One of the more memorable photos of the 35W bridge collapse showed an accessible van pressed against the guardrail. The Strib ran a profile of the van’s owner, Marcelo Ordaz-Cruz, over the weekend. He’ll be competing in next week’s Twin Cities Marathon. He comes across as a decent guy, not to mention extremely fortunate (he also survived a gunshot wound).

When I’m speaking–especially to larger audiences–I tend to sprinkle my speech with ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’. I’ve always regarded it as a bad habit and I try to suppress it as much as possible. My use of the ventilator requires me to pause every few seconds and there’s probably some element of my subconscious that feels the need to fill in the pauses with these verbal commas so that I don’t lose the attention of my listeners. But now there’s a study offering evidence that these “disfluences” help listeners focus their attention on the speaker. That may be, but I still find them irritating when other people use them in abundance and I need to reduce them in my own speech. People may find my pauses awkward, but I like to think that it adds a little suspense to words that are otherwise woefully banal.

I’m such a predictable hipster. I get crushes on all the indie music divas. Shirley Mansun. Jenny Lewis. And last night at First Avenue, Emily Haines of Metric had me wrapped around her little finger. She and her bandmates put on a solid, vibrant show that highlighted Haines’ sweet vocals and the foursome’s effortless musical synergy. My only disappointment was that Haines didn’t do any of material from her beautiful solo albums. But this was Metric’s gig and there are no piano solos in a Metric song.

I judge a lot of concerts by how much I regret being shortchanged sleep the next morning. When I woke up today, I felt no such thing.

I’ve spent the last hour exploring the public beta of Amazon’s digital music store. One of big selling points of the store is that its tracks are recorded at 256 kbps (the iTunes standard is 128 kbps) and they are DRM-free, which means they can be played on any music device without restrictions. The few songs I downloaded sound crisp and vibrant, but it’s difficult to distinguish any difference in quality on my mid-range computer speakers. The interface isn’t as polished and the selection isn’t as extensive as what you’ll find on iTunes, but I suspect that will change in time. Amazon’s entry into the music download business should offer some competition to Apple and force it to drop the higher prices for its DRM-free songs. In the best of all possible worlds, DRM will become a thing of the past and these stores will compete on price and selection alone.

Bush, at this point, is the Republicans’ worst ally. On no issue is this more evident than in his sustained threat to veto the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Care Program. SCHIP is due to expire at the end of this month and it seems likely that the president and Congress are headed towards a showdown. As this report from the policy research group Mathematica illustrates, SCHIP has been instrumental in boosting access to health care for disadvantaged children. The administration recognizes the program’s unmitigated success, but it is that success that has inspired the GOP’s opposition. SCHIP’s success undermines the conservative rhetoric that public health care programs are a red menace that will turn Americans into communist layabouts. A veto would be deadly to GOP electoral hopes in 2008 and I really can’t understand the president’s strategy. His efforts to blame the impasse on Democrats are weak and ill-advised. He’s playing to a base that is quickly becoming marginalized from mainstream American politics.

Bush continues to follow the Rove playbook, but Republican legislators in suburban districts know that the game is changing. And denying kids health care is not going to make these lawmakers terribly popular in their districts.