Edgewood, New Mexico — 30 miles east of Albuquerque — has a skittling problem. Yes. So to combat this epidemic of pill-popping, they participated in the national drug take-back program, according to their weekly paper, The Independent. You can just go down to the pharmacy and give them your pills! I have no idea why someone would do this. At least gun amnesty programs get scary illegal things out of your house. But pill amnesty programs just take away your fun pills! I don’t really get it?

Elsewhere in the Independent, there are jobs available for sheep herders. You live in “an isolated camp/bunkhouse,” are on-call 24-hours a day, and you get paid $750 a month. Just three months experience required!

Bill Simmons’ new sports and culture shop Grantland.com (Redsmith.com was already taken) is officially in “previews,” so you can read this long and worthy piece by Awl pal Katie Baker. It is about the New York Knicks, to be sure, but like everything written by Awl pal Katie Baker, it is about so much more. Like sports. Print and save!

As part of the deal that brought about the present British governing coalition, the Conservatives agreed to the demands of the Liberal Democrats — Knifecrime Island’s perennial third or fourth party, depending on which iteration of their composition you are scoring them by — to hold a referendum on electoral reform. Under the current system, known as “first past the post,” the candidate who receives the most votes in his or her constituency wins the seat. This is problematic to some, who see it as unfair in cases where candidates who are, for example, on the left of the spectrum, receive more votes in total than the candidate on the right, but still lose the seat because the candidate of the right received an individual plurality. This contentious referendum asks whether Britain should switch to Alternative Voting (actually, a modified version of alternative voting), in which voters select candidates in order of preference, and ballots are rearranged until one candidate has a total majority based on the number of ballots reflecting — oh, who are we kidding, only the most dedicated psephologist could make any sense of this. It’s much easier to understand when it’s clarified by kitties. Enjoy.

by Richard Morgan

• authentic

• virus-free

• attainable

• exclusive

• compatible

• popular

• English-speaking

• endorsed

• cool

• original

• smart

• easy

• intense

• fun

• budget-conscious

• fancy

• urban

• sexy

• thin

• black

• pink (but really white)

Richard Morgan has a first-generation iPhone jailbroken for T-Mobile. It is silver and scruffy with a text-message stuttering problem.

Here’s a story about a nice lady who goes to the farmer’s market and buys some fresh produce. (Warning: Not really safe for work! Also sort of terrifying and dark!)

Sounds like swell times: “During the recent gathering of the American Copy Editors Society, a lot of ‘hyphen’ jokes made the rounds.” [Related: Destroy all hyphens]

This is not quite what I expected to see in response to the death of Osama bin Laden. I guess it makes sense? It must have been weird for them to have tried to understand 9/11 in 5th grade. Good thing we don’t have a draft. I guess.

“The internet has moved at a breathless pace since the world found out about Osama Bin Laden’s death late last night, with experts from all fields being consulted to lend fresh perspective. Well, we think we’ve found a new area of specialty: pornstars! To show that Bin Laden’s death has captured just about everyone’s attention, we’ve rounded up some Twitter reactions from people who have sex for a living. Admittedly, out of the fifty or so accounts we scoped out, the pornstars below are the only ones who chose to address this momentous occasion on Twitter.”

“The season in which you are born may affect everything from your eyesight to your eating habits and overall health later in life, according to a blossoming field of research. The latest study shows that spring babies are more likely to suffer from anorexia nervosa as adults…. Previous studies have found similar links between spring births and various disorders, including schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis and even Type 1 diabetes. It’s possible these diseases are linked to some environmental influence during gestation or the first few months of life, though researchers aren’t sure what that could be.” It’s not just spring, either: Fall babies die earlier, summer babies are more likely to be nearsighted, and winter babies have mental health disorders. So there’s something terrible for all of us. I like to refer to the condition as “being human.”

New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg explains his current thinking regarding drugs and society, on his most recent radio show. (He was answering a question about medical marijuana; interesting that he immediately transitioned into legalization.) Here’s a transcript of his thoughts! “The argument is that the only ways you’re ever going to end the drug trades is legalize drugs and take away the profit motive and that to legalize — the corruption funds enormous dislocation of society. Mexico, you know, thousands and tens of thousands of people have been killed in the wars of the government trying to clamp down on the drug dealers. There’s no easy answer to any of these things. Nobody really — there are places where they legalized drugs. And then whether it destroyed society or didn’t is up to debate, again.” In the light of New York City’s 50,000 misdemeanor marijuana arrests each year, I would hope for a way more thoughtful and coherent position on this matter.