Front Line Voices. This site features letters from soldiers in Iraq. It looks so far like the only soldiers submitting are those who have a different view of the success of day-to-day operations in Iraq than that reported by the mainstream US media. The anecdotes of these soldiers must be viewed as personal testimony and not news reporting, but it’s interesting reading.

I don’t know this first hand, I’ve only heard it: never grab a running line. I think it originates from sailing, or maybe construction.
I had this idea of parenting children as grabbing a running line. That kid’s growing up and developing and is going to test you and trick you and lie and manipulate. If you step in and choose reason over emotional attachment then your emotions are hurt in the short term. If you let her go unchecked then she’s going to become a person who does hurtful things, so you’re hurt in the long run. Either way there’s going to be pain to endure. She’s on the move and you can grab her to try and stop her from getting too far away, but you know it’s going to hurt.

Nannyhood and Apple Pie. Interesting article about the capitalist marketplace entering American family life. A quote: “In a study Hochschild did at Amerco, a Fortune 500 company, she found that many employees with twenty or more years at the company were on their second or third marriages. ‘To these employed,’ she wrote, ‘work was their rock, their major source of security. They were getting their pink slips at home.’”

Singular They: The Pronoun That Came in from the Cold. I know exactly one person who might read this article all the way through. And [he/she/they] are probably the only person who gets this joke.

Lasers reveal why the cookie crumbles. Research like this is why God invented science. And my wife should note one more reason not to buy low-fat snacks: they make more crumbs!

Oozing Hypocrisy Over a Leak. I enjoy when national columnists level their nimble prose and skillful pens at one another. Here Richard Cohen takes a shot at Robert Novak.

Light Speed Ahead. Check out the reference to Niven’s Law. I need more time to just sit around and think up stuff like this.

2 y/o Girl survives 19 days home alone. This story made me feel so angry and sad—along with half a dozen other emotions that I have no name for—that I literally experienced pain. My own daughter is almost 2. What a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible thing to think about a small child going through.
More details in this story.

Maryland E-Voting Passes Muster. It looks like Maryland really wants to spend this $55M. We’ll be voting on touch screens in March no matter what new forms of voter fraud that may permit.

Blogger Pro features like spell checking are now free. That’s an edge up on Movable Type.