Etc...

Have we got a deal for you!

Situated as it is in a rice-growing region 60 miles north of Sacramento, little Biggs, Calif., doesn't exactly hum with nonstop excitement. But there may be some Nov. 18 at a town council hearing on perhaps the biggest challenge facing it in years: whether to change the town's name officially to ... Got Milk? It seems only Biggs responded to an approach by the California Milk Processors Board offering any of 20 towns "a meaningful contribution" to its school system if it would agree to the change before next year's 10th anniversary of the ad campaign of the same name. Oh, and a pledge that the town would be featured in a whole new promotional campaign at the time.

In suburban Lansing, Mich., a wild buck crashed through the window of police Chief Kay Hoffman's office during business hours. But, apparently thinking better of what it had just done, the deer turned and left the way it had come in. Ah, explained a spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources, it's mating season, and bucks can be expected to do strange things.

'I am not a protest-tracker, except for when I travel with the president, then I look out the window.'

source: CongressDaily

For the fifth time in the past six surveys, Mississippi ranks No. 1 in the US in generosity as reflected in an index published by the Catalogue for Philanthropy (CFP), a group that encourages charitable giving. Its data were compiled from 2000 federal tax returns, the latest year for which figures were available. Bringing up the rear: New Hampshire. The CFP's top 10 states and the difference between where they rank in wealth per capita and in how much they gave to charity:

1. Mississippi 49 6
2. Arkansas 45 7
3. South Dakota 43 5
4. Tennessee 37 4
5. Louisiana 44 13
6. Alabama 41 11
7. Oklahoma 42 14
8. Utah 27 2
9. Nebraska 33 9
10. South Carolina 39 17
– Associated Press