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4A ♦ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2006 •Mnusttm flatly HJmtrttd. OPINION Daniel F. Evans President Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Group Marketing Don Moncrief Managing Editor Football greatness We hope not to jinx anybody but we in Houston County stand on the threshold of doing something spe cial. One game, one win is all that separates three of our schools, three of our football teams from going to the Georgia Dome and playing in the state semifinals there. Northside, Warner Robins and Houston County will all do it if they can win this weekend. If it happens, and of course we hope it will, this may be the first time in the history of the state three teams from the same county have appeared, or will appear in high school football’s big gest arena. Even Valdosta and Lowndes, with tons of state trophies and region cham pionship ban ners between them, won’t be able to match an accom plish m e n t of this scale. (Although to be fair, if they had three schools in the same area - and didn’t always play in the same region - they probably could.) That speaks loads to the quality of the coaches and players, along with the pro grams they have established here. So on Friday, we say: Here’s to the Demons, Bears and Eagles. Houston County is behind you and wishing you the best of luck. Go get 'em! Letter to the Edttor Greed wins with fees Your recent (Houston Daily Journal) editorial about SPLOSTs and impact fees and what is nec essary in Houston County to maintain our public schools was misleading. Impact fees are not designed to be the sole source of taxation for our county gov ernment. They should be implemented to supplement our SPLOSTs. It’s not either or! It’s both together. Other county governments in Georgia and Florida use impact fees successfully. Why shouldn’t new home owners help pay for the required infrastructure they create? To say that these new fees might deter growth is ridiculous! Developers and new homeowners are not paying their fair share of the costs of new schools and roads, et cetera. No one really believes that all these developers are going to refuse to create new subdivisions because of impact fees. Developers will just pass these new costs of fees on to the new buyers of homes. With 100,000 new vehicles on our county roads in the next few years because of our new residents we must smell the roses before it’s too late! Your editorial refuses to accept the realities of impact fees and sounds like something our local chamber of com merce would say! This is all about fairness versus greed. Greed is winning! Frank W. Gadbois, Warner Robins Worth Repeating “It’s not only what you do in politics. It’s what you appear to do.” John McCain 111 U. S. Senator (Republican, AZ) HOW TO SUBMIT LETTERS We encourage readers to submit letters to the editor. Letters should not exceed 350 words and must include the writer's name, address and telephone number. All letters printed in The Daily Journal will appear with the writer’s name and hometown - we do not publish anonymous letters. The news paper reserves the right to edit or reject letters for reasons of grammar, punctuation, taste and brevity. Letter writers are asked to submit no more than one letter per person per week. We cannot guarantee that a letter will be printed on a specific Idate. The Daily Journal prefers that letters be typed. Letters to the editor are published in the order they are received as space permits. There are three ways to submit a letter to the editor: E-mail it to hhj@evansnewspapers.com, mail it to The Houston Daily Journal at P.O. Box 1910, Perry, GA 31069, or drop it off at ; 1210 Washington St. in Perry - between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. ; Monday through Friday. Audrey Evans Vice President Marketing I Advertising Foy S. Evans Editor Emeritus Even Valdosta and Lowndes, with tons of state trophies and region championship banners between them, won't be able to match an accomplishment of this scale. (Although to be fair, if they had three schools in the same area - and didn't always play in the same region - they probably could.) Odd name can turn you Into a joke Last week I wrote an entreaty to expectant parents to think care fully before choosing baby names so that their kids won’t come back one day with swords, like conflicted charac ters in a Shakespearean tragedy. People do some crazy things when they’re trying to decide what to call Junior. Either they don’t care, or else they just realize passing along gosh awful names will be the last time they have any control over their kids. Some folks hit it just right when they name their babies, though. As proof, I give you Donald Duck’s nephews. Those three ducklings, whom you can tell apart only by the colors of their clothes, have tame names when taken separately but become works of art when lumped together: Huey, Dewey and Louie. You’ll notice that although Huey, Dewey and Louie are all spelled differ ently, they rhyme. (There’s an expres sion in grammar for such words - sight, cite and site, for instance - but let’s not spoil the moment with rules.) In the human world (sort of), certain names are odd enough to make their holders stand out in a crowd. Do you think Madonna, Cher and "Oh, this one definitely goes on the nice list ...he does all his shopping locally!" % Thankful I can't hear the teen buzz From across the Thanksgiving family feast, a family member asked me if I had heard of “the teen buzz ringtone?” “No, thank you,” I replied. “But I’ll have some more of that chocolate delight.” They asked again among the holiday clatter. “Have you heard of the teen buzz ringtone? People over 30 can’t hear it.” “You’re kidding me,” I responded. “It takes you 30 minutes to do the People magazine crossword? Thank you for making me feel brilliant. Now, if you’ll get out of my sight, I’ll also feel thin.” “No,” they said, maybe adding “dummy.” I don’t know. I couldn’t hear them. “Have you heard about this ringtone that people over the age of 30 can’t hear?” “What? Feeble or ancient cans smear? What does that mean?” Finally, in the quiet of the outdoors, I was able to converse, and listen, freely. They were telling me about a popu lar ringtone, called the teen buzz, or mosquito, ringtone, that folks over 30 apparently can’t hear. Last year, a British inventor, Howard Stapleton, came up with a high-fre quency buzzer to be used by London shopkeepers to keep teens from loi- OPINION Glynn Moore Columnist Morris News Service Shakira would have become known outside their own villages if they had been named Betty, Jane and Maria? They might have had to use their entire names like the rest of us or else make up monikers the way Bono, Sting and Prince did. It’s too bad that we can’t get celebri ties to toe the baby-name line before deciding to reproduce. In recent years, they have churned out children who will have to live with their parents’ questionable decisions to name them Seven Sirius, Puma, Zowie, Peaches Honeyblossom, Suri, Apple and Moxie Crime Fighter. Those poor babies. Some names are just right. Singer Jimmy Buffett used to call his type of music “gulf and western” (like country and western, see, but from Florida instead of Nashville). Len Robbins Columnist airpub@planttel.net tering at night. The product, called The Mosquito, could only be heard by young people because of a condition called presbycusis, also called aging ear. According to scientists (apparently, ones in high school), when people turn 20, they start losing their ability to hear these high frequencies. By 30, they can’t hear the pitch of the “mos quito ringtone.” Teens, being teens, have hijacked this technology for their own purposes. What are their purposes? No adults really know. They can’t hear it. But apparently, kids are using this ring tone on their phones for some type of hijinks. I can’t imagine how, and I really don’t want to know. So, after hearing some of this, I decided I needed to check it out for myself. I went home, plopped down in front of the computer, and called my 7-year- jtyi HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL He was playing with the name of a communications conglomerate often seen as movies began: “A Gulf Western Company.” Perfect. Another good play on words was used by Ford Motor Co. many decades ago. A two-door model was called the Tudor, a stately name. The four-door model? Fordor, of course. Tudor/two door, Fordor/four-door. Some people want to rename every sports team until they have wiped out every Indian, Brave, Colonel, Rebel and Warrior, not to mention anything from the animal kingdom (too cruel) or any team with “Fighting” in its name (too violent), or “Devil” (too devilish) or - well, you get the picture. Personally, I’d like to disband teams whose names don’t imply that their massive, screaming, energized players are out there to win. Heat, for instance, and Magic and Jazz. Moreover, all teams should be returned to the city where their names began. Grizzlies in Memphis? Lakers in Los Angeles? The aforementioned Jazz in Utah instead of New Orleans? Please. The name says it all. Reach Glynn Moore at glynn. moore@morris.com. old daughter to my side. I then called up mosquitoringtones.com and pressed the button to unleash the mysterious ringtone. “Can you hear it?”, I asked my daughter. “Sure,” she said. “Can you?” I turned my head, pointing my youngest ear in the direction of the computer. “Yes, yes, yes, I do!”, I exclaimed. “It sounds just like a train. And it’s get ting louder!” “No, Dad, that’s the train a few blocks away,” she sighed. “This sounds a whole lot higher. It sort of hurts your ears.” We tried it a few more times. Actually, 11. Once, my ears did detect what I thought to be a high-pitched squeal. But that could have just been my sons fighting unsupervised in the liv ing room. We’ll never know. So, now you know the teen buzz. I am in the process of purchasing this kid-unfriendly tone and plan to install it in an intercom system throughout the house. I’ll turn it up full blast in my bedroom for disturbance-free nap ping. Let the kids have their fun and games with their teen buzz tone. Aging ear has its advantages.