"I read the news today, oh boy..."

•  Maverick Stands Tall! The town of Norman, Oklahoma, may have a ten-foot statue of their favorite son, if a group of local fundraisers have their way. Actor James Garner, born there in 1927, was the star of the TV western drama "Maverick," as well as the detective series "The Rockford Files." (You da man!)

•  After all, it's the oldest profession, right? According to the London Telegraph (29 Jan 2005), "under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take any available job -- including in the sex industry -- or lose her unemployment benefit." With prostitution having been legalized in Germany in recent years, a 25-year-old former waitress faces the prospect of losing public assistance for refusing a job providing "sexual services" at an evening establishment in Berlin. (Courtesty of New Oxford Review)

•  No more pencils, no more books! A high school in Vail, Arizona, is getting rid of textbooks. The School District is going wireless, as all students will be required to carry laptops to access electronic and online material; all this, in place of the print media, and simply going from one end of the textbook to the other every year. (When I was in school, we never got all the way through the textbook anyway.)

•  How about just calling it "The Thing"? The town council in Yelm, Washington, is faced with a permit application from Wal-Mart, to build one of its retail stores within its boundaries. As is happening across the country, the neighbors beg to differ, and have let the council know about it. The town council, after hearing endless calls for "a moratorium on big-box stores," decided that the words "moratorium" and "big-box stores" would be banned from their proceedings. The ACLU is challenging the ban. (Meanwhile, the people of Yelm could refer to an "invasion," couldn't they?)

(All stories courtesy of the Associated Press, unless otherwise stated.)