ROSES to Zoe Smith, a local fifth-grader who has launched an ambitious plan to help make life easier for some people she's never met on the other side of the globe.

Zoe, 10, wants to raise $5,000 by the time she turns 12 -- a little more than a year from now -- to buy 15 pairs of animals through Heifer International. The nonprofit organization tackles global hunger and poverty by providing livestock, plants and agriculture training to people in need around the world.

Zoe plans to sell lemonade and cookies, make and sell jewelry, and request donations to the cause instead of birthday presents.

It's a wonderful, selfless project, and we hope that, especially at this time of year, it inspires others to make a little extra effort to lend a hand to somebody who needs one.


RASPBERRIES to UNC for giving football coach Butch Davis a raise of nearly $300,000 after a single year on the job.

Stop and consider that amount -- $291,000, to be precise -- for a moment. Take the average annual salary of two full professors at UNC, add them together and you still come up well short of Davis' raise alone.

Well, you might think, he must have had a great season to deserve a bump like that.

The Tar Heels played 12 games this year. They won four of them.

Which is actually OK. Carolina was more competitive than it has been in a number of years, and we agree with athletic director Dick Baddour that Davis appears to have the team on the right track and has earned the confidence of players, recruits, fans and administration. Our guess is that in another year or two, Carolina might be back on the plus side of the W-L column and competing to nudge its way into the bowl picture.

But that's just a guess. If and when that happens, then you take a look at rewarding that effort and success.

But Carolina gave Davis a generous salary and benefits package to begin with when it hired him just last year. If Davis earned an additional $291,000 this year, when his team lost twice as many games as it won, what kind of hike are we talking about next year, and the year after that, especially if the team starts winning more?

Whenever a new coach comes on, everybody counsels patience, because one year isn't long enough to judge performance. That's true. It isn't long enough to justify a huge pay hike, either.


ROSES to the members of Mindstorms Team 2255 who gave the town of Chapel Hill a recent report on their activities.

Mindstorm Team 2255 -- sounds like a group of superheroes dedicated to fighting intergalactic evil.

Well, sort of. It's a group of kids who use math, science and technology to solve real-life problems, and this particular bunch turned their considerable brain power to the task of conducting an energy audit of the town's main police station.

They inspected the heating and air-conditioning system, windows, lighting insulation and other features of the building. Last week they presented their findings and made recommendations to the Town Council.

Marlow Durbin, for example, said the building's "HVAC system is obviously not working efficiently." He advised replacing it with geothermal technology, which he calculated could save the town about $8,000 per year. "A geothermal system uses next to no electricity," he told the council. "That's a lot of money saved for the town and taxpayers."

Did we mention that Marlow is 11 years old?