Since losing the contract to run Davenport's bus system at the end of 2000, MetroLINK has begun to aggressively expand its services, and planned bus routes to rural areas and nearby college towns could be just the first step.

Have you read the one about corporations planning to charge you hundreds of dollars a month for your tap water? Or the one about military "psychological operations" specialists manipulating viewers of CNN? What about the highly skilled programmers in Silicon Valley who, because they are immigrants, are laboring under sweatshop-like conditions?

If none of these stories rings a bell, it's not because you've missed the latest e-mail hoax.

Part two of two

The press conference last month announcing Davenport's completion of an application to the Vision Iowa program was filled with bold statements. In explaining the name River Renaissance, Davenport Community and Economic Development Director Clayton Lloyd invoked the Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Is anyone else getting tired of the world-according-to-the-armchair-quarterbacks-at-the- Quad-City-Times? Case in point: "Keeping Score in the Quality of Life," published on Sunday, March 25. Drawing on "the observations of hundreds of Quad Citians, scores of reports, and visits to other similarly sized U.