I agree, the logo is tops for sure.

Listen y'all. The more jukeboxes the better. We should have one a day as far as I'm concerned.

I really like the monocle idea with the enlarged letter(s) inside the lens.

Oh I love feedback, and I know Mr. Truman appreciates it as well. I just hope that the *overall* feel of the site (and the many more subtle changes) work to make the site more readable and enjoyable more broadly.

Re: the Dickensian feel. Well. I'll keep looking around, but it'll do for now, bleak or no.

That's an interesting idea but I have no idea how to make it happen.

1. This depends on screen size entirely. I'm working with it so that he disappears on smaller screens entirely, but if that doesn't work I may just include him with the logo.

2. You don't like that? I kind of do, but I'll blame Mr. Truman who came up with it (and a bunch of other ones) and only me a bit for saying this one was the best. We may tinker some more if it bugs people.

3. Still trying to find the perfect one, but I'm going for the bowler-hat aesthetic and something Dickensian felt right.

Screw Safari. ;)

Simply put: Children's television is getting less good, though Sesame Street (despite some minor changes) is still excellent and mostly tolerable, certainly compared to Barney and The Wiggles (all of whom surely have prices on their heads at this point.)

However, movies for kids are way, way, way better than ever before. You have Pixar, stuff like How To Train Your Dragon, and a whole bunch of other great movies. Even Disney has gotten its stride back after a post-Lion King spiral into mediocrity. So, not sure why this is, but there you have it.

That being said, we still watch a lot of Wizard of Oz and Annie in our house, so there is plenty of evidence in favor of good old-school kids' movies as well.

P.S. This is not meant to be directed at Jason, but rather advice for all writers. FYI.

Quick note: please never include block quotes above the more tag in a minipost. It screws up the formatting for the rest of the miniposts. Gracias!

Stillwater, I try to keep my politics and my idealism as vague as possible.

I'm not in the combox much, this is true. But I am lurking, and I'm very much doing stuff behind the scenes.

Apparently something in the spam detection engine is broken.

Well, it just strikes me as the inevitable conclusion of deregulation. Companies compete, some fail and others win. With something like insurance that thrives on muscle power and size, small insurers disappear and larger insurers take over.

Which is good, because these large insurers all have much, much larger risk pools.

And yes, I'm an owl now. It just felt right, you know?

I see increased competition as something that would lead to fewer, nationally competitive insurers, not more. Increased competition simply means fewer restrictions on insurers. You'd see lots of insurance companies die or get gobbled up by the big ones and those big ones would compete pretty much against one another. Competitive insurance plus reinsurance seems to work well in some European countries.

I'm tinkering away. Still investigating options with editing comments.

North, haunt away and thanks! Seize control anytime. Or, if that's too much effort, you should submit a guest post!

Yes, I would like a better editing system as well. Any suggestions people have are, of course, welcome.

So sorry guys. The button has been fixed! All is well!

1) Temporary theme change as a troubleshooting procedure.

2) I'm not sure.

Indeed. The problem with total freedom is that we all start from different points to begin with. Because guns and violence exist with or without a government monopoly on violence. Because sometimes the choice is not between freedom and tyranny, but between kinds of freedom and kinds of dignity. I don't know. I'm sympathetic to many libertarian arguments, and think many work in tandem with liberal goals, but I find ideological purity leads to as much blindness as anything.

Hey, can you edit this so that the link is embedded in text? Naked links throw off the formatting.

Thanks

Well, I just used Rose's pic that she totally failed at attaching to the post correctly...

I kid, Rose, because I care. ;)

Here. I'll fix it for you, and place it in the correct category.

Sheesh. Slacker.

The difference is this: the Scouring of the Shire is integral to the entire point of The Lord of the Rings. Also, the movies were not good for many other reasons.

The show, on the other hand, makes many changes but does most of them well.

Glad you think so.