In its effort to capitalize on available state money, the City of Davenport is working quickly to finalize its first phase of the joint Rock Island/Davenport River Vision implementation. But chasing that money - the city plans to ask for $15 million from Iowa's Vision Iowa and Community Attractions & Tourism (CAT) programs - means the city council probably won't be giving itself or the public much time to study the plan's details, including its financing or a riverfront casino hotel that became part of the discussion only at the tail end of the process.

If Susan Esser had known what she was getting into, she might never have started the Quad Cities' speed-dating service. That first session, in April 2001, didn't go as smoothly as planned, as she was unsure how to facilitate the orderly flow of singles from one person to the next.

Federal Election Commission Chairperson Bradley A. Smith talks big. During a commencement address May 23 at Augustana College, he said, "It is a fact that under the Supreme Court's jurisprudence today, criticism of a congressman close to an election receives less constitutional protection than does Internet pornography, simulated child pornography, tobacco advertising, topless dancing, defamation, flag-burning, or burning a cross outside a black church.

Nick Clooney hit upon an interesting idea when he was approached about doing a book about film: that movies sometimes should be looked at outside the realm of entertainment. A persistent literary representative kept asking him to write a book, but he kept deferring because of his schedule as host of American Movie Classics.