If you have a chance to see Jim Carrey’s “A Christmas Carol” this
season, do, particularly if it’s the 3-D version in an IMAX  theater. Locally, it is showing at the Flagship Cinemas in Lewiston and Auburn.

The special effects are stunning, and the oft-told story still brings a tear to the eye.

Our bright idea would be to allow all Wall Street swindlers,
particularly Bernard Madoff, out of jail for an afternoon to see the
movie.

Perhaps they would recognize themselves in the frightening form of
Ebeneezer Scrooge’s deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, whose
partially decomposed ghost shows up late at night in Scrooge’s
bedchamber.

You’ve probably forgotten how the giant chains, draped and locked
around his body, are attached to heavy money boxes that he throws
before him as he travels. “I wear the chain I forged in life,” he
thunders. “I made it link by link and yard by yard.”

Finally, Marley leaves via an open window. Standing at the sill,
Scrooge sees dozens of such tormented, wailing souls, all trying to rise toward
heaven, but bound to the Earth by their weighty chains and cash boxes.

We can only hope some of our modern-day Marleys suffer a similar fate.

Yes, there is evil aplenty on the World Wide Web. At the same time, people keep finding useful, creative ways to use technology.

www.localchores.com is one such effort, a site that tries to connect local teens with chores and help them earn money. Decades ago, kids would roam neighborhoods looking for lawns to mow and sidewalks to shovel. Not so now.

Heather Peel, a Web designer from Fayette, thought she could use some dependable teenager help with her chores, according to a story in the Portland Press Herald. So, she created a Web site that allows people to post their chore, their location and the fee they are willing to pay.

Chore-seeking teens can browse the site and find work. It’s an excellent idea. Although the new site is short on content at the moment, we hope it will grow.

One caution, however. While cleaning up brush and leaves might be great for teens, we would be wary of using the site to get help rewiring light fixtures or to find a baby-sitter, two of the “chores” recently advertised on localchores.com.

As we said in the beginning, the Web is rife with scammers and sickos. They will find this site eventually, so everyone involved should exercise a healthy sense of caution.

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