AFTER Vice President Dick Cheney made his disgusting "joke" about West Virginia inbreeding, the Slate Web site explained how the Mountain State got such a reputation. It said "yellow journalism" reporters in the 1880s and 1890s traveled through Appalachia, writing grossly exaggerated accounts of mountain backwardness. It said anthropologist Robert Tincher studied 140 years of marriage records and wrote a 1980 report concluding that "inbreeding levels in Appalachia" are no worse than "those reported for populations elsewhere or at earlier periods in American history."

Charleston scene: An ATV rider buzzing along Oakridge Drive, ignoring the county ordinance against using the hill buggies on paved roads.

When Steve McCarus was a 6-year-old boy in Charleston's East End, his uncle, Lester Yerrid, wrote "Dr. Steve McCarus" in the concrete of a sidewalk on Washington Street, a Sandy Wells profile recounted. The boy walked over that message to school each day - and grew to become a major physician. What a wonderful inspiration to devise for a child.

Back in the era before National Merit Scholarships, one of America's biggest student prizes was the Pepsi-Cola scholarship program. In 1948, West Virginia's three winners were: Robert Bornmann of Stonewall Jackson High School, who went to Harvard University and became a Navy physician; Nathan Silvin of Fairmont, who became a Pennsylvania university professor; and Martha Nash of Bluefield, sister of John Forbes Nash Jr., the math genius who won a Nobel Prize.

AFTER Vice President Dick Cheney made his disgusting "joke" about West Virginia inbreeding, the Slate Web site explained how the Mountain State got such a reputation. It said "yellow journalism" reporters in the 1880s and 1890s traveled through Appalachia, writing grossly exaggerated accounts of mountain backwardness. It said anthropologist Robert Tincher studied 140 years of marriage records and wrote a 1980 report concluding that "inbreeding levels in Appalachia" are no worse than "those reported for populations elsewhere or at earlier periods in American history."

Charleston scene: An ATV rider buzzing along Oakridge Drive, ignoring the county ordinance against using the hill buggies on paved roads.

When Steve McCarus was a 6-year-old boy in Charleston's East End, his uncle, Lester Yerrid, wrote "Dr. Steve McCarus" in the concrete of a sidewalk on Washington Street, a Sandy Wells profile recounted. The boy walked over that message to school each day - and grew to become a major physician. What a wonderful inspiration to devise for a child.

Back in the era before National Merit Scholarships, one of America's biggest student prizes was the Pepsi-Cola scholarship program. In 1948, West Virginia's three winners were: Robert Bornmann of Stonewall Jackson High School, who went to Harvard University and became a Navy physician; Nathan Silvin of Fairmont, who became a Pennsylvania university professor; and Martha Nash of Bluefield, sister of John Forbes Nash Jr., the math genius who won a Nobel Prize.

A new "CW" television station is coming to Charleston. In case you didn't know, CW is a broadcast network formed in 2006 by CBS and Warner Brothers.

Last week, we listed five former Bush administration officials who left and wrote bitter books attacking the White House. We forgot to mention ex-EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman, who wrote It's My Party, Too, complaining that the president is aligned with far-right "social fundamentalists" who pushed the GOP toward gay-hating, gun-loving, abortion-hating narrowness.

Bearing arms in West Virginia: Alphonso "A.J." Harper II, 24, of Charleston, has been charged in the drive-by shooting of two 17-year-olds in Charleston's East End.

Kanawha Valley residents, pinched by high gas prices, are taking the bus more often. In March, KRT had 201,428 passengers, almost 4,000 more than in March 2007 and 6,000 more than March 2006. KRT could end the year with 100,000 more passengers than during the previous year. This is good news, because bus riding saves gasoline, money and pollution.