Winners

Students who in the past needed the help of a tutor, but whose parents couldn’t afford one, will benefit from the new Live Homework Help program — a partnership between the Des Moines Public Library and Tutor.com. The program is designed to make homework help and tutoring options available to all Des Moines students in hopes it will increase participation and success in math and science courses and provide remedial assistance to students falling behind in their studies. Participants who don’t have access to computers at home will also have access to Live Homework Help’s in-library computers and after school programs. The program is available daily from 3 to 7 p.m. Visit www.desmoineslibrary.com or call 283-4152 Ext. 3.

SupportOurTroops.Org last week shipped 36,000 tubes of free sun block to the men and women in the United States military serving in Iraq. Guess the government couldn’t find the $139,625 it cost donors to buy the sun block for the troops from the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend on the war. Remember that next time you’re looking for a charity to donate your money.

John Canarina, conductor of the Drake Symphony Orchestra for 35 years, directed his final concert. The 73-year-old professor will retire at the end of the semester. Over the years, Canarina was also conductor of the famed Seventh Army and Jacksonville symphony orchestras. He even served as guest conductor for the BBC and Royal Philharmonic orchestras. Maestro, take a bow.

The good news is another round of economic stimulus checks arrived this week and the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the worst of the nation’s credit crisis may have passed. The bad news is most people will have to use their bonus checks from the feds to pay for gas and groceries and the bills keep coming. But, have no fear, our elected leaders tell us, we’re not in a recession.

Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. raked in more than $500 million in its first week of sales of the highly anticipated release of the video game “Grand Theft Auto IV.” The game follows Eastern European immigrant-turned-gangster Niko Bellic on new crime and sex-laden missions.

Losers

Memo to Des Moines Register officials: Let’s call a spade a shovel and stop the spin on the decision to shrink the size of the newspaper page. The reality is the cost of paper to print newspapers continues to skyrocket, and if you would have told your customers that was the impetus for trimming one inch off the paper, they might have respected you a little more for being forthright. Sure, the text size is the same, but the jump pages are greyer; the editorial columns are thinner; the mastheads are twice the size as before (so writers have to write less); the classified ads are so small now that you need a magnifying glass to read them; some sections are smaller than others while others have more white space in the margins; and you’ve used the new design as a way to sneak more ads at the top of the front pages of the sections without most readers noticing. Congratulations, you’ve found a non-descript design that matches your content. But don’t shrink the turd and tell us it smells better.

In the spirit of maintaining sunshine laws and the public’s right to monitor it’s government, it seems Gov. Chet Culver’s office has failed Iowans and democracy by advising state agencies that they can charge for lawyers’ time to scan documents for potentially confidential records requested by the public. The move to charge more for copies of open records is aimed at discouraging requests by the public and media that are time consuming. It’s a dangerous precedent that needs to be monitored closely by everyone.

Don’t you hate it when you throw a party and one of your guests decides to stick around too long? That’s the feeling many Democrats have toward Sen. Hillary Clinton, who continues to campaign for her party’s nomination for the presidential race despite the fact most experts agree she can’t garner enough delegates to secure the nomination. Give it up Hillary. Your ego is only hurting your party’s chances in November.

Did you hear the one about the 37-year-old suspected illegal immigrant who has been charged with raping a 10-year-old girl who later gave birth in eastern Idaho? It’s no joke. The girl gave birth by caesarian section while the father, Guadalupe Gutierrez-Juarez, sits in jail. Experts say it is unusual, but not impossible, for a 10-year-old girl to give birth, as one expert says girls in the United States are menstruating sooner, which can speed up the production of sex hormones and make pregnancy possible. Of course, what authorities can’t explain, yet, is how a 37-year-old man impregnates a 10-year-old girl without anyone knowing about it. CV

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