"When I moved back to New York, the home-brew movement was gathering steam. But I didn’t quite get it. Amazing craft beers were everywhere. Why bother making beer when you could simply buy something that was just as good, and probably better? In Egypt home-brewing had been a necessity. In America it seemed superfluous. But then I got a job in Georgia, which at the time did not permit the sale of beer with alcohol volumes over 6 percent. It was time to brew again."
— Steve Fennessy, Editor’s Note: On Georgia’s Beer Renaissance
"Mayor Kasim Reed isn’t one to play games. But during a recent tour of Thrust Interactive’s 4,500-square-foot Inman Park office, he tested the company’s just-released iPad title “Boomblastica”—a retro-style shooting game with Japanese anime graphics. His host that day, Jesse Lindsley, thirty-eight, represents a new breed of Atlanta CEO: an aspiring digital entertainment mogul, clocking eighty-hour weeks between rounds of Ping-Pong and Xbox."
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Felicia Feaster, Georgia’s Got Game
Video games, anyone?
"Should people who don’t play the lottery, or don’t play as much or as often, benefit from HOPE? Perhaps not, says the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, an Atlanta-based think tank which published a report this month showing that residents in Georgia counties with the highest incomes get the most HOPE funding, far outpacing what they contribute to lottery sales. According to the GBPI report — “HOPE for Whom? For Some it Doesn’t Pay to Play the Lottery” — the average Georgian spends $500 annually on lottery tickets. Poorer people spent a lot more — $831 each in the state’s poorest counties compared to $419 in the wealthiest counties. “I ran the numbers a couple times to make sure that was right,” says Cedric Johnson, GBPI policy analyst and the study’s author. “But there was no question. People in poorer counties were literally spending twice as much as those in the more affluent counties."
— Rebecca Burns, If You Don’t Play the Lottery, Does Your Kid Deserve HOPE? - Five Points
"Despite my chronic inability to say anything nice about him, he posted a YouTube video yesterday thanking me personally for supporting his campaign."
— Andisheh Nouraee, Newt Gingrich Personally Thanks Me for My Support - Five Points
"How will uncertainty about the program influence enrollment over the next few years? Families make decisions about college looking at the cost over four years. If the scholarship program changes year to year, and if qualification standards are changed and applied retroactively, it becomes harder to make a four-year commitment to a Georgia school."
— Rebecca Burns, Five Points: Tuition Hikes and HOPE on the Rocks
