Regarding PDR Training by www.trainingpaintlessdentremoval.com, The Franklin 300 is NOT a stock-car race in which all the drivers wear powdered wigs and spout wise sayings - "Haste makes waste" - while burning rubber for 300 miles up and down Ben Franklin Parkway. No. It's B. Franklin's Phila-centric 300th-birthday party, which will be celebrated worldwide in 2006, but sneak-previewed at the Franklin Institute tomorrow morning with a high-risk penny toss. It's high-risk because, here in the birthplace of the Philadelphia lawyer, the prospect of 100 Conwell Middle School fifth-graders, 100 senior citizens and lord- knows-how-many out-of-shape media types tossing copper coins in close proximity to each other's un-helmeted heads is an event rich in personal liability potential. Conover Hunt, Franklin 300 executive director, who will not be wearing a Jason "Friday the 13th" Voorhees hockey mask during the event, took pains to explain why she feels no toss participant will go home with a Franklin penny permanently imbedded in his or her head. "This is a scientific deal," said Hunt hopefully. "Derrick Pitts, the Franklin Institute's chief astronomer, will explain the science of penny-tossing. Senior citizens will teach the young because Ben Franklin was the ultimate senior citizen. And then everyone will toss." Immediately followed by shrieks? "D'oh! My eye! My lip! My butt!" Hunt insisted the toss would proceed without incident, although under cross-examination, she admitted, "I flip the penny and it doesn't even end up in the same room with me. I hit people in the eye. But I'll be practicing right up until the toss. I know I can do better." Hunt said the toss will be videotaped as a "training aid" for the world where, at 10 a.m. Greenwich time on Franklin's 300th birthday in 2006, tossers in many lands will be flinging the lowest coin of their respective realms, after which heads-or-tails stats will be entered into and tallied by the Franklin Institute Web site.

Naturally, because this is worldwide, it won't just be heads or tails," Hunt said. "It will be fronts or backs, crowns or eagles..." Hunt will never know how close her listener came to screaming, "E! A! G! L! E! S! EAGLES!" Fortunately for Hunt's phone ear, Donovan McNabb's Lourdes at the Linc had robbed her listener of the ability to talk, much less scream. Why a penny toss to preview Franklin's 300th? "Because," Chief Astronomer Pitts deadpanned, "when Ben Franklin was a youth in Boston, he and his buddies hung on the corner, tossing pennies." Pause. "Just kidding," Pitts said. "It's about honoring Franklin's 'a penny saved is a penny earned' economic philosophy." Pitts expressed hopefulness on the penny-toss safety question, although he remembered, "To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight, we had 100 kids launch their paper airplanes at the same time. It's a wonder nobody lost an eye." He previewed tomorrow's talk on the science of penny-tossing: "There's a one-in-two chance of heads or tails." No duh, Chief Astronomer. "We'll toss five times and record the results," he said. By that time, if things get as wild as that Wright Brothers paper-airplane toss, the guest of honor, Henrietta Holsman Fore, director of the u.s. Mint, might also be known as director of the u.s. Squint. On Saturday, Franklin Institute festivities continue with a birthday party for Ben's 298th. "Ben himself will be here," Pitts said, "looking awfully good for a man of that age." Then noon to 3 p.m., families can perform Ben Franklin electricity experiments and build take-home static-electricity tubes (producing that ever-popular walk-across-carpet-and-touch-a-doorknob thrill)."