Hey, you, fat kid. Get up from in front of the TV/Gameboy/Internet. Go outside and play, for goodness sake. Oh, wait, never mind:
For the past 25 years, playgrounds have been designed to be so immune from injury lawsuits that they have become downright boring, almost childproof. Often all that's seen on a playground is an expanse of rubbery surfaces. In Broward County, Florida, playgrounds now come with signs that say "No Running."
Despite an information revolution that connects all of us all the time -- or perhaps because of it -- the world has the attention span of a 4-year-old riding in a car:
This has been a proud nearly Paris Hilton-free zone since 2005, but come on. First, her 45-day sentence is changed to a 23-day one, then three days into that, she was "fitted with an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet and released to the comforts of her 2,700-square-foot Hollywood Hills home due to a mysterious and unspecified medical condition."
Never mind the polar bears and the glaciers. This global warming thing is getting serious:
Droves of cats and kittens are swarming into animal shelters nationwide, and global warming is to blame, according to one pet adoption group.
I'm not prepared yet to say where the world is headed, but I have my handbasket picked out just in case:
In their simple convent, where rows of chairs are arranged in front of a television and a crucifix, the 23 nuns of the Salesian Sisters of Mary Immaculate Province briefly put aside their pleas for the sick and the poor to pray for the San Antonio Spurs.
25 things that have disappeared in the past 25 years. Some are obvious -- indoor smoking, typewriters, phone booths. Some, like New Coke and Betamax, were barely here in the first place. Some are not lamented -- good riddance to carbon paper. If I may say so, No. 22 is premature, if only slightly:
22 The afternoon newspaper
Human rights on the march:
A homeless man who was arrested after asking a policeman for a dollar got a judge to throw out the case by arguing that begging is a form of free speech.
Judge Gail Rice made the ruling after Eric Hoffstead had his lawyer cite a 15-year-old federal court decision saying New York state's loitering law violated First Amendment protections.
Cheer up, Fort Wayne smokers. At least you can sneak into New Haven to have a cigarette with your meal. New Hamsphire is joining the growing list of states banning smoking in bars and restaurants border to border:
"Smokers are the only minorities I know of that society throws out into the cold in winter time," said Rep. Kenneth Weyler of Kingston. "Those zealots are out to eliminate all smoking in society."
