A slow day in the office for me means a busy day of reading for all of you.  Here are the links to prep you for this Christmas weekend:

1) School District Housing for California Teachers – If you’ve followed the real estate prices at all over the past few years, you know that there’s no more expensive housing market in the country than tech-haven Silicon Valley.  I know a whole lot of teachers, which means that I also know that their salaries wouldn’t go very far in a region where the median housing price is above $700,000.  So, the Santa Clara School District has started buying apartment buildings and offering units to their teachers at below-market rates.  This isn’t the product of left coast naivete – the economic justification is that the costs saved from reducing the massive turnover of the district’s teacher workforce caused by the high fixed costs of housing make the below-market apartment offers a sound investment.

2) Lost Star Melts Down After Drunk Driving Arrest – I appreciate the irony of the actress who plays a former LAPD officer on Lost getting belligerent with the Hawaii Five-O.

3) Passion of the Spaghetti Monster – Following up on Wednesday’s link, Matt sent in a great Wired interview with the creator of the Spaghetti Monster.

4) City News Bureau Closing Down (audio story from NPR) – Marshall Field’s isn’t the only Chicago institution going away after this holiday season.  The Chicago Tribune announced earlier this month that it was closing down the legendary City News Bureau, where young and hungry reporters have been trained to hunt for stories on the street since 1890.  Any institution that introduced writers like Mike Royko, Kurt Vonnegut, and Seymour Hersh to the world had to be doing something right.