You have to love automatic billing, especially when it’s done for the United States Government. How else could you end up with nearly $1,000,000 in shipping charges for two $0.19 washers?

Especially when the insane billing has only been going on from 1997-2006 and totals over $20,000,000. Just a drop in the bucket, right? Who checks the statement anyhow?

The contractor was taking advantage of an automatic approval system that was put in place to get supplies to troops quickly. And other contractors are being investigated for similar frauds.

Your tax dollars at work.

Technorati Tags: fraud, billing error, million dollar washers

I found a really cute “Make Your Own Bush Speech” generator on another site. It works rather like those refrigerator magnets where you take words and phrases to make poetry or utter nonsense.

You can decide for yourself if President Bush’s speeches qualify as either.

Once you’ve created the speech, hit play and listen. It’s good for a quick laugh.

Hurry up and tell the FDA not to allow the standards for chocolate to be changed. Comments close on April 25, 2007 May 25, 2007 (updated with new date), so there isn’t much time.

I caught wind of this over on Slashdot, and followed the links to the Don’t Mess With Our Chocolate website. And from that website, here’s the basic problem:

Their plan is to change the basic formula of chocolate in order to use vegetable fat substitutes in place of cocoa butter, and to use milk substitutes in the place of nutritionally superior milk. These changes will have adverse effects on the eating, physical and nutritional quality of chocolate

I’m a big fan of good chocolate. Not Hershey’s. I love dark chocolate, and eating some of the good stuff is far more satisfying than eating a larger quantity of the cheap kind. We don’t need junk masquerading as chocolate. If manufacturers want to make really bad chocolate, they can just call it something else!

The Don’t Mess With Our Chocolate website has instructions you can follow to help get the point across. Go do it quickly. It only takes a couple minutes.

Technorati Tags: chocolate, bad chocolate, fda, chocolate standards, food standards, cocoa

People living in Jackson County, OR, are going to be learning the true value of public libraries very soon. You see, due to lack of funding, theirs are about to close.

This is truly horrendous so far as I’m concerned. Libraries are vital to many people. Children use them to research class projects - and don’t assume school libraries are always sufficient. Toddlers and preschoolers enjoy story times. It’s internet access for those who can’t afford it at home. It’s a way for people to learn without having to buy books they may not be able to afford. And in small towns libraries can be community meeting places. Read the rest of this entry »

No, really. It does happen. Just one of those strange things you wouldn’t expect.

There’s a kite flying festival in some countries that can turn deadly. It seems some people get really competitive and use wire instead of string, so that they can use their kite’s wires to cut the strings of competitors. That it can also slice open throats is a nasty side effect. 

In Pakistan, where this has been a major problem at the Basant festival, they’ve tried banning kite flying, regulating manufacturers and other steps, unfortunately with little result. This leaves them in a difficult position - give in to Islamist factions in the country who would like the festival banned anyway as un-Islamic, or let it go on and allow people to die. Not the most comfortable of situations in a country that is trying to be moderate. Read the rest of this entry »

I read an article over on Time about the end of the religious right. I can’t really say that I agree.

I don’t think I’m seeing what is talked about in the article, that is that churches are being more balanced between the political parties. I could be missing something but I haven’t really seen that. Read the rest of this entry »