I still can’t believe that we are having 20th anniversaries of world events that I remember happening.

The picture on the Berlin Wall wikipedia page shows the stark contrast between East Berlin and West Berlin.

I thought this was a very powerful line, from a WSJ piece, Why the Berlin Wall Fell.

Barbed wire, closed military zones and the machinery of communist propaganda could keep the prosperity of the West out of sight of most people living east of the Iron Curtain. But that wasn’t true for the people of East Berlin, many of whom merely had to look out their windows to understand how empty and cynical were the promises of socialism compared to the reality of a free-market system.

Though, I’m sure many of you would disagree with that emphasized part.

I thought this was interesting, from another WSJ piece about Ronald Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech in 1987.

Ronald Reagan would embarrass himself and the country by asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, which was going to be there for decades. So the National Security Council (NSC) staff and State Department had argued for many weeks to get Reagan’s now famous line removed from his June 12, 1987, Berlin speech.

With a fervor and relentlessness I hadn’t seen over the prior seven years even during disputes about “the ash-heap of history” or “evil empire,” they kept up the pressure until the morning Reagan spoke the line.

I tried to find the violin thing on You Tube.  I found this David Garrett video. I don’t think it is the one I heard It sounds different from the one I heard, but it is very cool.  Who knew classical instruments could rock out?  (Yes, I know, plenty of people knew that.)

The German lady speaks until about :50 in.

You can find the video of the original Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal here. (Embedding disabled, unfortunately)

Then there is always the Alien Ant Farm version, if you’re into post-grunge alternative. The video is a fun homage to the King of Pop himself, including the light up sidewalk a la Billie Jean. But, somehow I remember the song sounding much better when I was 25. (Man, I hate getting older.)

Again, embedding disabled, so you have to follow the link.

A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.

No wait, that is why we need citizens to be allowed to arm themselves.

The intruders were apparently planning to rape the women and kill all 10 of the people in the apartment for a birthday party when the break in occurred.  That is, until they were shot by one of the hostages, who had a gun in his backpack.

Someone stops by for tea, they usually leave with soap.  A neighbor watches my kids in an emergency, she finds herself with a nice bag of assorted soaps.  You get the picture.

As you can imagine, I have heard time and time again that I should sell my soaps.  And why not?  People love B&B products.

The one thing that has stopped me from going into business is product liability insurance.  It is very expensive and you can’t do business without it because, let’s face it, Americans love to sue.

I briefly listed some of my soaps on etsy, but I stopped because the reality of the risk hit me and, even though I have virtually noting worth suing for, a lawsuit could still cause me a lot of trouble.

That is why, when everyone else is celebrating the US Supreme Court ruling that the musician from Marshfield, whose arm was amputated after a botched injection, can collect her $6.7 million lawsuit award from the drug’s manufacturer, I do not feel like celebrating.

I cringe at the thought that, in this country, you are responsible when someone else misuses your product.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel so bad for the woman, Diana Levine.  And when I saw the picture of her smiling with her arms in the air, I couldn’t help but smile.  She experienced a tragic loss of limb and I am sure this ruling, and the fact that she is going to be a millionaire, is great news for her.

I also want to be clear that I am not disagreeing with the court decision.  The issue before the court was about FDA-approved labels and whether they protected the company from liability.

What upsets me is that a Vermont jury awarded damages against Wyeth in the first place.  Wyeth did not cause Ms. Levin to lose her arm.  The nurse injected the medicine in an artery instead of a vein.  It was medical malpractice, not a faulty or mislabeled product.  There is a warning about the risk of inter-arterial injection.  The product has been available for decades and is both safe and effective when used properly.

But, of course, the big pharma can afford it, right?

Well, wrong.  This sort of judgement hurts all of us from big corporation to consumer to at-home mom trying to sell her soap on etsy or at a craft fair.

Lawsuits like this increase the risk of starting any business and, in fact, prevent many people from starting micro-businesses.  They also increase the price of everything we buy, not only from the companies paying lawsuit settlements, but also from every company in business that has to pay for product liability insurance.

No doubt, Ms. Levine has a lot to celebrate, as do others looking for monetary payment for their terrible accidental injuries.

But, make no mistake about it, the American public really has little cause to celebrate the litigous nature of our society and the decision that the maker of a product is liable for the product’s misuse.

Oh, and I should also mention that I did manage to find a company that specializes in insuring home-based businesses that sell under $5,000/year, the perfect solution for me.  Expect to hear more about my soap when my online shop launches next month.

It turns out that the mother of the child, who was abused for four year beginning when she was only 6, knew about the abuse and did nothing.

One time, the girl reported, Hulett was performing a sex act on her when her mother walked into the bedroom. She placed a dose of medicine on a table, then turned and left. The woman was wearing a shirt that read “World’s Best Mother,” the daughter recalled.

Now, the woman’s husband claims that she is being scapegoated.

The girl’s stepfather said Thursday he and his wife “made a mistake” in allowing Hulett to stay at their home — court papers say the couple allowed Hulett and the girl to share a bedroom, and even a bed — but the state is making them scapegoats for another person’s crimes.

“We paid our punishment,” the man, 39, said, referring to the loss of their daughter’s custody. “They have to blame somebody. They have to find somebody. So they’re pinning it on her. Who knows — I might be next.”

Actually, they didn’t need to “find somebody.”  They already imprisoned the two men who abused the child.

Honestly, I don’t understand why allowing a grown man to sleep in the same bed as your 6-year-old daughter was not grounds for criminal charges.  For Pete’s sake, they arrest mothers for leaving a child in the car while running into the store.

What this mother did was as bad as, if not worse than, what the abusers themselves did.  Parents are supposed to protect their children at all costs.  This woman gave her little girl to a pedophile for four years.  It is a shame that the mother only faces up to two years.

The mother denies having witnessed the abuse, but “court papers say authorities confronted the woman about the girl’s comments, and she admitted seeing what she believed was a sex act between Hulett and her daughter but not interfering.”

There is also an affidavit saying that the step-father also witnessed what he believed to be “a sex act.”  His response was to bring his concerns to the mother.

On a side note, why does the newspaper refer to this as “a sex act”?  Is the rape of a grown woman referred to as “a sex act”?  This is sexual abuse, molestation, rape.  Sex act makes it sound more benign.  Perhaps I am making too big a deal out of it.  This story just enrages me.

“If Ottis Toole was alive today, he would be arrested for the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh on July 27, 1981,” Hollywood Police Chief Chad Wagner said at an afternoon news conference announcing the end of the 27-year investigation.

The case is now officially closed.  Finally, John Walsh and his wife can have the peace they so deserve after a 27-year-long nightmare.  Not that their pain will ever go away.

By now you all read about the Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe at President Bush.

From a commentary at The Progressive,

Now I’m not for violence. But I am for standing up to bullies and brutalizers and mass murderers. That reporter had guts.

The irony in that paragraph is almost laughable.  I say almost only because there is nothing laughable about the Iraq war.

I certainly am not so presumptuous as to say that the Iraqis should be grateful for the US invasion, but I do have to wonder whether this reporter “had the guts” to stand up to the bully, brutalizer, and mass murderer who ruled Iraq before the US intervened.

I’m going to have to say, probably not, based on the fact that he is still, you know, alive.

Or as they put it over at Ace of Spades, with their characteristic sarcasm,

Apparently the man and his family were arrested, his wife raped in front of him and then the entire family was thrown screaming into a wood chipper. Oh sorry, that’s what would have happened if this brave Iraqi patriot had tried this during Saddam’s reign.

I am not a fan of the Iraq war either, but let’s keep some perspective here, people.  George W. Bush is not a brutal dictator.

Updated: Just for laughs…

Honors class versus assured good grade

A group of students at MMU High School are circulating a petition to convince the administration to weight the GPA’s, that is, to give honors and AP classes more weight in calculating a GPA.

Their reasoning is that honors and AP classes are harder and a student is effectively penalized for taking on the challenging classes, in which their grades are typically lower than they would be in a college prep class.

This leads some students to opt for the easier course load, in order to assure a high GPA, and some students who take the more difficult classes end up off the honor roll.

The principal’s response was priceless.

“Who am I to determine who works harder and what’s more challenging?”

Umm, the principal!

I wonder how that response would go over in the real world. I can imagine the reaction if the director of a hospital gave that explanation as to why he wanted to pay surgeons and janitors the same salary.

That honors and AP classes are more challenging is not a matter of opinion; it’s a fact. AP is college level, for Pete’s sake.

A new initiative to stop global warming

Vermont’s favorite global warming activist, Bill McKibben, is back in the news with a new initiative, 350, as in, the safe and acceptable level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in parts per million.

Does anyone else see the irony in this opening paragraph?

It was raining in Cleveland one day last week, giving Bill McKibben a little down time at the airport.

I’m just saying.

How math protects people from information theft

Okay, I have nothing to say about this other than that my inner math geek thought this was a pretty cool article.

I so heart math.

Local residents are not surprised by the outcome of the voting. “I used to think Daims was some sort of a kook,” said town-charter-mandated token conservative Barbara Southworth, “but after the success of last year’s ‘Kurt Daims is not a tie-dyed, granola-munching, ponytailed, neo-hippie post-Marxist with a Peter Pan complex and delusions of godhood or a kook, either’ initiative, I have to admit that he’s actually got some pretty good ideas. If I didn’t, they’d throw me in jail.”

A while back, Burlington had a call for a new city slogan. If Brattleboro ever has a contest like that, I vote for “Brattleboro, Keeping the left-wing, kooky Vermont hippie stereotype alive.”

Well, okay, the left-wing, kooky Vermont hippies help, too.