From Marian Denis Carter of Mt. Lebanon, in a note to the Post-Gazette:

I'm tired of the lake effect

And snow up to my freezing neck.

What happened to that dire warning

Of melting ice

And global warming?

Where are you

When we need you most?

In the Arctic ...

Warm as toast!

Dave Juliette at One Man's Tofu took issue with last week's Forum package featuring an "independent progressive" fed up with Democrats and a "conservative independent" fed up with Republicans. Mr. Juliette is fed up with independents, and he especially upbraided the Democrat-basher:

"Grow up. Here at OMT, we knew that President Obama and the Democrats weren't going to be able to just snap their fingers and within six months the entire carnage wrought by eight years of the Bush administration would be reversed and we'd be well on our way by this time to Great Society II. We live in a complicated world, and it doesn't help that everything that made America great in the first eight decades of the 20th century was squandered and trashed in the last two. There are no easy solutions. And you can't get upset and run home every time the ref makes some call that goes against you."

Laura Flanders at Alternet.org: "In his State of the Union, President Obama scored some laughs early on with his comment that the bank bailout was 'about as popular as a root canal.'

"... Personally, I would have hated the bailout less if it had actually done the work of a root canal ...

"What do dental surgeons do? They dig deep, eliminate infection, clear the sick places out and protect the decontaminated tooth from future infection. ... That's an almost flawless list of all the things the bank bailout failed to do. Perhaps because, from everything we've learned since, the surgeons in the bailout were themselves infected."

Dean Baker in Boston Review: "Wall Street bankers ... like to think of themselves as swashbuckling capitalists. They battle cutthroat competition with one hand and oppressive government bureaucracy with the other. In reality, the financial industry is deeply dependent on the government. Far from the rugged, go-it-alone types they wish they were, they are more like well-dressed, coddled adolescents. And this is true in good times and bad. The industry's dependency takes five main forms:

• an explicit safety net provided by government deposit insurance;

• an implicit safety net provided by 'too big to fail';

• an open invitation to raid state and local governments for fees;

• a right to change contract terms after the fact;

• a special privilege of being the only untaxed casino."

Often, rejection.

From ForeignPolicy.com: "Despite having served for years as a distinguished Pakistani diplomat, Akbar Zeb reportedly cannot receive accreditation as Pakistan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The reason, apparently, has nothing to do with his credentials, and everything to do with his name, which, in Arabic, translates to "biggest [male appendage]."

This wasn't Mr. Zeb's first rejection, which led ForeignPolicy to speculate: "One can only assume that submitting Zeb's name to a number of Arabic-speaking countries is some unique form of punishment designed by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry."

Pop City's New Girl offers a list from readers of "What Pittsburgh Needs," which includes outdoor food vendors, taxis and "mo betta jazz." Mike Madision at Pittsblog adds his own. Among them: Build a "back end" onto the Pittsburgh Promise and provide loans for Pittsburgh college grads to start businesses.

PG staff writer Mark Roth sends a note around the newsroom each month offering ideas or posing questions that the paper might want to explore. I'd like to put this one to readers to see if someone has a cutting-edge explanation:

Why do dogs spin around before they sit down?

If you know, or have a theory, e-mail me at the address below.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.