A.G. Cullen Construction Co. subcontractors who have decided to remain on the job, despite Cullen's decision to walk off the new-prison project due to a pay dispute with the county commissioners, merit positive notice.

While the decision will allow them to avoid the inconveniences of having to remove equipment and possibly encounter worse weather conditions later, the companies' good-faith action will help the project move ahead to some degree.

Cullen's latest projection had anticipated a May 2008 completion date — seven months behind schedule — and an estimated 80-day transition period before the new prison is fully operational. Cullen's departure threw the projected completion date into deep uncertainty; there is some speculation that as a result of Cullen's decision, completion might be pushed back to 2009 or beyond.

Companies rightly expect to be paid promptly under terms of their contracts, and there is an element of risk involved anytime they are wiling to "worry about payment later." But there also is a cost involved in closing down operations before a job is completed and then having to set up operations again later.

Prison subcontractors such as the Cost Co. and Clista Electric obviously have weighed the advantages and disadvantages of both options and their decision to stay will be to the project's benefit.

Bad news has swirled around the project from virtually its beginning, when there was a long delay in obtaining structural steel. The decision of these subcontractors is a fragment of good news, but unfortunately not enough to cause overall optimism regarding the project's future course.

A recently released study, "Reading Across the Nation," produced some troubling data regarding the ritual of parents reading to their young children. Parents who do not make time to read to their children deserve a jeer for ignoring this important child-development tool.According to the study results, bedtime stories were biggest in Vermont, where 67 percent of respondents claimed to read to their children daily. Mississippi ranked last, with a score of 38 percent.Overall, the study found that just under half of the parents surveyed said that they or other family members read every day to their children, from newborns to 5-year-olds. And there are those who disagree with the study's findings, claiming that that figure really is much lower.Whatever the actual figure, parents should heed the message from researchers and child-development specialists who say reduced rates of shared reading time can hurt family cohesion, stymie creative development in younger children and drag down academic achievement.In down-to-basics terms, parents who don't read to their children are, in fact, cheating their children.Reading to children should come before TV, video games and computer time, and regardless of whether working parents are tired at the end of the day.Reading to children and instilling in them a love of reading pays big dividends toward children's success in later years.

National Football League officials made the right decision in caving in to demands that Saturday night's game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants be available on more than the NFL Network.The NFLNetwork is available in fewer than 40 percent of the nation's homes. As a result of Wednesday's decision, the game will be simulcast on CBS and NBC.The game is significant because the Patriots could become the first NFL team to compile a 16-0 regular season. No NFL team has produced an unblemished regular-season record since the 1972 edition of the Miami Dolphins, whose undefeated regular season came during a 14-game regular-season schedule.With the NFL officials, prior to Wednesday, insisting that they wouldn't cave in to calls for making Saturday's game more available to fans, the contest threatened to become a sequel to an American Football League game on Nov. 17, 1968, when NBC "pulled the plug" on a heart-stopping game between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets with less than 2 minutes to go so the network could start the children's program "Heidi" on time.The Jets had just taken a 32-29 lead at the time. What the nation missed was an Oakland rally in which the Raiders scored 2 touchdowns in 9 seconds, resulting in a 43-32 Oakland win.Regardless of whether Saturday night's game is a cliffhanger like that 1968 AFL matchup or a runaway contest, the NFL made the right decision not to leave a substantial portion of NFL fans out of visual touch with the game.