Your Self-Reflexive Mayor

Looks innocent now, but get a couple more examples* and you’ll have a real story:

Mayor Bloomberg got some free publicity on the state-created English Regents exam this month, scoring a positive mention in a reading-comprehension passage.

“New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spearheaded an ambitious plan, unveiled in 2002, to ring Manhattan with recreational, multi-use paths and greenways to make the entire waterfront accessible to walkers and cyclists,” gushed paragraph 14 of the mandatory passage, read by about 150,000 high school sophomores and juniors across the state this month.

After students — all too young to vote for Bloomberg, who is running for a third term — read the passage, an excerpt from a September 2006 Environmental Defense Fund article, they had to answer nine multiple-choice questions and write an essay.

*Not sure if this counts or not.

Success Has A Thousand Fathers, Each Of Whom You’d Just As Soon Avoid On Father’s Day

Scary thought of the day: What if instead of mayoral control, the big New York City test score gains are due to George Bush’s No Child Left Behind, as studies seem to indicate?

Democratic candidate William Thompson can opt to pursue this line of argument as need be but maybe it’s safer at this point to rehabilitate Bush than it is to prop up Bloomberg’s juggernautical campaign . . .

[Eduwonk and Education Week links via.]

Summer Is Murder Around Here

No, literally! And there is data:

Still, the prime time for murder is clear: summertime. Indeed, it is close to a constant, one hammered home painfully from June to September across the decades. And the breakdown of deadly brutality can get even more specific. September Saturdays around 10 p.m. were the most likely moments for a murder in the city.

The summer spike in killings is just one of several findings unearthed in an analysis by The New York Times of multiyear homicide trends. The information — detailing homicides during the years 2003 to 2008 — was compiled mainly from open-records requests with the New York Police Department, and a searchable database of details on homicides in the city during those years is available online for readers to explore at nytimes.com/nyregion.

. . .

Summer is when people get together. More specifically, casual drinkers and drug users are more likely to go to bars or parties on weekends and evenings, as opposed to a Tuesday morning. These people in the social mix, flooding the city’s streets and neighborhood bars, feed the peak times for murder, experts say.

And the trend occurs in other cities, in places like Chicago, Boston and Newark, according to criminologists.

Some of the same trends are on display around Christmastime and are believed to be behind the slight increases in murder that occur then, criminologists say.

Greenmarkets Are Great!

And then you remember where you are:

Organizers say the Greenmarket, held every Thursday, will further chip away at the terminal’s dingy, dirty reputation from yesteryear.

“This market is the next chapter in the terminal’s evolution,” said Susan Bass Levin, deputy director of the Port Authority, acknowledging it was once “a place you would hesitate to go.”

While signs posted on brick pillars still warn that “no person shall spit, urinate or defecate” on terminal property, some of the 210,000 people who pass through every day were delighted to see produce from upstate farms in midtown.

. . .

“I personally wouldn’t eat there,” said Ronald Goodie, 63, of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “With all the dirt coming in and out of this place, no way, not for me. Why would they pick this place of all places to do that?”

Al Jean-Babziste, 38, also of Brooklyn, agreed, saying, “You touch the door handles and the booths, and it’s all so dirty, and then you sell fruit? I don’t know about that.”

Location Scout: Port Authority.

Governmental Dysfunction Affects Men Of All Ages, But You Should Seek Immediate Medical Attention If You Have A Stalemate Lasting Longer Than Ten Days

And in other news:

State senators made a bold move Thursday to end their paralyzing stalemate: They packed up and went home.

After yet another fruitless negotiating session — which almost came to blows — the battling pols got out of Dodge to enjoy their long weekend.

But not before making sure they got paid.

. . .

A brief session Thursday to try to work out a power-sharing deal almost ended in fisticuffs.

Turncoat Democrat Sen. Pedro Espada and fellow Bronx Sen. Jeff Klein nearly got into a fight during the closed-door session, sources said.

“I was going to kick his ass,” Espada told the Daily News when asked if discussions got heated.

Espada — who was made Senate president in the coup — was angry Klein had joined peace talks just after sending out a press release bashing him and calling on Republicans to dump him as a leader.

Espada wanted to “duke it out,” according to a source.

“Let’s go!” Klein replied before new Senate Democratic leader John Sampson (D-Brooklyn) and the man he replaced, Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), jumped in and calmed the situation, according to the source.

Espada either left the room or was escorted out.

Klein would not discuss specifics, saying only it was a “heated exchange.”

“I can take it,” Klein quipped before poking fun at Espada’s residency issues. “He lives in Mamaroneck. I live in the Bronx.”