Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Clearing the plate

I've been compiling links I've been meaning to blog about, so in order to clear the plate, here's all of them, with snarky comments:

A Life Worth Living - See, every now and again you need to remember what's important. It's not the job, though the job is an important vehicle to attain other goals. It's not about having more stuff than everyone else, either, though more and more people seem to believe that. It's faith, family, and happiness. It's living a good life. It's behaving with honor. It's doing good things for other people (quote I read today, likely paraphrased because of my memory, but anyway: The best way to forget about your problems is to help somebody else with theirs. Cool.). Anyway, this is a pretty good essay.

Cover the Uninsured week: There are currently over 46 million uninsured Americans, roughly one in six. You or I take going to the doctor for granted. Parents, there are public health programs for your children. Everyone else, find out what you can do.

Medical Guesswork: The proportion of medicine that actually works is 20-25%. Glad to see those increasing health care costs are being well spent.

Egg cooked via cell phone: If this is true, it's kinda scary. Like, way scary.

Social Security comic books from the 1950s and 60s: Scroll down a little. Cool.

What Would It Take: An essay by Chuck Gutenson asks how Christians can support the Bush administration. Interesting reading.

Lobbying has gotten out of hand. By the numbers.

Wikipedia's Timeline of fictional future events: This is just cool, in an SF geek kinda way.

10 ways to avoid outrageous hospital overcharges: Just like it says; good to know.

No, I don't remember where I got all of these links, so no linky credits. Sorry.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Blanket censorship

Blankets is a wonderful graphic novel that I just finished reading by an artist-writer named Craig Thompson. Someone in Missouri is trying to get it removed from a public library because they think it's pornographic. It is, of course, not even close, but the letter from the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund says it much more eloquently than I'm going to try to. Anyway, buy a copy and donate it to your local library.