Al's Morning Meeting

The Real Cost of Doing It Yourself

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I got this note from Al's Morning Meeting reader Alison Hewitt, a staff writer at the San Gabriel (Calif.) Valley Tribune:

I'm a regular reader of your Morning Meeting and got the idea to research the following story from one of your postings: Turns out more do-it-yourselfers are injuring themselves with their power tools -- especially saws -- than used to 5 to 10 years ago. Doctors and industry folks say it's because power tools are cheaper, hiring someone else is increasingly expensive, do-it-yourself TV shows are winning more followers, and people like to skip the safety steps. Here are the links to the articles:

• "The power to harm"

• "What to do when it's more than an owie"

The Great Kidney Hoax

Remember that Dutch "reality TV show" in which a woman was going to choose a contestant to whom she would donate a kidney? As the show aired Friday night, it became clear the entire idea was a giant hoax. The "donor" was an actress, but the patients who were competing for the kidney were real and still need kidneys. All of the participants knew it was a hoax but hoped the publicity over the show would increase awareness for their cause.

Manual Lawnmower Comeback

The Associated Press includes this passage in a story about those reel hand-powered lawn mowers making a comeback:

"It's phenomenal," said Teri McClain, inside sales administrator at the 112-year-old American Lawn Mower Co. in Shelbyville, Ind., which she said is the only manufacturer of reel mowers in the United States. "Sales continue to rise every year."

Phenomenal might be a little strong. Exact statistics aren't available, but McClain estimates 350,000 manual mowers are sold in the United States each year -- most made by her company. That is just a fraction of the 6 million gas-powered walk-behind mowers that hit the market last year.

Still, that number is about 100,000 more than were sold just five years ago and seven times as many as the estimated 50,000 a year sold in the 1980s, McClain said.

Turning Chicken Manure Into Cash

Chicken farmers who used to beg people to take away their farms' manure are now selling it for $7.50 a cubic yard. Organic farmers need organic fertilizer.

Clotheslines: The Ultimate Green

A Canadian politician wants to make it legal for Nova Scotians to install clotheslines in subdivisions where they are currently forbidden. Click here to see ways to save energy when drying clothes.

Al's Morning Multimedia: Cool Sites

Tech reporter Bob Bicknell at KYW Newsradio 1060 in Philadelphia posts a nice collection of cool, unusual and useful Web sites you may have never heard of. Among them:

• TechPresident.com -- One of the many sites following the candidates on their marathon journey toward the primaries and the White House is TechPresident.com.

Most interesting here is how the site tracks the candidates' MySpace.com pages and the number of viewings they get on YouTube.com.

• ClinicalTrials.gov -- For anyone who's been diagnosed with any disease or disorder, the promise of a clinical trial offers the hope of a new and perhaps better treatment. That's where this site comes in.

ClinicalTrials.gov is run by the National Institutes of Health and can link you to help that you might not otherwise get.

• DoMyStuff.com -- This site promises to help you "outsource your life." Here's where you can put your chores and errands up for bidding. Others can then browse the job, see what you're willing to pay for it, and "bid" on their own to take that job.

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.