Have to? I HAVE TO? I don't have to do SQUAT. And 'boy'? BOY? I surely HOPE you said ROY..... I firmly stand on the conviction (often, if anecdotally, proven) that many people will do what they're going to do regardless of what I say. Sometimes a well-chosen phrase can deflect that path a bit. My phrasing would have been: I've found it helps to edge the driveway after a rain, or you can cheat a bit and water the driveway edge the night before if you want to. Alpha male silverback gorillas wouldn't take offense at that. :-) Which is good, as I stand five-eight and tilt the scales at 140 lbs. I'd like to note, in addition, that the organic crowd isn't trying to sell you anything. Except a philosophy, which is fine...however, like any given religion that shows up at my door, I have the right to refuse the information or start analyzing inconsistency. Now that organic methodology is backed with some data, it's become a science. Unfortunately, the number of blind spots is a bit too high and it has a regrettable history as a pseudoscience (now there's a misnomer...). At least the tendency is starting to change. As far as the synthetic/organic "war" goes, I'm part of the big group that stands in the middle. I see applications of both, try to be as minimally toxic as I can be, but I am not going to try to remove several thousand weeds by hand. A few hundred, sure. Lets not do that. Let's recognize that everybody's trying to help. That having been said, a factual error can certainly be corrected and most of us take that correction very well and learn from it. My one major remaining prejudice is muddy thinking. When I discover I'm doing it I do my best to rout it out. When I see it in others, I correct it. Otherwise, the error simply perpetuates itself. Funny you should say that about the English professor thing. If things has gone just a bit differently...well, they didn't, and I would have been happier in the hard sciences anyway. Here is a link that might be useful: (Mostly) Organic Lawn Photos

Gary, This is really an issue of resources and conserving them. More municipal water is used (and wasted) in Dade County on lawns than for drinking and bathing or agriculture. Instead of watering a lawn, I devote some of that area to a mulched vegetable garden watered mostly with a rain barrel and with soil that is being improved every year with compost. So, some rain water doesn't drain off my property, running over oil-slicked roads and over-fertilized lawns before draining into the Bay - where it pollutes. Tax dollars end up paying for storm-water treatment, to keep the Bay clean and the fish and wildlife there surviving. Instead some of my excess rain helps me grow tomatoes, beans, herbs, cukes and the occasional melon. Kitchen and yard waste that would end up in landfill go into a composter and then it's all ultimately spread in my veggie garden, under newspapers that could also go in the landfill. This reduces hauling and landfill costs that all taxpayers share. No harsh pesticides are used on my garden because a) I don't want to eat stuff with pesticides on it b) I certainly don't want my garden to contribute to polluted run-off and c) I'm not a professional farmer skilled in the ways those chemicals should be used. I use soap and water. And I haven't exactly withdrawn from the global economy. Just got back from Publix, in fact, where I bought pork chops and paper towels and dog food along with my organic eggs. While other people have other hobbies, this is mine. It does nothing to harm anyone and does a little to reduce the resources I'm using - resources we all pay for. Then, when I buy a Florida grapefruit instead of a California one, I'm supporting my neighbors, and in some cases, my family. I'm descended from a long line of farmers, including a grandfather who saw his land fouled by a nearby phosphate mine. There are still citrus groves in my extended family. My grandfather would be proud of my hobby and pretty confused by your concern that I'm endangering the global food supply by growing a little bit of my own. I am too. S

Wayne, here's the headline...Crystal power Palmtop Nuclear Fusion Device Invented By Michael Schirber LiveScience Staff Writer posted: 27 April 2005 01:00 pm ET The nuclear reaction that powers the Sun has been reproduced in a pocket-sized device, scientists announced today. Researchers have for years tried to harness nuclear fusion to power the world. But its cousin, nuclear fission -- the breaking apart of atoms -- is the only method so far commercially viable. The latest invention is not in the same league as efforts to build complex commercial reactors. The new device creates a relatively small number of reactions, and requires more energy to operate than it produces. The Real Deal (AP) - Previous claims of tabletop fusion have been met with skepticism and even derision by physicists. In one of the most notable cases, Dr. B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in England shocked the world in 1989 when they announced that they had achieved so-called cold fusion at room temperature. Their work was discredited after repeated attempts to reproduce it failed. Fusion experts noted that the new UCLA experiment is credible because, unlike the 1989 work, it did not violate basic principles of physics. "This doesn't have any controversy in it because they're using a tried and true method,'' said David Ruzic, professor of nuclear and plasma engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "There's no mystery in terms of the physics.'' -- Associated Press But the configuration is so small and simple that its creators think it may inspire unforeseen applications. "I certainly find it interesting that you can heat a cubic centimeter crystal in your hand, then plunge it in cold water and it will cause nuclear fusion," Seth Putterman from the University of California Los Angeles told LiveScience. Putterman's lay description greatly oversimplifies how the compact apparatus works. Specifically, Putterman and collaborators heat a pyroelectric crystal, lithium tantalite, from minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit to plus 45 in a matter of minutes. This generates an electrical charge -- 100,000 volts -- across the tiny crystal, which is housed in a chamber filled with deuterium gas, a heavy form of hydrogen. The high voltage is focused onto a needle-thin tip, which strips electrons from nearby deuterium nuclei and then accelerates them at a solid target containing deuterium. When two deuterium nuclei collide together at high speed, they fuse to form helium. The Sun also fuses atoms in thermonuclear reactions that create light and heat. The byproduct of the newly discovered lab reaction is a particle called the neutron. The scientists detect about 1,000 neutrons per second. Because neutrons are so penetrating, Putterman said that a hand-held neutron source might one-day be used to do geologic surveys or to look into cargo containers for nuclear devices. "Current neutron generators are extremely cumbersome," Putterman said. "They are about as big as a dentists X-ray machine, so you canÂt carry them into the field." Pyroelectric crystals could also provide a beam of ions for use as a microthruster in a miniature spacecraft. The research is described in the April 28 issue of the journal Nature.

Attention, shoppers! If you take a half-gallon of fudge ripple ice cream from your supermarket's freezer case and then remember you are on a diet, don't leave it to melt on the rack where the tabloid magazines scream "Tom Cruise Marries Alien!" Likewise, in a department store, if you suddenly realize that a pink poncho will be passe in a month, don't fling it over a display of men's socks and walk away. Nor should a four-pack of 60-watt light bulbs be wedged between the boxes of fettuccine and ziti. For a few minutes, pretend I'm your mom -- your shopping mom: Were you raised in a barn? Will you never learn to pick up after yourselves? Stop rolling your eyes and look at me when I talk to you! Listen up: More and more of you are not putting things back where they belong when you go shopping. It happens at high-end and low-end and everything-in-between stores. It occurs in supermarkets, clothing stores, toy stores, stationers and any place where merchandise isn't too heavy to lift. It even goes on at the Gap, despite clerks -- only those with eyes in the backs of their heads are hired -- who attempt behavior modification in customers by pointedly refolding polo shirts milliseconds after they are mussed. It occurs even in bookstores, where, as in libraries, there are often tables or carts with posted pleas to place unwanted books on them so that people who know exactly where they should be shelved can do so. Still, you'll find a John Grisham tome next to "101 Ways to Cook Cauliflower." Especially during sales, the dressing rooms of department stores look like pigsties -- clothing in dumping grounds on the floor or falling off hangers and hooks -- because customers won't even return them to collection racks at the mouth of the dressing room so employees can restock them. Don't make the excuse that everybody does it. What if everybody jumped off a cliff? Would you? Experts who study what is called "shrink" -- the term for inventory loss due to shoplifting, employee theft or error, and damaged or "distressed" items -- estimate that less than 1 percent of all shrink is caused by shoppers who act as though they are royalty being shadowed by a maid. (A major grocery chain has about $500,000 worth of shrink a year, according to recent studies.) This number would be higher if alert shoppers and employees didn't see wrongs and right them, says Larry Miller, president of Trax Retail Solutions in Scottsdale, Ariz., and national director of the National Supermarket Research Group. Miller estimates that shoppers (acting as mothers the world over do) or store employees rescue about 60 percent of dumped grocery items. "Most people don't look at a pound of ground beef sitting on a grocery store shelf and ignore it. They take it back to the refrigerated meat section," Miller contends. "This has always been a problem, and it occurs at all stores no matter where they are," says Barry F. Scher, vice president of public relations for Royal Ahold NV's Giant Food LLC chain. He notes that the cost for supermarkets is especially high when the item involved requires refrigeration or freezing. Even though employees are instructed by managers at various times during the day to scout for misplaced items, perishables most often have to be thrown out because it is not known how long they've been sitting around. Scher says that Giant stores don't have staffers dedicated to performing the task called "shop backs" but that it takes employees away from other duties. "Stores also lose out because the stock isn't where someone can find it and sell it," says Jon Schreibfeder, president of Effective Inventory Management Inc. of Coppell, Tex. This means that, to be confident that they have enough of any product, managers must overstock items. Schreibfeder, whose company advises retailers on ways to control inventory, says that although the practice isn't nearly as large or troublesome as shoplifting or employee theft, "we talk about the [dumping] problem continually" with clients. Schreibfeder's prescription has been to have his clients schedule regular "stock straightening" for several times a day, especially when the store isn't busy. He also said a retail customer in Bermuda learned that nothing works as well as a departing ship in making people evacuate a store, leaving stick deodorant next to the asparagus. "A cruise ship would come in and the passengers would begin shopping. They'd find they were running out of time and would leave stock scattered everywhere," Schreibfeder recalls. He and his employees helped the store employees realize that they should scurry to round up misplaced products in between dockings. He also advised the owner to mark shelves that were most often victimized by shoppers and to have employees combing those prone areas. Schreibfeder says it's conceivable that, down the line, radio frequency identification (RFID) might be able to beam out an all-points bulletin (APB) to store managers, saying, in effect: "I'm over here -- and I'm defrosting!" to help in the roundup. Both Schreibfeder and Scher are inclined to be soft on consumers who dump products thither and yon. "People these days think they are too busy. Everybody's in a rush," Scher says. But Dorothea Johnson is unforgiving. Johnson, founder of the Protocol School of Washington and an etiquette teacher for 40 years, says we all must put things back because it is right and proper and is a tiny thing we can do to keep the world from chaos. She can think of no excuse for not returning merchandise to its shelf. Practicing this daily has the side effect of increasing self-esteem, she says. "Oh, you see, not putting things back is not being mindful of the next person who comes along. Although salespeople are trained to watch out for such things, I always put things back. I can then tell myself I did the right thing," says Johnson from her home near Portland, Maine. Even parents who spend the livelong day harping on children and spouses about tidying up can slip up now and then and ignore their inner Miss Manners. The other day, in a fit of fitness, someone left a pound of bacon next to a mound of tilapia packages after glancing about the store furtively to see if anyone was looking. But do as I say, not as I do. And don't run with a stick in your hand. You'll poke your eye out.