An interesting point from a reader who identifies himself as a former copy editor at two newspapers:

"I am surprised that the Star's computer hasn't been told yet that Walmart is now one word, unhyphenated. It's been that way in ads and on stores, but still 'Wal-Mart' in my daily newspaper. How come?"

Yikes, this one's an error of consistency that several readers have noted. Karen Putman's barbecue team Flower of the Flames won the grand championship prize at Saturday's Great Lenexa Barbecue Battle.

Today's Letters page mistakenly labeled a photo as Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. The image actually pictured Sen. Charles "Chuck" Grassley, R-Iowa. As you see above, the men don't look much alike.

This is a problem that The Star and any other organization that uses digital photo archives runs into often. The full shot originally pictured both Baucus and Grassley, but somewhere along the line a photo editor had cropped it to show only Grassley. Unfortunately, the caption wasn't changed at the same time.

An anecdote: A couple of years ago, I tuned my car radio to a very well-known populist pundit as he held forth on the media. I thought I was going to run off the road when I heard this guy make a sweeping pronouncement: The Kansas City Star, "a far-left newspaper," had "never let the folks know" that George Tiller performed late-term abortions at his Wichita clinic.

Now, I'm fine with exaggeration as a rhetorical technique (though I think it's an awfully dangerous tool that leaves you open to ridicule when concrete examples give lie to your claims).

Those of you who work the Jumble in Star TV on Sundays noticed that there were two things missing this week: The bubble blanks at the bottom of the puzzle, and the answer key.

Long story short: The page designer cut off the bottom of the puzzle by accident. Here's the whole thing, along with its answer key.

Some readers noticed yesterday's Letters to the Editor contained an awfully inopportune entry: A writer wished that TV pitchman Billy Mays would "lose his obnoxious voice." Of course, we found out shortly after the paper was printed that Mays had been found dead yesterday morning.

There's now an editor's note on the online versions of the letter, though at least one reader asked The Star simply to remove it entirely.

I've heard from several senior citizen readers this week who read in AARP the Magazine that current Social Security budgets currently have no cost-of-living increases planned for 2010 and 2011 for many recipients.

"Why hasn't this been in The Star?" asked many of them.

A question from an e-mailer that I can't answer after consultation with several people who are interested in this kind of thing. Since I know the readers have vast memory banks, let me pose the question to you:

Here's a very interesting point from a reader who gets text alerts of breaking news from KansasCity.com. She received an alert Monday about an earthquake in Anchorage, Alaska. At the time of the text alert, the USGS was reporting it was a 5.7 magnitude quake, but they later revised it down to 5.4.