The first guinea pigs will be middle schoolers, notorious for their maturity, thick skins, concentration, and tech savvy. This is either (a) a green, paperless way to connect students and teachers with the conveniences of the Internet or (b) as crazy as giving each student a firearm, cell phone, squirt gun, an unlimited hall pass, and a six-pack of Coke.

Having no children in MCS, I don't know. But I have heard of very rare occasions in which email and social networks have been used for non-serious purposes as well as a tiny number of accidents and technical glitches. I would like to hear from parents and teachers on such Gaggle.Net reassurances as "the teacher is in charge," "safe, productive email for your students," "easy for the teacher to control unwanted SPAM, pornographic mail, etc."

Here are some more:

A C Wharton wants Morris to be the city attorney, replacing Elbert Jefferson. When Morris ran MLGW, the place was an island fortress, as hostile to the notebooks and cameras of the media as any agency in town. Sham public meetings. Severance packages for Morris and other top executives. The Herman Morris bobblehead doll. The confused reaction to Hurricane Elvis. Memphis Networx. The place needed fresh air. Willie Herenton got that one right.

So much that members gave point man Robert Lipscomb a round of applause.

So much that members didn't make any snarky comments about bait shops or the Bass Pro logo.

So much that Councilman Joe Brown praised Jeff Sanford of the Center City Commission for "guts, testicles, and balls" in a recent speech about the state of downtown.

The discussion item, a certain hot button topic, was added to the Personnel Committee agenda Monday. This will be the last scheduled council meeting with Myron Lowery as interim mayor. Lowery is a city charter expert and is running in the special mayoral election this month.

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Chief Administrative officer Jack Sammons said the amount at issue with Herenton is at least $73,000 that was paid to the former mayor in 2003 and subsequent years. The administration became aware of the information this week, he said.

In Lowery's view, the city charter intends that the job of mayor is a salaried executive position and the mayor and CAO are not eligible for extra pay for vacation days.

Shortly before sunset, the three bears — stop if you've heard this one — came out of their lair and into what must be bear heaven. They figured that out soon enough and spent an hour or two amusing the guests of Fred and Diane Smith, benefactors of the zoo's newest exhibit.

The city of Memphis and Shelby County hope so. A plan will be presented next week that puts a 50-cent bounty on old tires taken to the Shelby County Recycling Facility. It also cracks down on used-tire haulers who illegally dump hundreds of them at a time after picking through the ones they can resell.

The intent is laudable — beautification, blight removal, a little economic stimulus, and a small, potentially useful thing at a time when governments are strapped to do big things. But the economics are so brutal they could make can hunting or journalism seem attractive.

After a day of delays, private meetings, and tortured rationalizations, the council voted 7-4 to deny interim Mayor Myron Lowery's request to dismiss Jefferson, a holdover from the Herenton administration who became the summer's most improbable hot button issue.

There were 12,937 violent crimes in 2008 compared to 13,055 in 2007. Across the United States, violent crimes declined 1.9 percent in 2008, the FBI reported.

Mayor Myron Lowery has ended an agreement that paid lawyer Ricky Wilkins more than $2 million in three years.

Meanwhile, another Herenton loyalist, city attorney Elbert Jefferson, is hanging by a thread as he called in sick Tuesday, avoiding a scheduled meeting with Lowery.

Given the opportunity for the first time at a regular-season game, football fans bought $114,576 worth of beer at the Ole Miss-University of Memphis game Sunday afternoon.

What's plan B? An alternative preemptive runoff. It would require selflessness and statesmanship, but it would work and Memphis would be better off for it.

React, but don't overreact.

That was the consensus of a meeting at Clark Tower Thursday of about 75 East Memphis residents, public officials, police officers, and representatives of Malco's Paradiso movie theater to last Saturday's underage crowd that overflowed the parking lot and was dispersed by 23 police cars.

The one-hour meeting was low volume and even upbeat at times as public officials emphasized that crime is down overall in Memphis and the Paradiso is part of a healthy shopping and office center of 113 acres.

Developer Henry Turley still thinks so, as he told a group of real estate professionals at a luncheon at The Racquet Club this week. He says he's as committed to it as he was to HarborTown or Uptown or any of his projects, even though it is limbo with the interim mayor Myron Lowery and the Memphis City Council.

The basic vision of an amateur youth sports complex funded by $50 million in private capital and $75 million in tax rebates hasn't changed, but Turley said he has rethought some of the parts. For one thing, he now thinks the Coliseum should be demolished and eventually replaced with a multi-sports facility.

Coincidentally, Turley was speaking a few blocks from another common ground — the Paradiso movie theater — and three days after 23 police cars were called out Saturday night to control a crowd of more than 500 teenagers and others gathered in the theater's parking lot. He thinks Fair Ground could be a positive alternative "if we build a place so nice you have to play here."

The incident has prompted Malco to change its policy toward underage teens being dropped off by their parents. They will no longer be allowed in the building.

Police spokesman Karen Rudolph said an initial report that three squad cars responded was wrong. In fact, 23 cars responded, including every available car in three substations, plus special units. She said the crowd in the parking lot numbered at least 500 people between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., when police began closing entrances on Mendenhall, Sanderlin, and Poplar Avenue.

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The faux-Italianate Paradiso is a something-for-everyone multiplex that shares the parking lots west of Clark Tower with Houston’s, Ben and Jerry’s, Whole Foods, McAlister’s Deli, and other popular businesses. The center is common ground for different ages, races, high schools, and neighborhoods and is especially popular with teenagers. Patrons are accustomed to lines, traffic snarls, and crowds of kids hanging around outside, but Saturday was different.

Rudolph said one possibility is that two horror movies showing that night were sold out, leaving hundreds of teens with nothing to do and time to kill. But Ann Forbis, who was there for a 7 p.m. movie, is skeptical.

“It takes a lot to rattle my cage but that rattled me big time,” she said. “We could not go out the exit door, the lobby was packed, and there was an ocean of kids outside and cars cruising in the parking lot. They were not in line and were not there to see a movie. If I had been a parent trying to pick up my girls I would have been mortified.”

As she and two friends walked to their car, they saw a group of young men on the ground and thought that someone was hurt or performing CPR. When they got closer they saw “six or eight guys were shooting dice.”

Rumors began spreading Saturday night and Sunday. Cyndi Blair, who lives in East Memphis, said people on her neighborhood watch have been talking about a “fight club” outbreak. A man leaving the theater broke up a fight between two girls that was being videotaped. He reported that three security guards were “trying in vain” to tell people to disperse. A police report that night says 10 teens were charged with misconduct for fighting.

Jane Williams, an East Memphis resident, said there’s a lot of buzz among neighborhood groups.

“We are now being urged to e-mail Mayor Lowery to see if we can get him to make a public statement and take action. What upsets many of us is that incidents like this in the Paradiso and Ben and Jerry’s area have gone unreported for at least six weeks. This is dangerous.”

Malco spokesman James Tashie said the crowd was drawn by a promotional flyer sent out by a local disc jockey touting the R-rated horror movies Halloween and Final Destination. Malco employees are instructed to card young people and deny them a ticket if they are underage, but teens skirt the policy by having someone else buy a ticket for them.

The flyer from “G. Webb & S.O.H.K." touts “Hanging With The Stars Part 2” at Paradiso “08.29.09.”

“We were aware of it (the promotional flyer) and beefed up our security but had no idea it was going to bring in such a large number of underage kids,” Tashie said. “Parents are dropping kids off and they are not old enough to go to the movie, so they are out there for two or three hours with nowhere to go.”

Malco executives have been meeting about the incident for two days. They say they believe the Paradiso is drawing some of the rougher segments of the crowd that went to the Muvico theater downtown in Peabody Place before it closed. “We are going to hit [the situation] with all the firepower we have, because our investment there is so great,” Tashie said. “We don’t have car break-ins or muggings. The perception is worse than the reality.”