DCentric

Good morning, DCentric readers! Here are your fresh links:

Robbers kill D.C. shopkeeper in front of wife and son “A man who identified himself as Patel’s nephew said that Patel had been in the back of the store when the robbers arrived and accosted his wife and son, ordering them down on the floor. One of the thieves shot Patel as he emerged from a storage room, the nephew said. “My uncle had no idea the robbery was happening,” said the nephew, who declined to identify himself for fear of retribution. “He walked out, and the guy fired at him and ran off.” (The Washington Post)

Looking Back: Frelinghuysen University “Let me tell you about a university, in the Shaw neighborhood, that was founded to serve African Americans. Except, I’m not talking about Howard University, I’m talking about Frelinghuysen University. Black educators Jesse and Rosetta Lawson founded Frelinghuysen University (what a mouthful), originally located at 2011 Vermont Avenue, and then located at 1800 Vermont Avenue, in 1906 to provide social services, religious training, and educational programs for black working-class adults. The university is named after New Jersey Senator Frederick Frelinghuysen who had worked to promote civil rights during Reconstruction.” (DCist)

Boom in Washington Leaves Gaping Income Gaps “The changes have aggravated the widespread disparities in a city that is both the American seat of power and home to some of its poorest neighborhoods. Among the nation’s 100 most populous cities, Washington ranked seventh in income inequality in 2009, according to the Census Bureau…Over all, the city’s white population is up by a quarter, while its black population declined by 7 percent. It was second only to Atlanta in terms of increase in the share of its white population over the last decade.” (The New York Times)

D.C. mayor-elect weighs in on McNabb benching “…when he was asked by a writer for The Washington Times if he had heard about starting Redskins’ quarterback Donovan McNabb being benched, the D.C. native and former football player became animated. “I just heard, for [backup quarterback] Rex Grossman. He was the baloney in the sandwich the last time,” Mr. Gray said. “That just strikes me as strange.” (Washington Times)

District residents worry new Congress will interfere with D.C. laws, programs “In Southeast Washington, single mother Ravenia Boyd-Gordon was elated when her two children were awarded scholarships last year to help pay for private-school tuition. But the D.C. vouchers were quickly rescinded by the Obama administration because of uncertainty over funding from Congress. “I was in a jam,” Boyd-Gordon said. “When you have children, you have to plan ahead. It set me back at least a year in planning a direction for their education.” (The Washington Post)

A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation “It doesn’t matter if the place is Manhattan or Manhattan, Kan.: the urban patterns remain the same. West isn’t shy about describing the magnitude of this accomplishment. “What we found are the constants that describe every city,” he says. “I can take these laws and make precise predictions about the number of violent crimes and the surface area of roads in a city in Japan with 200,000 people. I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.” (The New York Times)