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Not the main attraction

High Point City Council shifted its municipal elections to even-numbered years when more voters would participate. It definitely will see a large turnout this November.

But more High Point voters will have fewer choices on their city ballots. When filing concluded Friday, Mayor Becky Smothers and Council members Bernita Sims in Ward 1, Michael Pugh in Ward 3, Bill Bencini in Ward 4 and Chris Whitley in Ward 5 were unopposed. The seats in Wards 2 and 6, where incumbents are retiring, are contested. And there are four candidates for two at-large seats.

The shortage of competition is disappointing but hardly surprising. With so much interest in state and national races, challengers for local offices likely would find it very difficult to win voters' attention.

Voting may be down in odd-numbered years, but wouldn't local candidates prefer to be the main attraction?

The water's just fine here

First, it was a shark scare.

Now a national study on the cleanliness of the nation's beaches includes some disquieting details about the kind of unsavory stuff spilling into the tasty blue waves washing ashore.

The good news is that North Carolina is not one of them.

The state's beaches rank among the cleaner ones, as do the beaches in neighboring Virginia.

Among all of the beaches rated in a study of pollution, only Alaska, New Hampshire and Delaware achieved better reviews for their water quality, the National Resources Defense Council noted.

Only 1 percent of the water samples collected at North Carolina beaches in 2007 violated public health standards, the NRDC report says.

Those pollutants generally come from bacteria contained in animal waste and sewage dumped from some boats directly into the ocean.

There is, of course, a flip side to the good news. One factor that kept North Carolina's coast so pristine was the lack of runoff because the state has been so starved for rainfall.

For every gray cloud, there's a blue sky lurking to make us miserable.

Not so fast

The Los Angeles City Council has supersized its objection to rising obesity rates. The council voted unanimously last week to impose a one-year ban on new fast-food restaurants in parts of that city.

We know, it sounds like a very California-like thing to do, but at least the intentions are good. The ban targets the poorest parts of the city, where few options exist beyond fast-food outlets and where obesity is especially rampant.

If approved by the mayor, the ordinance would put a moratorium on the construction of new fast-food outlets in a 32-square-mile area.

Would such a measure ever make it to Greensboro? Probably not, not only because it seems to overstep government's role in a competitive business market, but because the poorest parts of Greensboro don't have very many fast-food restaurants.

Even unhealthy amenities are missing there, especially in east Greensboro.

Dog repays human kindness

A homeless dog rescued on the streets of New York while hobbling on only three legs may return the kindness of his human friends. And then some.

Veterinary surgeons at N.C. State have fitted the German shepherd mix, named Cassidy Posovsky, with an artificial leg designed to fuse into his bones.

The surgeons already have performed the surgery successfully on two cats, but it's crucial to see if the procedure will work with a larger animal before moving on to human patients.

Kudos to the State surgeons and to Cassidy, whose restored ability to run on all fours would mean so much to countless numbers of wounded veterans and diabetics who have lost limbs to amputation.