An Associated Press story under the headline "Gulp! Mexico tells citizens to swallow their gum" reports that the average square yard of Mexico City sidewalk has 70 blobs of discarded gum.

For your reference, I'd estimate that that average square yard of sidewalk in the United States has 10 blobs of gum, but another 100 discarded cigarette butts.

In Mexico City, discarded gum has apparently become such a problem that you can't walk down a sidewalk in a pair of loafers without losing your shoes.

People who dare walk in bare feet face an even bigger problem, the prospect of getting stuck to the sidewalk for hours while thousands of their fellow citizens shuffle by spitting gum at them.

The swallow command has alarmed at least one pediatrician, who says swallowed gum usually passes through the digestive system, but that it can ball up with other objects and cause intestinal blockages, according to the AP story.

But I think it's great advice, and if we could only get American smokers to swallow their cigarette butts.

The airlines are beginning to experiment with biofuels to save money and reduce carbon emissions. And that scares me. You can get out and walk if your vegetable oil-fueled car stops running, but you've got bigger problems if your plane stalls.

Again proving that pilots are braver than the average working stiff, two pilots for Air New Zealand spent two hours yesterday testing whether something called jatropha oil could fly a Boeing 747-400 aircraft.

Granted, the jatropha oil was blended with jet fuel and used in just one of the plane's four engines, but I've got to wonder if these pilots felt the need to pack parachutes.

According to a New York Times' story, "Virgin Atlantic in February became the first airline to test a biofuel blend in a commercial aircraft, using a 20-percent mixture of coconut oil and babassu nut oil in one of its four engines."

"Two more airlines are to test their alternatives next month. Continental Airlines on Jan. 7 will conduct a test flight using a blend that includes algae and jatropha, the first biofuel test flight of a commercial airliner owned by a U.S. company.

"And Japan Airlines is planning a test flight Jan. 30 using a fuel based on the camelina oilseed."

Maybe I'm not as committed to the go-green effort as I'd like to think, but I sure hope these airlines do a lot more testing before they start running regular commercial flights on algae or babassu nut oil.

Even then, I might start packing a parachute in my carry-on.

-- The bad news for the economy: Americans spent less this holiday season. The worse news: We consumers are still broke and will be even more broke when those credit-card bills arrive. We did what we could, but it just didn't work.

The couple in the AP photograph to the left were married on Christmas Day in an ice chapel built for the occasion in Fairbanks, Alaska. Why would anyone get married on Christmas Day? From my childhood, I remember friends with birthdays near Christmas complaining that their relatives would give them just one gift to serve as a birthday/Christmas gift. I wonder if this couple received wedding/Christmas gifts.

-- Doing some last-minute stocking shopping on Christmas Eve, I noticed that Valentine's candy had already started pushing Christmas candy off the shelves. And there were still 53 shopping days until Valentine's Day. Look for those end-of-the-summer sales to start sometime around March.

-- If you nearly pull a muscle playing baseball on the Wii you bought your kids for Christmas and then get out of breath boxing one round on the Wii, does that mean Wiis are cool and realistic? Or does it just mean you're really out of shape?

-- Did you grow tired of your Christmas guests? Consider the Pennsylvania family that found a man had spent several days in its attic during the holidays. He had allegedly climbed down occasionally to help himself to food and clothes. "When he came down from the attic, he was wearing my daughter's pants and my sweat shirt and sneakers," homeowner Stacy Ferrance said. I'd hide too if I were dressed like that.

-- Are you overwhelmed and saddened by the idea of taking down the Christmas lights? Don't rush. If you can put it off until about the middle of June, you'll reach the halfway point, and you can just leave them up. Then you can try to convince your neighbors that your ahead of the game, like some radio stations, instead of behind it.

Some secretive Santas are filling their stockings and pockets with stolen gifts, according to media reports that Christmas shoplifting has increased because of the poor economy.

No wonder so many seem so stressed this season.

Christmas shopping can be exhausting enough, but the pressure of Christmas shoplifting must be relentless. Imagine constantly having to worry if that's really Santa Claus sitting in the corner or a store detective in disguise. And it can't be fun having to wrestle with another thug to get the last Wii before they're all sold, or, in this case, all stolen out.

Then what if your spouse finds out how much you didn't pay for her gift?

And what do you do if you steal the wrong gift? You won't be able to come up with a receipt. Do you come clean and tell the recipient to go back to the store and steal one in another size?

Or do you return to the scene of the crime yourself? Are there honorable, conscientious shoplifters who only steal what's on their list and would actually return the wrong sweater to the rack before stealing another one in the right size?

Some shoplifters, apparently the more experienced ones, prefer to steal gift cards, but how much thought goes into that?

I guess Christmas shoplifting does have its advantages. You don't have to drive all over town in your (stolen?) car to ensure you've found the best deal on the necklace at the top of your wife's list.

And you don't have to worry about that January spending hangover when the credit-card bills show up in the mailbox. I bought what? The kids already broke that.

Christmas shoplifters might even receive some new jewelry (a pair of handcuffs) and a new home (a jail cell) where they can spend the holidays with a new group of friends.

You're not necessarily getting a call from the great beyond.

Under the headline, "Trend: Dead Take Cell Phones With," Robert Roy Britt reports on the Website Livescience.com that more people are getting buried with their cell phones.

Britt picked up on the trend from an msnbc.com story, which reports,
"While statistics on cell phone burials don't exist, funeral professionals agree it's a fairly common occurrence -- at least among the tech-savvy and the young -- and some believe we're only seeing the tip of the wired-to-the-end trend."

Britt notes that those who are cremated or buried at sea would probably get lousy reception.

I'm wondering how those departed techies can rest in peace if their cell phones keep ringing? But then they probably couldn't hear their phones over their iPods anyway.

Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing talk show hosts probably thought it was another example of the liberal media's bias when an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at President Bush.

But I think we should try to keep an open mind.

There's plenty of talk about the importance of objectivity in journalism, but a former editor of mine made a good point when she claimed that objectivity is a myth. (After all, journalists -- with the exception of some TV anchors -- aren't robots.) With our human limitations in mind, journalists must strive for accuracy and fairness, even if we're writing about, say, the Patriots, and we know in our hearts that the only reason they lost was because of a vast conspiracy against Bill Belichick.

Reporters can challenge their sources, pepper them with tough questions, but when it's time to file, they must put aside their biases in an effort to produce an accurate and fair report. In this case, it's clear from the photographs and videotape that the reporter was throwing a shoe, not a question, at the president. His actions seem over the top, but we shouldn't jump to a conclusion and indict the press in general or this reporter in particular.

Maybe he was just trying to get the president's attention, which can't be easy if you're working one of these presidential press conferences, and you're not from Fox News. It looks like the reporter threw just some regular old shoes. If he'd been trying to hurt the president, wouldn't he have thrown a steel-toed boot or something with a spiked heel?

And who got hurt?

President Bush didn't seem shaken by the exchange. He joked about it. Some public officials actually enjoy sparring with the press. They thrive on the give and take. For a guy who has spent eight years in such a stressful job, the president showed great reflexes in ducking the shoes. He looked like a guy who's had some experience.

For his part, the reporter is being treated like a hero by some of his countrymen, which is nice since the public usually holds reporters in low regard, right down there with politicians.

All that being said, I'm not endorsing his news-gathering approach. All I'm saying is that we need to wait to see his report on the president's visit to Iraq before we judge whether he can put his apparent ill feelings aside and produce a fair and accurate report.

Of course, we might have to wait a while -- until he gets out of jail.

And if the current trend continues, we will all have posed on one of these calendars by the year 2011.

A recent example comes to us from Barre, Mass., where "The Bare Men of Barre" took off their clothes to raise money for a library.

The models include a 90-year-old man, nine town firefighters and the fire chief, who said his men "were more than willing to do it," according to a Boston.com story.

The story reports that 2,500 men live in the town, and the calendar's organizer convinced 80 of them to appear on the calendar. I suspect she got only 80 because she stopped asking at 80 and left the other 2,420 alone.

Closer to home, the Westerly Pawcatuck Area Chamber of Commerce has produced "The Men of Westerly" calendar for 2009 to support several charities, including a food pantry and shelter. A couple of years ago, 12 women from Rhode Island's Sons of Italy lodges posed for the fundraising "Calendar Girls 2006," sharing recipes and a little skin, as a Journal story noted. In 2005, the men of Wickford posed for a cause.

Similar calendars have been produced in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. We can at least partly credit or blame it on a 2003 movie called "Calendar Girls," based on the true story of women in an English town whose calendar for leukemia research became a huge hit.

It seems that all of the efforts raise funds for good causes, but not everyone is happy about the calendars. A commenter on Boston.com's Web site writes: "How I pine for the old days of bake sales."

The reader has a point. Many of us simply weren't meant to pose naked on calendars. Clothes have a couple of important purposes. They keep us warm, and they prevent us from getting nauseous when we pass each other in the street. Considering the popularity of these calendars, we all risk seeing a little more of our neighbors than we ever wanted to see.

Still, I'm afraid that protester will have to wait until 2011 or so, when each and everyone of us has had the chance to pose on a calender. Then maybe we can turn to baking cookies -- fully clothed, I hope.

I like lobster and if lobsters were stalking beachgoers and clawing the paint from our cars, I might be all for this, but they seem pretty content staying in the ocean and hiding under rocks, so I see no reason to eat more of them.

Julia Munsey's heart may be in the right place -- she's trying to help Maine's struggling lobster industry -- but she doesn't understand what kind of chaos she could unleash if her proposal to replace Tom Turkey with Larry Lobster takes off.

And I'm not just talking about fighting over the wishbone. What would happen if we stopped culling the turkey herd at least once a year?

The turkey population is exploding, and they're terrorizing neighborhoods across the country. The've moved from the woods to the suburbs and even into cities. They're stalking people, chasing them, even kicking them.

It was just a couple of years ago that a man in Middletown claimed that a turkey kicked him after a group of them surrounded his car.

And in urban Brookline, Mass., a turkey stalked one woman and repeatedly pecked another in the backside. A postal carrier -- somebody who has probably stared down pit bulls and German Shepherds -- acknowledges avoiding some houses because of those menacing turkeys.

A writer in Colorado describes the birds that live near her house as "turkeys gone bad".

She writes, "They slump through yards in close-packed groups like sullen teenagers. They shuffle through leaf litter and bark chips, gobbling up insects and acorns, heedless of private property rights.

"If a vehicle slows to watch them, they mob it.

"For some reason, they often cluster around the community mailbox. Drivers stopping to get their mail are sometimes flocked by ferocious turkeys that peck at the doors and attack anyone who gets out."

These are ornery animals, and they must be stopped. I know what you're thinking: 'It's wild turkeys that are terrorizing these people, not the turkey that ends up covered in gravy on my Thanksgiving plate.'

Sure, but how long before those domestic birds break out and join their crazy cousins? What kind of problems will we have then? Will anyone get their mail?

I say you can eat all the lobster you want on the Fourth of July or New Year's Eve, but eat as much turkey as you can on Thanksgiving. That's what I plan to do -- and not just because my safety depends on it.

He might still miss some shots, but he will never be accused of taking a bad shot.

He will never commit a foul. And he will never get fouled.

Oh sure, plenty of his opponents will claim to have fouled the Commander in Chief when he misses a shot. And some of those "guilty" defenders might have actually been standing in the same area code as the first basketball player when he took that errant shot.

During Obama's campaign, we learned that the candidate, already a good basketball player, gets his exercise and relaxes by playing hoops. In fact, he eased the stress of awaiting yesterday's results with a pick-up game.

Through the years, we've heard a lot about our presidents' favorite sports and fitness routines. President Bush was a runner before hurting his knee and shifting to mountain biking. President Clinton was a runner and a golfer.

I remember following President Clinton when he vacationed on Martha's Vineyard. On the president's regular jogs, a few Secret Service agents would run alongside him. President Clinton was a little heavier then, and he wasn't setting any speed records, but the agents, who looked to be in tip-top shape, didn't sprint out in front of him. They stuck to his side.

I figured those agents had a better assignment than the agents who accompanied President Clinton to the golf course. It could be dangerous duty with the president spraying golf balls around the course. And I suspect some of those Secret Service agents learned to look the other way when the president filled out his scorecard.

With a full Secret Service detail, President Obama won't have trouble finding a few athletic guys to play hoops at the White House, but he might have trouble finding guys who will give him a good game.

Who would call a foul on the most powerful man in the world? Who would dare play tight defense on a man whose life he has pledged to protect with his own?

The typical player has two worries when he starts playing a pick-up basketball game: Will anyone pass to me? And if they do, will they think I shoot too much?

President Obama won't have those concerns. His hands will be sore from catching all the passes.

And if he launches a shot from the White House lawn that lands on Pennsylvania Avenue, all he will hear is, "Nice shot, Mr. President. I think I fouled you on that one."

How many of us wanted to shoot, punch or run over gasoline tanks last summer when gas was selling for more than $4 per gallon?

Now that the price is relatively low -- at $2.54 nationally -- we can find more suitable places to channel our rage. Has anyone shot or burned their 401k statement in the last couple of months?

Maybe this guy is still holding a grudge or is just a little slow on the draw.

If Rhode Island voters are so inattentive that they'll mistake a Rhode Island bond question with Massachusetts' effort to repeal the income tax, they'll probably be confused by a few other things, too.

Here are some questions that might arise on election day or sooner:

-- Is Tina Fey running for vice president? Fey and Sara Palin certainly look alike. With Fey imitating Palin on Saturday Night Live and then Palin appearing on SNL, Alec Baldwin might not be the only one who is confused.

-- Can I vote for Martin Sheen ? The honorary Kennedy (left) campaigned in Rhode Island just last week, and he might have more presidential experience than either of the candidates. After all, he was pretty good as President Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing and he played President John F. Kennedy in a television miniseries.

-- Will a yes vote on Question 2, make it safe to smoke marijuana in Rhode Island? If the average Rhode Island voter is confused over Question 1, is it a stretch to think that some voters who enjoy relaxing with a little ganja would confuse Rhode Island's Question 2, which would help preserve open space, with Massachusetts' Question 2, which would decriminalize marijuana possession.

-- If John McCain wins, will he have to raise taxes to pay for Sarah Palin's wardrobe? You'd think a $150,000 wardrobe budget would be plenty to get anyone by for four years, but, you know, fashion changes with the seasons.

-- Is Barack Obama running for a spot in the White House or on Dancing with the Stars? Some votes might have missed Obama with Joe the plumber's helper, but plenty saw him dancing with Ellen DeGeneres and been bragging about dancing better than John McCain.

Why leave the books at home in the bookcase when they can serve as stylish and practical hats, protecting you from the sun and rain while giving you the chance to impress people?

Imagine all your friends saying, "She must be smart. She's wearing a Shakespeare hat."

(I wonder if I could learn a foreign language through osmosis by wearing a French dictionary on my head.)

These models were showing off the bookish look during India Fashion Week, and there's no doubt it will be the rage by the spring of next year, so start checking your bookshelves for something sharp right now.

And, remember. It's a fashion faux pas to wear a paperback after Labor Day. Fall and winter are for hardcovers.

Apparently fed up with piles of fan mail that make it hard to find the door, former Beatle drummer Ringo Starr has told his fans to stop writing to him.

Ringo (left) won't find peace unless fans of The Beatles, not to mention The Simpsons and Thomas the Tank Engine, stop writing to him.

He says any mail sent to him after Sunday won't get read or answered.

He says he doesn't have time to answer any more letters or sign any more pictures of himself, John, Paul and George.

Ringo has delivered the message via video on his Web site, but that might not be enough to get the word out. He's apparently considering writing a song to help spread the message.

It will go something like this:

"A lady I don't know wrote from Columbia
in a language that I barely understand.
She sent me a Fab Four photo, ha ha!
She said I was the best in the whole band

"And I said,
No, no, no, no, don't write me no more
I'm tired of reading letters, it's a bore.
No, thank you, please, you're killing too many trees
And then you'll get a lecture from Al Gore."