The Department of Education in South Carolina has inked a deal to place 11-inch-wide strips of advertising above the windows inside school buses (for a price of $2,100 per month per bus). Those ads will probably be less harmful than the guns and knives some kids have been known to carry to class. Probably less harmful than most bagged lunches, in fact. But why stop with ads inside the vehicles? I say, plaster messages above the windows on the outside of buses, incorporating the kids into the ads via cartoon talk balloons. That could yield some potentially intriguing and ironic results. The riders on the driver’s side could demand Skittles, Happy Meals or iPods, while their classmates across the aisle would lament that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

—Posted by David Gianatasio