I’m not sure whether to laugh, raise an eyebrow, or nod warily at this.

Recently, Wal-Mart has been rolling out plans for what it calls a sustainability index — a measure of how green the products it sells really are. It is asking each of its suppliers, an enormous list of businesses, 15 questions about the life of their products from manufacturing through disposal: questions about greenhouse gas emissions, social responsibility, waste reduction initiatives and water use.

…Wal-Mart has already created a Sustainability Index Consortium, which will include environmental groups and other nonprofits, universities and businesses. The consortium will create the criteria for the index, and will share with Wal-Mart the task of building a product-by-product database measuring the environmental impact of each product’s life cycle.

Oh god!  Guilt-free consumerism is almost here!  Thank you skillful marketing, thank you!

Regator and InDecatur and are celebrating their respective 1st and 2nd birthdays tonight with a blowout at The Grange from 6p-9p.

As Dave has stated on InDecatur, there’s no sponsor, so there’s no open bar.  BUT if you come equipped with lots of InDecatur knowledge you might get yourself a free drink.   Personally, I’m banking on “goal weight” being one of the questions.

Happy birthday virtual Decatur brethren and sistren!

Marvel at my willingness to jump on half-baked data to prove a nagging hunch I had a few months back.

In the midst of our many scintillating conversations about school enrollment and the general population’s assumption that the student-age population will continue to skyrocket until school-age children are living on their own in huge bungalow communes, I brought up birth rate.

And this morning, I was vindicated.  As reported in the New York Times, baby-making hit a 50 year high in 2007, but for the first time in a decade, the birth rate fell in 2008, especially in the second half of the year.

Why?  For the same reason you’re cutting back on eating out, new car buying, and jumping blindly into adjustable-rate mortgages.  Babies are expensive.

Now I’m not arguing that Decatur’s student population won’t continue to rise in the coming years.  It’s certainly possible that new families with kids could still outpace declining birth rates of the current population.  But don’t be surprised if I reemerge in 2014 to say I told ya so!

Whoever thought filming tax credits could provide so much joy?

The Decatur Minute, with it’s close proximity to all Decatur permits, gives word of Past Life filming around the intersection of Ponce and North Candler today.

Also, Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva is returning to film around the Square next Monday.

In the midst of a dog walk last night, we saw the aftermath of this accident at the eastern intersection of Ponce and Commerce.

A crushed car on the sidewalk.  Decatur and DeKalb police and fire on the scene.  Police tape across the intersection and smoke rising from the center of the action.  I’m now kicking myself for not taking a blurry pic with my cameraphone.

Though I couldn’t get much info from anyone at the scene, the rumor mill is full of info this morning.  Robbie tweets in response to Andisheh that the crash is the result of a police chase and that one suspect fled on foot.

Lynne writes in with a report from an eyewitness that reasserts that the driver fled.

A work colleague saw a terrible car wreck early evening on Thursday at the corner of Commerce and E. Ponce (near Decatur First Methodist Church). A black SUV sped through a red light heading west on Ponce, and crashed into the line of waiting cars going east. One woman had to be cut out of her car. The driver of the vehicle that ran the light got out of his car and ran away on foot. Anyone know anything more?

I’m trying to get confirmation from Decatur PD on all of this.  Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Police Chief Booker provided details in the comments section.