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PHOENIX - A day after his 36th birthday, Roy Halladay will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his right shoulder. The Phillies announced the news before last night's game against the Diamondbacks. Halladay had been mulling his options but decided to have the procedure done in Los Angeles on Wednesday by Neal ElAttrache, the doctor who examined him earlier this week. "I liked him, I thought he was spot-on," Halladay said on Wednesday in San Francisco, when he announced that he would need surgery.

A scrumptious blog from a couple traveling around the world with their mouths and their minds wide open. Name: TheRoadForks.com What it does: Joins beautiful photography with first-person travel stories and advice. Akila and Patrick McConnell have created a site that is one part cooking class, one part art show, two parts tour guide, and three parts addictive. What's hot: You don't feel as if you're reading about an old trip. The vibrancy of TheRoadForks brings you right to their table whether the trip was in 2007 or last week.

When a word is new, it is rich with meaning, capable of helping your mind gravitate toward something real. But meanings also decay. The thinking that a word occasions is the meaning of that word. So meanings are messy, shifting, volatile, pointed or dull, gathering or dissolving. Let's think along these lines about one of our most fashionable words ("blog") and one of our most venerable ("freedom"). People still occasionally ask me what a blog is, meaning that they want a simple definition of the word, which was apparently the most looked-up term of 2004.

Frank Wilson is a retired Inquirer book editor who blogs at http://booksinq.blogspot.com I am writing this in a secure location well outside the city limits. I mention this because it means I won't have to pay the city in order to have the privilege of earning some money as a freelance writer. On the other hand, it looks as if I will have to pay for the privilege of continuing my blog - at least if I try to make some money off it - should I ever return home. It seems that anybody who makes money doing anything in Philadelphia is obliged to get a business-privilege license, which costs either $50 a year or $300 for the lifetime version.

Camden charters alarming to some on school board Camden Flow Claudia Vargas' blog about Camden City http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/camden_flow/ The likely influx of charter schools to the Camden School District in September has some school board members worried. At Wednesday night's budget meeting (yes, another one), a few members complained about the increase in charter schools taking away money from the district schools. The board is predicting that $56.5 million of the school's $314 million budget will go to fund the city's charter schools in 2012-13, compared with $43 million this year.

A blog item posted Tuesday about Bart Blatstein's intention to make a bid for the Daily News ' owner, Philadelphia Media Network, was pulled down from Philly.com by company management. PMN spokesman Mark Block said he had been concerned that the news release referenced in the post to Philly Clout by reporter David Gambacorta "could be construed as more than it was, by creating the impression that Blatstein and his partners were in negotiations for the purchase of Philadelphia Media Network.

Plymouth Community Ambulance, already under investigation for questionable spending, is dealing with another problem - an employee whose Web log got her fired. John Durante, acting president of the ambulance's board of directors, said yesterday that the employee was fired Jan. 13 for misuse of a computer and "inappropriate comments" about emergency victims on her blog. Durante declined to identify the former employee other than to say she was a female paramedic. Durante said he had not seen the photos and text on the woman's blog.

One town's meager Web space was cluttered with criticisms and kudos - and lots of disparaging comments aimed at local personalities - after a local blogger was outed as a Town Council member last month. Many of these posts have been exercises in poor Web etiquette, particularly in a small town. The acerbic blogger was anonymous until a local developer identified him as Kendrick Buckwalter, an otherwise mild-mannered Phoenixville councilman. Buckwalter owned up, but not before his heretofore anonymous posts had derided the council president as a "king" and accused the executive director of the Phoenixville Main Street program of engaging in "double speak.

McNabb, you are the best QB. We love you here in Philly, and I totally agree that you should get more weapons. I hope the Eagles can get some moves so you can have more weapons and win our first Super Bowl!!! Number 5, you're the best thing to have ever happen to Philly. We want you to be an Eagle for life. - http://www.yard barker.com (comment from Donovan McNabb's blog) Yeah, Donovan. Please don't pay no attention to the haters. YOU are the best QB in the history of the Eagles.

A Central Bucks School District teacher who was suspended from her job last year for a blog in which she called students "disengaged, lazy whiners" filed a First Amendment lawsuit Friday against the district. Natalie Munroe contends the Central Bucks superintendent and her principal violated her free-speech rights by "harassing and retaliating against her" over the blog, the Doylestown Intelligencer reported. She returned to the classroom. But the lawsuit says she has since been subjected to "ridiculous and overly critical evaluations.

Read Trudy Rubin's blog at www.inquirer.com/ worldview

PHOENIX - A day after his 36th birthday, Roy Halladay will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his right shoulder. The Phillies announced the news before last night's game against the Diamondbacks. Halladay had been mulling his options but decided to have the procedure done in Los Angeles on Wednesday by Neal ElAttrache, the doctor who examined him earlier this week. "I liked him, I thought he was spot-on," Halladay said on Wednesday in San Francisco, when he announced that he would need surgery.

Trudy Rubin's "Worldview" column does not appear today. Follow her blog at www.philly.com/worldview .