By ANN BELSER, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Last summer, if Steve McGavran's sons were in the car, he could buy gasoline from only Exxon.

The gas station wasn't giving anything away. The McGavran boys -- Max, 6, and Jack, 8, of Lenexa, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City -- were playing a stock market game and had included Exxon Mobile Corp. in their pretend portfolio.

During the Great Depression, miners from Pittsburgh worked a reopened mine in Buttermilk Hollow, Pa., to help the needy. One hundred unemployed men mined an estimated 25 tons a day, using only hand tools, over a three-week period. The coal was dumped into a common bin and redistributed by hand and by truck.

It's all about dollar cost averaging.

That's when you invest the same amount, week after week or month after month for years, buying fewer shares when the market is high, more when it is low. Over time, there will be an average investment price for your money that has taken advantage of market lows.

Reality can be so problematic.

Despite the noble intentions of going green, the effects often can be at odds with the goals.

Ethanol seemed like a good idea, until the studies showed that growing the corn and converting it to ethanol used more petroleum than just burning gasoline in the first place. It also has the added detriment of contributing to higher food prices.

L.B. Foster has been having a great few years in its railroad division.

Stan L. Hasselbusch, the chief executive officer of the Green Tree, Pa.-based company, said the business was strong and, as fuel prices rise, looked to be getting stronger.

While employers are slashing benefits to save money, they are using other tactics to try to retain workers, according to a recent study.

In its "2008 National Study of Employers" the Families and Work Institute found that employees are more likely to stay with on the job if employers provide flexibility in the workplace.

Leave it to the lawyers to spoil the fun.

Accountants seem like party animals next to these guys, or at least when it comes to March Madness they do.

When reading the book "How to Self-Destruct" there is that moment, after pages and pages of laughing at the stupid things other people do in their careers, when the reader hits the prescient passage.

It is that moment when you look up from the pages and say, "Hey, how does this guy know me?"

He doesn't.

Maybe work conflicts would be easier to navigate if we could all just duke it out.

Imagine the meetings: Instead of disagreeing orally, a worker could lunge across the conference table, place the manager in a choke hold and demand that he say "Uncle."

Alas, work conflict is more subtle and hence a little more difficult to defuse.

The families who are able to chat via computer with loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan owe a debt of gratitude to a pornographer.

The politicians who post their videos on YouTube also need to thank the porn industry.