If you search thrift stores and garage sales you will inevitably find a deliciously musty "Activities for Children" book that was written prior to 1950.

In those books are rainy day projects, like making electromagnets out of battery, wire and nails, sailboats out of balsa wood, paper airplanes out of... paper, etc. etc.

I have a four year old and she responds with enthusiastic attention at these ancient ideas. She, and her little friends, like to make things, build things, and do things.

I don't think a child needs to have plastic, injection-molded toys or electronic amusements for a well-rounded early life.

So, eight years of the wildest, craziest party we've ever seen, and now its over.

The lights are turned on, the music turned off, everyone leaves in their limos,

and the black guy gets to clean up the mess.

Good Luck, Mr. President, you'll need it.

wants to be President of the United States. But he isn't a natural born citizen, hence his Quixotic obsession with a dead issue. Give it a rest, Juan. If the right wing conspiracy couldn't shake this coconut out of the tree,

no one can.

Happy Thanksgiving

How dare you miscreants mention Jimmy Carter in comparative reference to the O-man when the smoke hasn't yet cleared from the train wreck the Bush family has left us this Holiday season.

Jimmy Carter had a hell of a lot to deal with picking up after the elephant parade of Nixon and Ford. He may not have been the best, but he was human.

I'm not sure that W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and the other R-Bots can be classified as part of our species, much less our citizenry, after the last 8 years.

is the real issue here. Obnoxious lighting is as obtrusive as booming speakers and as upsetting as dumping trash on the street in front of your home. Light pollution degrades the environment by taking away the night sky and the stars. Laws are being passed in many locales concerning this problem. The dark of night and starry skies would be good for us. We might realize how insignificant we are in the universe. Humility follows.

Heyyyyyy ladies. You know I like to give you pleasure the way you like it. I can lick my eyebrows clean, if you know what I mean (wink)! So if you want me to keep lickin', then please keep the bic flickin' down under as it makes it sooooo much easier to make you purr like a kitten. A patch of hair down there would be like kissing a dude with a mustache, something I never have and never want to experience. No way! Also, pubes trap moisture and have what scientists call "funk", so if I can smell it wafting up before I have even reached the bellybutton--I'll be like that submarine in Red October--surface! surface! surface! Oh, and don't think you'll fool me by wearing one of those pine tree air fresheners hanging from your belt buckle. Even if its totally dark, I will know.

Consider Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts Jr., & Benny Hin. Remember the head of the Baptists a few years back who had a girlfriend and was partying like there was no tomorrow? How about all of the Catholic priests?

Consider Larry Craig, Newt Gingrich, David Vitter, Mark Foley, and all the other Republicans and religious right who are "sexual sinners". How about Jeff Gannon who was a plant in the Bush press corps, and who turned out to be a male prostitute? Anyone remember the "boy prosty" scandal during Bush 1? How about Bill O'Reilly's phone sex tape?

Yessiree, I think Rick Warren is a perfect pick to tell us how to live and to say a prayer for all of the sexually frustrated Republicans out there. Maybe he'll do some confessin' on the stage himself!

Maybe Obama is a genius.

Bwahahahahaha!

This seems ridiculous. Am I missing something here? Everywhere you look you see monstrous commercial/industrial buildings with flat roofs.

The buildings are already hooked up to the grid. Let's provide an incentive through tax credits or rebates so commercial property owners will allow the installation of photovoltaics on all of these buildings. Problem solved: no infrastructure required, just a fairly simple retrofit and electrical hookup. Billions in savings and we can start tomorrow.

My idea? Certainly not. The Edison Foundation posts a statistic that if only 6500 big box buildings are converted to newest photovoltaics, it would net a reduction of 25% of the nation's electrical needs.

Also, for those arguing against developing alternatives while oil is cheap, please remember that your tax dollars support and subsidize Big Oil through pipeline projects, petroleum infrastructure, and biggest of all, the military, which, it can be argued, exists primarily at this time for defense of our supply of foreign oil.

Add those billions of dollars into the equation and gas, heating oil and diesel become much more expensive and on the same level as solar, wind, geo, and other alternative energy solutions.

The concept of using big box stores and warehouses as a "networked component power plant" is a lot saner & cheaper than a multi-thousand acre, built-from-scratch solar farm (boondoggle) that will require massive beaurocracy, disruption of eco-systems, hundreds of miles of transmission lines and hideously ugly substations.

The idea behind the Edison Plan is to use commercial roof tops in prime solar zones as the solar farm. The rooftop PVs would be pumping electricity directly into the grid.

The plan wasn't to have the property or business owners buy the PVs, but to incentivize them to provide space for the collectors.

The tax credits would be "rent" for the rooftops of commercial buildings where the Power Company PVs would be installed.