Winner: it's been a little more than 100 years since President Theodore Roosevelt designated the mountains around Logan as a forest reserve. As a feature story in this week's Deseret News noted, Logan Canyon had, at the time, become a dust bowl wasteland due to overgrazing and clear-cut logging. Today it is a lush forest area, and Logan no longer has the water concerns it did a century ago.
There are lessons in all of this, of course. The main one is that mankind benefits from the intelligent management of the environment.
Loser: The Jordan School District is kidding itself if it thinks it can change much by passing a mealy-mouthed policy that puts an end to all foreign trips by school groups except for undefined exceptions. A proposed new policy would allow principals to argue for certain trips at the district level but that would be too easily manipulated by vocal parents.
But then, the district is kidding itself if it thinks the best solution to a recently canceled trip to SARS-plagued Asia is to put a halt to all foreign travel. Such trips can be valuable educational tools. The district wants to limit its own liability for canceled flight tickets. That's understandable. Parents should understand that they take the risk of losing money if world events get in the way. But don't put an end to all but an undefined few trips.
Winner: Congratulations to Mark Pett, a former Deseret News editorial cartoonist whose new comic strip, "Lucky Cow," will be appearing in this and 50 or so other papers. Pett, who admits his heart wasn't really in serious editorial drawing, is a tremendous talent who ought to do well.