The Left Lane
Hotel crib safety tips

The problems included loose hardware; too-soft bedding, which could cause suffocation; and adult-sized sheets that posed strangling and suffocation hazards.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts is responding by distributing new cribs at more than 300 hotels, while employees at Westin, Sheraton and Four Points by Sheraton hotels are being trained in crib safety.

What they're being taught: Cribs should not be placed near lamps, dangling cords, ribbons, windows, fans, heaters or climbable furniture; bumper pads should not be punctured or torn, because a torn plastic cover may end up suffocating a baby; and there should be no split, cracked, broken, loose or missing slats on the crib.

College-bound girls

Many more high school girls than boys intend to earn a college degree, suggesting the recent drop-off in male college enrollments is likely to continue, a new report says.

In 1998, the latest year available, 46 percent of U.S. college freshmen were men, down from 55 percent in 1970.

More boys and girls want a college education, but girls' expectations have grown more dramatically in the past two decades, says sociologist John Reynolds of Florida State University in Tallahassee.

Americans should be concerned about adolescent boys' declining school performance and college enrollment, says Harvard Medical School psychologist William Pollack, author of "Real Boys' Voices." "These boys say they feel an endless pressure to succeed, and when they look at men who represent success, they're hurtful workaholics who have to squelch their emotions," Pollack says. "These boys are saying they're no longer interested in being pushed along on the track they were put onto as 5-year-olds."

Here's a local bit of trivia to ponder: Over the past 40 years, the Big Island's population has increased by about 29,000 people every 10 years, according to a new report prepared by the Hawai'i County Planning Office.

Here's how the Island population growth breaks down: 1970: 63,000. 1980: 92,000. 1990: 120,000. 2000: 149,000.

Of course, if you know statistics, you know that means the rate of the county's growth actually is slowing. It has something to do with the number of new people remaining the same, but being a smaller percentage of the total number of residents.

Furthermore, the planning office says, only about one-third of the arrivals each year (about 10,000 people) are because of local births. The other two-thirds are people moving to the Big Island from somewhere else.