters off northern Europe at the tail end of the Gulf Stream, for example, are about 6.7 Celsius (44.06 Fahrenheit), the highest for early January since records began in the 1930s, according to Norway’s Institute of Marine Research….

Off New York this week, rescuers guided eight dolphins into open water after they became stranded in a shallow cove, apparently because unusually warm waters meant fish on which they feed were staying closer to the coast.

A type of Black Sea jellyfish seems to have become established off Scandinavia, perhaps flushed out of the ballast tanks of visiting ships and now able to survive because of less chilly waters in winter.

Norway’s Institute of Marine Research said 18 tropical swordfish had been seen off Norway since 1967 and sightings were becoming more frequent. Four were spotted in 2006 alone, including a 22 kg (49 lb) specimen caught on November 14….

In recent years, salmon have been seen swimming north of the Bering Straits between Russia and Alaska, and jellyfish plagued Mediterranean beaches in 2006. Over-fishing and destruction of habitats is also disrupting marine life.

Many scientists link high global air and water temperatures in recent months to an El Nino weather event warming the eastern Pacific, and to global warming stoked by burning fossil fuels.