Dec 16, 2024

What word would you use to describe 2024? Merriam-Webster named their Word of the Year, and it's not an extremely unifying word.

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The Limestone County School Board has voted on an academic calendar that would put students in classrooms July 31 next summer, reports AL.com's Rebecca Griesbach.

No traditional public-school system started that early this year, although one charter school did.

In Limestone County, teachers will return to work July 25, classes begin July 31, and classes end May 21, 2026.

Public-school return dates have been trending earlier for years, and keep in mind that Limestone will be starting only two days earlier than it did this year. But for many there's a jarring mental leap to think of school in July.

(And by "many" I mean "at least me at ages 6-17.")

Limestone Schools have expanded the winter break a bit to balance the earlier start. The board also approved an Aug. 6 start date for Fall 2026.

An argument between two men on a walking trail led to Birmingham's record-tying 148th homicide of 2024, reports AL.com's Carol Robinson.

That comes with more than two weeks left in the year, so this appears to be, at least by some measures, Birmingham's worst year for homicide on record.

The only other year the city reached 148 homicides was 1933. And while one might guess the population is higher than it was then, that's not the case. Birmingham's population is actually around 70,000 fewer than it was at the time, making the current homicide rate considerably higher than it was in '33.

Among the homicides for this year, 11 have been ruled justifiable, one was an officer-involved shooting, and two resulted from this year's deaths of victims who were shot before this year.

The Birmingham-based, nationally syndicated Rick and Bubba Show came to a close on Friday after 31 years on the radio, reports AL.com's Greg Garrison.

They finished on their annual "Year Ender" Christmas-themed show, this year's being billed as "The Big Show Ender." The show has annually taken off the last half of December and filled programming time with "best-of" segments until they returned in early January.

That's also planned for their programming slot over the next few weeks until Rick Burgess launches "The Rick Burgess Show," which is expected to bring along some of the staff that appeared on-air on The Rick & Bubba Show.

Bubba, the other half of the duo, is Bill Bussey, who's now the assistant athletics director for broadcasting at Jacksonville State University.

The show got its start back in the early 90s when Bubba was a station engineer and went on Rick's radio show to do a feature they called "Good Ol' Boy Theatre," during which Bubba would read Shakespeare as, well, you might imagine a Bubba would read Shakespeare.

The folks at Merriam-Webster have released their Word of the Year. And it's "polarization," reports The Associated Press.

Before you suspect that they picked the word "polarization" because they don't like who won a certain election, know that Merriam-Webster says it tracks data from searches and uses of words.

And "polarization" totally tracks. Drop any opinion into the comments of a big social-media account's post and see what happens. It can be on anything. Whether Beyonce's song is country. How much screen time Taylor Swift gets during the ballgame. The authenticity of Australian breakdancing in the Olympics. Whether Tim Walz was right when he called Republican leaders "weird" or whether that was a big ol' takes-one-to-know-one moment.

Even concerning the major American sports -- our old way of escaping religion/politics anxiety -- people don'ttalk sports anymore as much as they argue about who has the best sports opinion.

Let's make our collective New Year's resolution to make the 2025 Word of the Year "grown-up."

Here are the answers and results from Friday's quiz:

This week it's been 105 years since the Boll Weevil Monument was dedicated in this city.

Enterprise (CORRECT) 88.8%

Selma 4.7%

Scottsboro 3.2%

Abbeville 3.2%

A recent study involving Auburn University determined that from April 2023 to April 2024 in Alabama there was a 40.5% decline in:

Managed bee colonies (CORRECT) 80.0%

Newborn bald eagles 14.1%

Youth football participation 5.3%

Testosterone levels among men who listen to yacht rock 0.6%

What organization is building a new State House that it'll lease to the Legislature?

Retirement Systems of Alabama (CORRECT) 81.8%

Alabama Power 9.4%

Alabama Education Association 8.2%

Wild Turkey Federation 0.6%

According to NASA's adjusted timetable, when do they plan to once again land humans on the moon?

2027 (CORRECT) 40.9%

2030 35.9%

2034 21.8%

Before Elon Musk buys the moon outright 1.5%

After the Crimson Tide failed to make the College Football Playoff, Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne suggested that his program might consider this in the future.

Scheduling weaker nonconference opponents (CORRECT) 73.8%

Leaving the SEC 15.6%

Running up the score on opponents 5.9%

Putting more emotional energy into basketball and gymnastics and chilling out on football 4.7%

In 1936, Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees of Shorter.

In 1938, civil-right protester Jimmie Lee Jackson of Marion. He was shot and killed by a state trooper, prompting the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965.

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