Philip Pullman: All around you is silence (The Guardian)

And above all, we need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish. I'd like to suggest a principle that should be a point of honour for everyone involved in education: everything we ask a child to do in school should be something that's intrinsically worth doing, something we ourselves would be proud to do well.

    

If War is Peace, then... Victory (Whiskey Bar)

"Ashcroft will starting pushing the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act later this month in a 10-day, 20-state Victory tour that includes a stop in New York."

---

"Winston followed her down the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces ..."

    

Message left on a Microsofty's message board

Yudel's Line: You're not groking the anti-MS sentiment among long-time computer users.

It boils down to one simple phenomenon: Given the choice of improving its bottom line or meeting the needs of end-users -- MS has historically chosen the former. That may not be a crime (though crimes were comitted along the way). But for those of who trained in CS and caught a whiff of the mission that motivated Knuth and Englebart and Von Neumann, this was disturbing.

Examples are too numerous to completely mention, but I would include the strategic decision to make Word Wordperfect-incompatible to be one example; bundling Outlook another; and deciding to turn every program into a programming environment and therefore a virus-vector a third.

Here's my latest personal kvetch: I tried to load up scans I had made in Windows 98 on Windows XP. Ooops! Microsoft Imaging is no longer included, or no longer compatible, or something. No way is any of my content going into a MS-only file.

    

Much weirder than a headline or a quote can capture: Driver who nursed infant found innocent of child endangerment (CNN)
    

All of Family's Neuroses Projected Onto Dog (The Onion)

FLAGSTAFF, AZ—"Mommy, Woofers is lonely out there in the doghouse! He wants to come in and play!" says attention-starved Billy Tobin, 10.

    

Who knows how to cure what evil lurks in the hearts of kids? Student shadow program weighed (Maryland Sun)

Students in Anne Arundel middle and high schools might soon have a new reason to behave: avoiding the disciplinary measure of being "shadowed" by their parents at school for a day.

That idea was recommended in a report submitted to the county school board last week by a task force reviewing disciplinary measures.

    

Any Excuse to use 'Avuncular' in a Headline: Nation's Toddlers Critically Under-Photographed (The Onion)

WASHINGTON, DC—Citing a desire to more closely monitor the growth of U.S. nieces and nephews, the National Coalition of Aunts denounced the severe under-photographing of the nation's precious toddlers Tuesday.

"These little treasures grow up so fast," said Linda Mirrin, chairwoman of the NCA and aunt to three adorable boys. "We aunts have a simple and reasonable request: Take more photos and send them to us, so that we can see how big those little darlings are getting."

    

Google now has a built-in calculator. (Via Scripting News)

Which means that those of us who have a google search box in our browser (as does Mozilla) can now do math from our browser.