BethFamily and Friends

Acceding to my wife’s demands

First of all, I’d like to give myself a great big pat on the back for spelling “acceding” correctly on the first try. I have it on good authority that if there’s a gene responsible for good spelling, the Kauffman family doesn’t have it. So what is this demand and why am I acceding to it? You wouldn’t know it from this site, but my wife has a lot to say about…
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Politics

Who are you calling a socialist?

It occurs to me that even private health insurance represents a kind of “socialized” medicine. If I may be so bold, I’d like to tell you what I think of private insurance: the bastard child of socialism and capitalism. The idea behind insurance is to pool resources with a larger group, so that individual members are better able to cope financially with misfortune, minimizing…
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Current EventsSports

ESPN - Group led by MacLean agrees to buy Lightning - NHL

ESPN – Group led by MacLean agrees to buy Lightning – NHL WOW! and WOW! Excuse me, did I just say WOW! Maybe I’m just WAY, WAY out of the loop, but I had no idea this was in the offing. I’m of two minds about prior ownership. On one hand, they delivered the home team from it’s losing ways to an unimaginable championship. On the other, they claim poverty, won’t…
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Current Events

Who to believe?

I’m kicking myself for not saving an article written by an AP military writer sometime in the last week. The article discusses the author’s feelings that progress is being made in Iraq. A re-reading would make me more comfortable characterizing the article, but I’ll give it a shot anyway. From what I recall, the basis for this position was increasing cooperation from locals in…
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Kitchen Sink

“Baby Einstoned”

There was an interesting item on Slate’s Human Nature page this morning. It described recent research which suggested “Baby Einstein” was bad for babies: Baby DVDs are worse than educational TV shows, because the DVDs “have little dialogue, short scenes, disconnected pictures and … linguistically indescribable images.” Researcher’s conclusion: Your kid is…
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Politics

Intellectual consistency

Who am I to call for consistency of thought? I can’t keep my mind on the straight and arrow for a day, let alone a lifetime of policy decisions. Still, I got a kick out of a line I read in an article this weekend (I can’t for the life of me remember which one). The author of the piece said that conservatives against “socialized medicine” didn’t understand that we…
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