Showing off: The Olympic torch run is a publicity stunt perhaps the world's most extravagant one ever. Like any good publicity stunt, its organizers want to attract attention. But hauling a fake Olympic torch up the slopes of the highest peak on the planet? Pardon us, please, but we think that's a little over the top. Mount Everest has lost much of its mystery in recent years, and scaling the mountain has become, largely, a commercial venture, not so much evidence of supreme endurance. Garbage and the remains of unlucky climbers litter its slopes. Now the Nepalese are threatening to shoot protesters who want to call attention to China's treatment of Tibetans as the torch is carried aloft. Why can't we leave Everest to the real mountaineers and accord her majesty some dignity?

No better than nothing: The federal Department of Education has spent $6 billion on a reading program for low-income elementary schools. Now a federal report shows that children without the Reading First program are reading just as well and improving as much as those with it. In fact, the expensive initiative, touted as a keystone of No Child Left Behind, has made no difference at all in how well children understand what they read. This is another indication that the federal government would do better to simply set standards and leave the nuts and bolts of education to the states.