There are plenty of people who drink tap water without thinking about what might be in it. There are others who buy water filters without considering whether it's a good match for the water that's being filtered. And there are still other people who refuse to drink tap water, preferring bottled water.

A wiser strategy is to spend some time with your community's annual water-quality report, which is required to notify the public of performance compared to federal and state standards.

Colin Beavan's thought was hardly unusual. Most of us have wondered whether all our accumulated belongings and technology make our lives better.

"We're consuming way too much stuff as a civilization," Beavan said. "And we have an idea that's because we need all these things. When people tend to talk about living environmentally, they tend to think of depriving ourselves. The question became in our year: Would we be less happy or more happy? Would we actually find that there were some greater satisfactions than consuming resources to be had? And if that was the case - which it was in our case - might it be possible for our culture to design itself in such a way so that it uses fewer resources but also gives us happier lives?"

Consider these quotes from two climate scientists:

"In our models, it's difficult to understand how a 1-degree Fahrenheit warmer sea can spawn the ... rather significant increase that we've seen in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Therefore, we can't put it all together. ... But the notion that a warmer Earth could cause more hurricanes, certainly that would be predicted by the climate scientists."

"Yet how can a barely discernible, 1-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th Century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?"

With an imminent worker shortage, the Quad Cities are faced with the need to keep and attract young people.

Despite thousands of jobs becoming available in the coming years and significant improvements in the number and variety of amenities in the Quad Cities over the past decade, leaders are faced with a deep-rooted problem: perception.

"Fairness" is an ideal that most people would like media outlets to embrace, but as a federal policy for television and radio, it's been dead for more than 20 years.

Yet despite that, the rule known as the Fairness Doctrine won't go away.