As bad things go, what Foley did was only fair-to-middling bad. As a result of it, political careers will be ended and elections will probably be affected. There might be criminal charges ( Read more... )

Help at Any Cost by Maia Szalavitz covers various tough love residential and boot camp programs that teens get put into. They're incredibly destructive in the short and long terms, and sometimes lead to deaths from illness and deprivation. They're also very expensive for the parents and profitable for those who run them.

Here's a link to a podcast ( Read more... )

From Atlas Shrugged:

(A pulverizing sound-beam weapon has just been demonstrated)
Dr. Stadtler looked at the faces in the grandstands. They were sitting quietly now, they were listening, but their eyes had an ebbing look of twilight, a look of fear in the process of being accepted as permanent, the look of raw wounds being accepted as permanent. ( Read more... )

Instead of speading democracy or ending war and hunger, how about just showing up for work and not torturing anybody and not stealing the oil-for-food money.

The small virtues of kindness and reliability need to get more respect to make the big plans feasible.

Bush said

A new Iraq will also need a humane, well-supervised prison system. Under the dictator, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values. America will fund the construction of a modern, maximum ( Read more... )

I just read _Red Thunder_, and it was remarkably disappointing. Varley's written some sf that I'm very fond of (notably _The Ophiuchi Hotline_ and _The Golden Globe_ and much of the Nine Worlds short fiction), and part of what I've liked has been his inventiveness. I'm very fond of idea-a-minute sf ( Read more... )