What's in a name?: O.K. So maybe "Orchard Hills" is no longer a proper name for the berg now known as North Salt Lake, given that most of the orchards that used to adorn those hills are long gone. But giving the city a name with a little more of an independent identity from its larger cousin to the south is still a good idea. Because City Council members were unsure what to change the name to, and because any decision made now wouldn't fit the legal window for a possible referendum, they punted the question into next year. Plenty of time for a contest.

Banning stupidity: It is a sad commentary on our times when a federal agency has to bother to ban a practice that on its face seems so stupid and dangerous that a prohibition should be redundant. Yet the National Park Service has had to announce that, henceforth, the practice of kite tubing will no longer be permitted at Lake Powell. That's where someone sits in a large, round, inflatable device being towed by a fast-moving boat and becomes airborne by up to 60 feet. Until, that is, something goes wrong and person and tube crash into the water. That "sport" has seriously injured four people at Lake Powell since April and killed at least one man in Texas. Stay tuned for the rule against looking down the barrel of a loaded gun.

Bush's sanctuary: Despite what his political enemies might think, it appears that President Bush can be educated on important topics. Over dinner and a movie with ocean explorer and filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau in April, the president reportedly decided that an uninhabited stretch of the Hawaiian Islands, 100 miles wide and 1,400 miles long, needed protecting. So Thursday he ordered national monument status for the home of some 7,000 species, a quarter of which are found nowhere else. As long as the Kane County Commission doesn't get wind of this, this stands to be one of the president's better environmental legacies.