Breaching The Web

As I have confessed previously, I am afraid of needles. Terrified, in fact. So No, No Not the Needle! in the Washington Post naturally caught my eye.

The article adresses one of the most difficult aspects of needle-fear — getting others to take the fear seriously. Very few people like needles, but those of us with intense fear reactions are often misunderstood — “Oh, it doesn’t hurt that much” or “no one likes it” or “ha ha ” are not helpful comments when you are in the throes of a panic attack, particularly after you’ve gone through a lot of tough emotion work to force yourself into getting a procedure done.

The article’s conclusion, that the first encounter children have with needles or other invasive medical procedures should be handled carefully, is important. Needle-phobes are made, not born, and honesty and kindness could go a long way to prevent the manufacture of more needle-phobes.

This is a great idea from Mark Kleiman: since George W. doesn’t want to debate Kerry, Kerry should create a life-sized Bush action figure, fill it with stock Bushisms, and then debate it. This would make for great (and probably free) publicity, would take the battle to Bush, and would be fun for me to watch (which is what really matters, after all).

Bush’s approval ratings plummet to 38% in California, and nationwide only 43% approve of Bush.

I’m just hoping that all these folks vote their outrage.

I couldn’t let this pass by: a Kindergartner in California with a blue-dyed punk haircut had his hair washed out by his school’s principal after parents of other students in the boy’s class complained that his hair would ruin the class’s annual photo.

Think about the message the other kids in the class are getting: if someone is different from you, complain to the right people, and you can force them to be the same as you. Conformity is good, and nice pictures are more important than individual expression.

I guess this isn’t such a big deal, since it is an isolated incident in one school in a state that I don’t even live in, but it bothers me a lot.

Floyd Norris has an interesting (no really!) commentary in the International Herald Tribune on the effects of stock options on various U.S. accounting crises of the past 10 years or so. The failure of U.S. companies to subtrack the estimated value of stock options from profits has been a factor in much of the turmoil of the last few years (although that practice may be changing) — and Europe may now be headed in the same direction. There’s no new analysis in Norris’s piece, but it is a nice summary of bits I’ve read elsewhere.

Also, like Medley, I find April 1 tomfoolery irritating, so you won’t see any of it here. In fact, I went out of my way to post about the least humorous topic I can think of (accounting).