Was on an airplane flight recently.

There was a full-page ad in the in-flight magazine:

“Live forever. Take HGH!”

I couldn’t possibly make that up.

The whole ad extolled the virtues of HGH

If you’re wondering, HGH (human growth hormone) is one of the substances on the banned performance enhancing drugs list for most sports.

Yet here was this magazine ad saying it’s the greatest medical advancement since antibiotics.

Some say that at some point down the road most humans will take some form of what sports consider “performance enhancing drugs” as a way to live longer, healthier lives.

I’m not sure I’m buying that. The long-term consequences of putting any kind of drug in my system scares me. I avoid taking aspirin for headaches, much less anything stronger, unless I absolutely must.

It was just funny to me that we vilify athletes who take HGH, but the makers of HGH say we should all do it.

Maybe we’re not far from an athlete suing an airline, saying they only failed a drug test because they saw the magazine ad.

Two Pace High administrators are in legal hot water after allegedly violating a court order prohibiting the promotion of religion in Santa Rosa County schools.

Here’s the full report.

This news, in combination with a NWF Daily News Spouter who says the ACLU recently got involved in a case to allow Muslim prisoners to have the right to pray in prison, has me wondering — maybe the organization should change its name to “Anti-Christian Lawyers Association.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard about the ACLU taking up the civil liberties of someone who wants to protect their right to express their Christian faith.

I personally don’t think any kind of prayer has any place in taxpayer funded places. Reason: If you allow a Christian prayer, then you have no choice but to allow, say, a Satanic prayer as well. Better to not have either in public, and let people worship in their own way in private.

But why is the ACLU so insistent on taking the side of those who don’t wish to see Christian prayer in school? Aren’t the administrators in this case also having their civil liberties restricted? Shouldn’t the ACLU have a lawyer on both sides?

Post your thoughts below, or follow up on this thread at the Crestview Chatter, our new online message board.

The Laurel Hill city council already has approved a lower millage rate for the 2009-10 fiscal year, and at least two members of the Crestview city council want to do that same.

What should the final number be? Has any citizen out there actually crunched some numbers and said, ‘We can cut the millage to (fill in number here). It will reduce the city’s budget by (fill in another number here), but we can do without (fill in programs here).”

If you can complete that sentence for either city or for Okaloosa County, we’d love to hear from you, or post your thought at the ‘Crestview Chatter’ message board.

I had an opportunity to sit down for an extended interview with North Okaloosa Medical Center CEO David Sanders last week.

You can read the full interview in our “Crestview MD” medical directory special section in the July 25 edition of the Crestview News Bulletin.

To me, Sanders’ most noteworthy comments from the interview were these:

“a lot of the things we may have had opportunities in, we fixed those”

and

“So we have fixed a lot of our opportunities, and then we have done an effective job of communicating that. ”

At first glance, those comments probably make no sense.

However, substitute the word “problems” where Sanders says opportunities and see how it sounds.

Makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it?

I can tell you from the context of the conversation, Sanders was using the word “opportunities” to describe what most of us would call “problems.”

I hear a lot of people talk about turning problems into opportunities.

Sanders might well be the first person I’ve ever met who has truly made that philosophy a part of his everyday vocabulary.

The News Bulletin launched a new feature last week.

You can access our new online message boards at http://forums.crestviewbulletin.com/.

I encourage you to try that link and take a look at the new message boards. News Bulletin staffers will be active participants in these conversations. We’ll also be diligent in making sure the conversations don’t devolve into anonymous attacks.

Please take a look. If you see a message that catches your attention, leave a message of your own. If you have a topic worthy of discussion, post it for others to weigh in.

I look forward to hearing your feedback.

‘Mike Jackson dead’ was the text message I got from my wife at about 5 p.m. this past Thursday.

I hoped it was an error. CNN merely reported ‘Michael Jackson hospitalized’ for the next half hour or so before Jackson’s passing was confirmed.

I’m not here to worship “St. Michael.” Let’s remember he wasn’t a saint, but let’s also remember her was the absolute best at what he did in the 1980s.

Jackson was reared in Indiana (Gary, to be precise), so we Hoosiers always kinda claimed him as one of our own

A few memories:

• A popular joke in the area where I grew up in the mid-1980s was “What do (stone-handed Cincinnati Reds left fielder) Dave Parker and Michael Jackson have in common? They both wear one glove for no apparent reason.”

• Jackson still having enough star power in the early 1990s that our whole basketball team bus would go silent when his “Black or White” came on the radio

• Me never being able to hear the song, “Bad,” from Jackson’s late-1980s album of the same name. Never could find it when it was released (FM radio was a rarity in the Wright household at the time). Missed it twice during a Jackson video retrospective Saturday on VH1.

A common misconception about newspapers in general and the Crestview News Bulletin in particular is that if we publish an opinion on our opinion page, it means the paper endorses that opinion.

That’s rarely the case, even if the opinion is from a CNB staff member. The goal of the opinion page is to present as wide an array of views as possible. Pretty much the only restrictions are that you can’t advocate a crime, you can’t advertise and you can’t lie.

For a while we stuck a “this opinion is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Crestview News Bulletin” disclaimer in front of every column. I stopped doing so, not because the columns now do represent the opinion of the Crestview News Bulletin, but because I felt stupid putting the same disclaimer in front of every column.

What would be a better way to get that point across? Post the disclaimer in the middle of the page each week? Post it on every story? Don’t post it at all?

Let’s hear your thoughts.

Rather frequently we get a call from someone reporting the poor condition of their road.

We did recently post a photo of Okaloosa Lane, as people almost certainly will make added use of the road when Shoal River Middle School and Riverside Elementary open next fall.

Suffice it to say, there are more than 200 miles of dirt roads in Okaloosa County, and many of them are problematic.

What are the worst roads in the county? Why is yours the worst road? We’ll consider your input on future stories.

Can it all be fixed? Not in the short term. The price tag would be staggering and people would have to be willing to accept either a complete restructuring of the typical county budget or a massive tax increase.

In the meantime, we can point out the trouble spots.

Just wanted to take a moment to apologize to readers for a couple of typos on the front page of the May 30 edition of the Crestview News Bulletin.

No factual errors. Just bad spelling that should have been caught.

The irony: The night before the proofreading of that newspaper was spent watching the national spelling bee.

Too bad “Laodicean” (the winning word at the spelling bee) wasn’t used in the May 30 paper. Wouldn’t have missed that one.

Among the many interesting reader comments posted on the www.crestviewbulletin.com Web site in response to a brief article on the May 26 Crestview city council meeting was this leadoff hit:

“Funny how the meeting ended after 7 and this is already posted.”

If you read the whole comment, you’ll see it wasn’t intended as a compliment.

The story was posted at 8:59 p.m. (If any of you check the story on our Web site it will say 9:59 p.m.; our site is on Eastern time).

All I have to say is, I’m sorry it took so long.

In today’s high-tech age, the sooner a big story goes up, the better.

I think the commenter was implying the story got special treatment to get posted so quickly.

If that’s the case, we also gave special treatment to a house fire Wednesday in Crestview (fire was reported at about 2 p.m.; story was posted by 4 p.m.) and to the May Day and Military Appreciation activities Saturday (photo galleries posted by 4 p.m. on Saturday immediately after the morning and early-afternoon activities), among others

No, we don’t always post government meeting articles immediately after the fact. If the biggest news from a council meeting is, say, passing of a resolution in support of the F-35 (as was the case earlier this spring), then I feel comfortable eating supper and sleeping first and posting the news first thing in the morning.

But if it’s big story, we’re going to post the information as soon as we can.