Ted, Ted, Ted

This site tells you how to get a live human being on the line when you call one of a long list of giant soulless corporations.

It’s funny how discussions of child well-being policies seem to attract both the smartest, most compassionate commentators and the most self-absorbed idiots. This one is not an exception.

Craig Murray – Hitting a nerve
“I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce – as they have whispered to the media in this case – that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, [...]

I point out this new culture site, even though it is a little off-topic here, for the obvious reasons.

Let me paraphrase Lyndon Johnson and say Alexander Cockburn is wacko, but he’s our wacko. Here he weighs in, perhaps a little more heavily than necessary, on the Potter iconography and current events: “In the death games played by adults, children are always the pawns.” Courtesy of Gail.

Stephy Says: Aw, Ted, it’s an accident of birth. It could have happened to anybody. (and did, to many others.You all survived and got out.) It might have been a port wine stain in the shape of the crucifixion across your forehead. (Or butt!) Your true friends don’t hold it against you. Though you had [...]

And speaking of geekery: Amen. “I have never ever met a technical person (including me) whom I would trust to know what is really the right thing to do in the long run.” — Linus Torvalds last weekend.
If you are interested in software design and stuff like that, you might find this exchange pretty interesting. [...]

I’ve never been ashamed of my conservative religious upbringing. I just figured it was something that happens to some people, like rainy weather or a toothache. Today, driving to work and listening to John Ashcroft testifying at the Senate hearings, I realized what it must be like for those people who do feel ashamed. I [...]

Sens. Graham and Shelby have decided to let the CIA take the wrist-slap for that missionary airplane their minions shot down in April. This being the Senate Intelligence Committee, it would be too much to expect them to actually tell the truth — that the whole drugs-and-spies concept is irredeemably corrupt and destructive and needs [...]

For reasons no one needs to be reminded of, the Organization of American States prohibits forced disappearance, which it defines as “the act of depriving a person or persons of … their freedom, in whatever way, perpetrated by agents of the state … followed by an absence of information or a refusal to … give [...]

Much as it pains me to admit it, for a clear-headed take on international events these days you can usually count on the Trotskyists. My favorite leftist web site is carrying a piece on Afghanistan that lays out the cui bono question about as clearly as I’ve seen it done anywhere (relying heavily on Ahmed [...]

I don’t think I’ve said here how proud I am to know Linda Burnham, who gave this remarkable speech last month.

I’m as surprised as you are that we dragged our sorry selves out of bed at 1:30 a.m. Sunday to watch the Leonid meteor shower. It turned out to be worth the pain. It looked kind of like this, except the picture is a three-minute exposure. We really only saw about one shooting star every [...]