I always thought the “representation” part would come before the “no taxation” part on DC’s license plate, but the 2008 Sales Tax Holiday, which kicks off at midnight tonight and runs until the 10th, suggests otherwise.

All clothes, shoes, accessories, and school supplies under $100 per item are eligible for exemption from the District’s 5.75% sales tax. The exemption is well-timed to give locals a break on back-to-school shopping, but there’s no reason you can’t take advantage of it, too.

Local gossip sites can’t get enough of these “hottest fill-in-the-blank” contests. The Hill just published its annual rundown of the 50 Most Beautiful People on Capitol Hill, and incoming first-year law student Laura Swett made the list.

The 23 year-old Republican works for Georgetown law alum Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who tried to stir up trouble last spring about a Saudi donation to Georgetown that was vetted three years ago (the Editorial Board told him off). Since Swett rolls with someone who ignores available information, here’s an out-of-context quote from her Hill profile:

“I use my office as guinea pigs,” she said.

Shocking. At least she’s single. DCeiver has more coverage of who’s sexy, who doesn’t merit a second look, and who’s delousing.

If love really is a battlefield, then the guy in this week’s Date Lab went thermonuclear in his questionnaire. He manages to be both funny and insightful, saying that the TV show of his dating life would be “like “Temptation Island” but without the dignity and restraint.”

Meanwhile, she lists Pilates as one of her desert island DVDs and thinks that one of her brag-worthy traits is that “she can provide you with the Democratic agenda without even looking at talking points.” Aside from not being that unusual in DC, is that really the best she can do?

She must be better in person, or he must be considerably worse, because the date is a hit. Dinner goes well, and they end up chilling by the Capitol fountain, and maybe more, as the Post is all too eager to point out with the article’s subhead (”Is it a euphemism when he says they ‘hung out’ in her car?”)

This is irritating because:

• Duh, it is
• They’re on a date! There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m not sure why the DL team is being so middle school about it
• They totally gave away the ending

Rating: 3. This is a solid DL, but not spectacular. The dude wasn’t nearly as funny in the interviews as he was in the questionnaire, and she’s a bore, but everyone needs someone.

Chances of Success: 4. The follow-up at the end of the article says they went on a second date, but the real proof? He’s already defending her on the Post’s comment board.

The items that show up in your Facebook news feed fall into one of three categories: interesting (your ex’s relationship status changes), sort of interesting (your housemate posts new photos), and not at all interesting (someone you knew in high school leaves a group.) But even the most mundane entry is still good because it’s not work.

Until now. Blackboard Sync is a new application that will link announcements, grades, discussion boards, and other Blackboard features with Facebook:

You can find out if you have a new assignment, grade, new forum posts, etc., without having to leave Facebook. Blackboard Sync also cross-references your courses’ Rosters with Facebook to make it easier to connect with your classmates through Facebook.

Northwestern is signing on, but we can only hope that UIS’ documented ineptitude will for once work to our advantage and keep Blackboard out of your downtime.

Via Uwire.

 Metro map with proposed silver and purple lines

University of Maryland-College Park students have formed a new campus organization in hopes of drumming up support for the Purple Line, a proposed Metro line that would connect the Red, Green, and Orange Lines and keep suburbanites from ever having to enter the dirty District:

Student government president Jonathan S. Sachs, said the “Terps for the Purple Line” coalition is “one of the broadest we’ve seen.” It includes the campus NAACP chapter, Black Student Union, Latino Student Union, Hispanic Heritage Coalition, Graduate Student Government and the campus chapter of the Maryland Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).

It’s not surprising that such a diverse array of student groups has signed on (who wouldn’t want to cut down on travel time?), but it’s a strange cause for short-sighted college students in general, since the Maryland Transit Administration fact sheet (PDF) says that the construction would begin at the absolute earliest in 2012 (between friends: 2020.)

Metro map by Eric Fidler

After seeing Stuff White People Like’s Christian Lander read from his new book, I’m still not sold on his writing, but I have to admit that the guy is a little funnier and more chill than I would have expected. Reading aloud from his gifted children post, he interrupted himself to say, “Just so you know, I picked Reseda, California because of the Karate Kid. That’s where the Karate Kid was from. But his girlfriend was from Encino, she was like rich or something.”

Lander responded to the criticism that his blog is actually about yuppies, rather than white people, by saying that while in grad school he noticed that “These people weren’t just in urban centers. They were in college towns, and they were hating everyone around them.”

But being a transplanted yuppie who ends up in the Midwest for school doesn’t make you not a yuppie (not to be confused with a coastie).

The book contains new material, so I felt a little scammed that he read all old posts: gifted children, awareness, having two last names, knowing what’s best for poor people, and unpaid internships (which got one of the evening’s biggest laughs) Another, more surprising big laugh was his admission that SWPL got slammed by The New Republic. I’m sure this left a lot of Timbuktu-carrying, Nalgene-swilling people in the room confused about which side to root for.

After four sexual assaults in the last two weeks in the neighborhood around American University, DCist reports that “Officials from all universities in the area, including Georgetown, George Washington, UDC and American, have been briefed by police to put their students on alert.”

If that’s the case, why hasn’t Georgetown’s DPS sent out an alert? Students should be finding about crime risks from their university police, not from city-wide blogs. The sexual assaults weren’t at Georgetown, but if MPD thinks there is a reason to believe Georgetown students should be alerted, we should know.

Public Safety’s reticence is especially embarrassing after the University was chastised for being slow to tell students about 2007’s hate crime. Georgetown spokesperson Julie Green Bataille hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
Update: Spokesperson Julie Green Bataille responds via email:

Georgetown was notified of the incidents as part of regular conversations with MPD but was not asked to notify our community related to these incidents. Consistent with our public safety alert process if there was reason to believe there was an ongoing threat to members of our community we would issue a notification. In this case there are no current plans to do so.

We’re looking deeper into this.

This Wednesday at Politics and Prose, Stuff White People Like blogger Christian Lander will read aloud from the book his blog inspired.

If you’re planning on going, you should first resolve whether you like Stuff White People Like earnestly or ironically. My housemates and I got into a conversation last weekend about whether there’s actually any difference between watching a show “ironically” and just watching it. (The show in question was The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which rocks.)

In the blogosphere, Stuff White People Like has the same issues. You probably hate it, because a) It’s about yuppies, not white people and b) It’s self-congratulatory and not all that funny. But you probably read it anyway, so what’s the difference between actually liking it and not?

Christian Lander reads aloud from Stuff White People Like (the book version) Wednesday night at 7 at Politics and Prose (5015 Connecticut Ave NW) — the kind of bookstore that “white people” love. Van Ness/UDC Metro on the Red Line or take the L2 north from Dupont Circle.

Two cute, Asian, athletic 25 year-olds meet for dinner at Morton’s. Things could get sexy fast, but when they first spot each other in the restaurant, she says he’s hot “for an Asian guy”. After the initial impressions, the date itself goes fine, though the follow-up fizzles because he’s ditching town for grad school next month. Not the hoped for sexiness, but no harm done, right?

Not so fast. Commenters at the Post went nuts over the to-date-or-not-to-date-an-Asian situation. Some reamed the Daters out for their preconceived biases:

“For an Asian guy”??? That was simply foul - perhaps one of the most demeaning things I’ve read in Date Lab (and I’ve read every single one).

While others took on dating biases Freud-style:

They seem like two really nice people. However, I just don’t understand the phenomena [sic] of Asians being attracted to other races. Is it a self-loathing thing?

Or took the all-out inappropriate slur-dropping tack:

I think we got two twinkies in a pack!

The debacle raises an interesting question about whether or not the matchmakers should take fundamental differences like ethnicity, race, or religion into consideration in setting up these dates.

It would be overly PC, not to mention naive, for the DL team to pretend that ethnicity doesn’t play any role in who people choose to date. But it’s just as dumb to assume that two people will hit it off just because they have that in common and not much else, and these two didn’t seem like that promising a pair. I mean, he likes City of God and she likes Pirates of the Caribbean.

Rating: 1. The whole drama just made this white girl kind of uncomfortable.

Chances of Success: 0. If he was sticking around DC, they might have had a chance, but as it stands now, no way.

Earlier this year, we  touted the virtues of local coffee shop Murky Coffee. Not everyone seems to share our admiration, though: the Post reports that blogger Jeff Simmermon went on an online rampage against the shop after he was told that his order (three shots of espresso on ice) violated company policy.

Owner Nicholas Cho didn’t take Simmermon’s trash talk lying down; instead, he posted an equally angry response on the Murky Coffee site, defending the ice rule with the notorious “It’s cool because we’re saints” argument:

When it comes to my shop, engaging in the transaction that makes us customer and barista, or customer and “server,” means that we’ve engaged in a transaction, and we have an obligation: to give you the best product we can, with customer service that’s equal to the respect and courtesy that any two people should (hopefully) expect from one another.

As a former coffee shop employee myself, I’m confused by the logistics of the debate. An iced Americano is okay, but a triple shot over ice isn’t? An Americano is just espresso shots with water, so it’s unclear why diluting the drink makes it all right. I would ask, but tangling with these two looks like a dangerous game.

Flickr photo from user Aaron Landry used under a Creative Commons license