Here at the Free Press’s Department of Etiquette and Common Decency, we have been receiving a great deal of inquiries with respect to the propriety of male musicians performing onstage while wearing shorts. It is not entirely clear as to whether these queries are being propounded by the genuinely confused, anticipatory contrarians, or outraged audience members seeking something definitive in writing. Regardless, it is apparent that the wearing of shorts on stage is becoming increasingly frequent, and that the issue needs to be conclusively addressed.

  As a general matter, the answer is that shorts (or cut-offs, umbros, jams, jorts, hot pants, bermudas, footer-bags etc.) should not be worn by any performer who is or might be in view of an audience and is not AC/DC’s Angus Young. Most sources agree on an exception for certain members of thrash metal bands, and there appears to be some support in instances of life-threatening heat (although this is far from universal acceptance). Beyond these carefully circumscribed exceptions, however, there is uniform consensus that wearing shorts on stage makes you look like a fucking idiot.

By the latest count, the nuclear agreement with Iran has enough support in the U.S. Senate to survive. This, even more than stopping the missile strikes on Syria in 2013, may be as close as we come to public recognition of the prevention of a war (something that happens quite a bit but generally goes unrecognized and for which there are no national holidays). Here, for what they’re worth, are 10 teachings for this teachable moment.

On Monday morning the protesters outside the the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio were fewer in number than in June, but no less determined to prevent a consumer bailout of FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse nuclear plant and Sammis coal-fired plant. After three postponements, the PUCO was holding the first evidentiary hearing on FirstEnergy's request for a rate hike to support the aging power plants.

"We are on the brink of a major breakthrough," said Harvey Wasserman, editor of nukefree.org and history instructor at Capital University. "We have a nuclear plant and a coal-fired plant that this utility is begging, tin cup in hand, to keep operating. About a decade ago, we heard FirstEnergy and others say that they wanted competition in the electric power business. Now they are begging for more money to keep these reactors open, because they can't compete in the market.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is proud to announce in their 2014 Annual Report that their already record-low recidivism rate has dropped again and is now 27.1 percent and continues to be well below the national average of 49.7 percent. Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after he/she has either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior.

  The report attributes Ohio’s reduction in recidivism to the use of evidence-based programs such as reintegration units within the prisons, programs to connect offenders with families and resources while incarcerated, community corrections programs and their continued work with local communities and reentry coalitions.

  As of January 11, 2014, Ohio’s prison population was 50,604 and these prisoners are “housed” in the state's 28 prisons which were built to house a total of 38,579 inmates. That’s 12,025 inmates too many. Some have served their “reasonable” time and now await the decision of the Ohio Parole Board to release them. One of these inmates is Norman Whiteside.

The Columbus Free Press has been no great fan of city council president Andrew Ginther’s undistinguished career in the public sector; his face graced our 2013 Halloween cover, and we invited readers to use it as their Halloween mask as Ginther seems to be something that he was not – that he was a Republican masquerading as a Democrat, in our article “Gintherstein – A Democrat with Republican Chops,” http://columbusfreepress.com/article/gintherstein-democrat-republican-chops)”. And now it looks like the wheels are coming off his planned coronation as the city’s Mayor, and we feel a little nostalgic about that. I mean – if we don’t have Andy Ginther around, who in the hell will we have to expose or lampoon anymore? His tenure has provided such rich material for alternative press as he has turned Columbus into a crony-supporting corrupt political backwater of a town, while he stumbles from one abuse of public trust to the next.