July 2009
“Simply put, Members of Congress should not have the ability to award no-bid contracts” to private firms, Flake said in a statement explaining the 540 proposed amendments he plans to bring up. “Many times the recipients of these earmarks are campaign contributors. The practice has created an ethical cloud over Congress, and it needs to end.” He noted that at least 70 of the...
In 2008, Richard Tabler, a death row inmate in Texas, called State Senator John...
– States Seek to Jam Prison Cellphone Signals - NYTimes.com
“…Bill Moyers, on his show later tonight, will expose for the first time the health insurance industry’s secret campaign against Michael Moore and his film, “Sicko.” It contains a stunning revelation and admission by a top health insurance executive — the former head of publicity for CIGNA, one of the top health insurance companies in the country — that...
Fiction on Ebay
Parker writes in to point out a fascinating example. Apparently a group of fiction writers are experimenting with selling physical goods on eBay with fictional stories given away “free” in the description. The project is called Significant Objects, and involves a bunch of fiction writers purchasing random trinkets, and then coming up with a neat story to go with them. The post at io9...
Women in this society hold their heads very high. Alexandra von Schwerin, a journalist and entrepreneur, explained it to me as she sees it: “They have been used to being independent since Viking times when the men went away for years in their long boats. Women began to be educated in large numbers at the beginning of the 20th century and equality has been pushed hard ever since. The glass...