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If you want to appear smarter when you're watching Jeopardy tonight, here's a quick cheatsheet: this famous photo is part of one of the answers.

The question? "What is....?"

Well, I don't know. I just know that the photo by Jack Moebes of Day 2 of the Greensboro sit-ins at the Woolworth's downtown is part of the answer because the show's producers requested the rights to use it. Seated left to right are Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Billy Smith and Clarence Henderson. You'll note that these are not the original Greensboro Four. McNeil and McCain sat at the lunch counter on Feb. 1, 1960. Here are the original four leaving that day.

Spend a little time on this site and you'll be ready to impress your friends with your sense of history.

Seth Godin outlines eight ways to lose an argument online. They're pretty obvious, once you think about it. If you imagine someone employing any of these in person, you can see why they don't work to his benefit. He simply comes off as overbearing and obnoxious.

But you can read their use throughout the blogs and story comment fields. I've shortened them below, and it's worth reading the whole thing.

1. Have an argument.
2.Forget the pitfalls of Godwin's law.
3.Use faulty analogies.
4.Question motives.
5.Act anonymously.
6.Threaten to take action in another venue.
7.Bring up the slippery slope.
8.Go to the edges.

He includes his suggestions for ways to win an argument, too. My favorite: Smile.

Almost every day, I hear from people who tell me why newspapers are losing circulation. They cite:

* We're too liberal or too conservative.

* We've got too little local news or not enough national news.

* We're in bed with the power structure or antagonistic to the power structure.

* We're moving too slowly or too quickly away from the way things have always been done.

While all those things have probably contributed in minor ways, they aren't really it.

Steve Smith, one of the more progressive editors in the country until he resigned his position in Spokane last year, posted a speech he gave that addresses what's happened in the newspaper business. While I don't agree with everything he says, he describes the causes of circulation losses clearly and, I believe, accurately.

It isn’t about content, mostly — research tells us that. The social and technological forces simply proved insurmountable.

Still, we can argue that industry leaders in both print and broadcast failed to understand or embrace new business models or that their experiments were the wrong experiments at the wrong time. But they were not blind to their changing circumstances.

At the turn of this century, at the dawn of the decade, the steady, progressive loss of print readership and circulation began to accelerate, driven now by the digital explosion and the proliferation of competitors. Some, such as Craigslist, struck at the heart of the legacy media advertising base. Information aggregators who, let’s be honest, steal the work of others and distribute it without paying for its creation, contributed to the devaluation of news and information, creating the digital-era myth that information is free.

Meanwhile, the growth of cable and satellite TV, channel proliferation and market fragmentation, competition from PCs and video games…all of that contributed to accelerating declines in the audience for traditional TV news.

Simultaneously, changes in the marketplace began to erode, at a pace far faster than expected, the financial foundations of traditional news organizations, particularly newspapers.

Changing buyer habits have all but destroyed the department store culture that was the bedrock of a newspaper’s revenue stream. Discount chains such as Wal-Mart and Costco are now the retail leaders. And these chains have foresworn traditional print advertising in favor of direct mail and word of mouth (Costco) and cheap inserts and television (Wal-Mart).

He proceeds to talk about journalism's future, its challenges and opportunities. It's a long read, but it moves quickly. And most of it can apply to Greensboro.

A nice story:

On Tuesday, we published a story on the front page about Greensboro Urban Ministry's need for $100,000 to operate its emergency shelters.

This morning, Mike Aiken, the executive director of Urban Ministry, sent out an e-mail reminding folks of the annual Feast of Caring that included this note:

The Feast of Caring started the day with some very good news! The Bank of America Foundation just awarded Urban Ministry $12,500 for the WE shelters. In addition, a $1,000 check was received in the mail from an individual who scratched through the $100,000 needed headline in the newspaper and wrote in $99,000. (Bold added.)

Another reason to love our readers.

We've discussed before whether criminals read newspapers. Honestly, I have no idea, which means I can argue it either way.

But here's a Sheriff's Department in Wisconsin that thinks they do, according to a TV news report. At least the smart ones.

Burglars are using information from the newspaper to hit homes where they know no one will be home. Last night we told you about burglars in Stoughton who police believe are checking the obituaries and targeting people at funerals.

Tonight we have evidence that the problem is spreading across Dane County and the thieves responsible are taking any information they can get from the newspaper.

For years, I've heard about this. We have had friends housesit when we have attended family funerals.

Snopes addresses it, too. 

I'm always amused when people who disagree with me tell me what I am really thinking or why I really did something. On Twitter, I asked if there was a technical name for this type of argument, other than specious. What I discovered, of course, is that everyone's a jokester: 

LadySiren: "Sounds like a job for the Psychic Frenemities Network"

Haikuhijinks: "Argu-meants"

And for the win, kevglobal: "Clair-annoyance"

When the mayor-elect suggested a retired general would be a good choice as police chief, I assumed he was merely thinking outside the box to inspire his fellow council members to think more creatively. I didn't think he was serious. After all, while they may be expert at many things, military leaders aren't necessarily known for crime fighting and crime prevention, unless they've been MPs. And they aren't known for cutting spending either, which is another of the council's aims.

I do admit, though, that I relish the idea of a retired general in charge. Can you imagine some of the exchanges between the retired general and the council?

Then I remembered that Greensboro already has a well-decorated general in its midst, Gen. Nathanael Greene. Some may think he's dead, but they would be wrong. He's alive, well and engaged with what's going on in Greensboro. He's responsive to people, and best of all, he was "one of the most trusted generals in the Revolutionary War." Isn't that what people think we need? Heck, we already have a statue of him downtown.

Perfect choice.

To send everyone into the weekend on a positive note, check out the Joke's on You. It is routinely one of the best features in the Friday paper and Web site. The smiles multiply on the blog because all of the cartoon captions are listed, and we're talking hundreds of entries. (With due respect to Tim and his sick sense of humor, he doesn't always pick the best ones.)

The feature has now crossed the pond two weeks in a row: one entry from a 14-year-old in Northern Ireland and one from a man from Brighton, England.

Keep them coming.

If you're a regular reader of this Web site -- or just about any other news Web site for that matter -- you're used to commenters going all postal on other commenters, people mentioned in stories and us. (Examples from today.)

Whenever we think people have gone beyond the pale, we delete their comments. We probably don't delete enough of them. They then respond by calling us censors and worse. (Doesn't hurt our feelings.) When we know a story will set off the worse in us, we don't open it for comments at all.

So, commenters who get their jollies by insulting others need to be aware that more and more people who are more thin-skinned than others are reading comments. And doing something about it.

When we began publishing the break-in map, a few readers wrote in requesting we publish a list of everyone arrested each week, too.

In the trade, that’s called a crime blotter. Lots of newspapers publish them.

We don’t.

We know that arrests are public information, and a list of them every week would certainly be well-read. That’s the allure of crime blotters.

I see the delicious gossipy value of being able to read the names of everyone arrested. Problem is, I don’t see any public service value of publishing a list of them in the newspaper. And, out of fairness, if we write about a person’s arrest, don’t we have an obligation to write about the disposition of his case? Some of these folks are acquitted, after all. We have a hard enough time trying to keep up with arrests we do publish. Doing it for the dozens of arrests made each week would strain a staff the size of the New York Times, much less ours.

I know we publish "Guilford County's Most Wanted," which some may say is the same thing. I consider it different. Those are folks who law enforcement officers are looking for.

If you're interested, the Greensboro Police Department provides a nifty service online. Browsing through a few days certainly gives you an idea of how the police department must spend its time. Sad, really.