I too thought it was going to be a real discussion! When my daughter was 4 (in 2000), she watched a lot of the election process with my son (who was 18 at the time and very into politics.) She wanted to stay up on election day to see who won but had to go to bed. Her reaction on hearing the news that Bush had won was to wail, "But Kerry won all three debates!"

This little scripted exchange, in contrast, is mildly amusing at best -- the old putting adult words in little mouths schtick.

Color me unimpressed

“You will see many people who are wearing only small clothes and you will wonder why they are cold and may think they are being disrespectful."

Not sure I understand this bit -- are the runners wearing less clothing than the Maasai warriors in the photo? (Particularly since we can assume that they're wearing no underclothing?)

Also, I think the part about the sun could have been a bit clearer -- on first reading it sounded rather like the sun in Britain rose and set at random times each day!

My daughter was reading at this age, though she wasn't talking (The reading was evident when she would play the Between the Lions computer games where you had to pick the box matching the word that was spoken.) When she finally talked at about 2 she spoke in grammatically correct, complex sentences. She could read anything without stumbling over even polysyllabic words. She had and has an unbelievably vocabulary -- always used in context.

Everyone has his or her own talents. Early reading is just one. Maybe it'll all even out in the long run (the rabbit doesn't win the race, after all) -- and unless a good reader is motivated to put his or her brainpower to good use, it's nothing more than a parlor trick. (That's why we treated my daughter's skills as commonplace -- she went to preschool thinking reading and math were things every three year old could do.)

bean -- she wasn't doing a bad "Katherine Hepburn" imitation, she specifically stated she was doing the "transatlantic" accent that was ubiquitous in American movies in the 1930s and 40s (though, yes KH was best known for the sound.)

I think she did an admirable job. It's easy to criticize someone else's work. But unless you can do better lay off. I've seen professional actors raking in tons of money who couldn't match her.

Hey, given the stupidity of society today, he's probably lucky he's not being charged as a terrorist. Stop the country, I want to get off.

Shrug. Seems to me the people at that company have way too much money and time on their hands.

I disagree with George Carlin (that kind of mindset is a cop out that allows anyone to say anything -- however insulting and vicious as long as you at least pretend that you don't *really* mean it. (The equivilent of being able to say rude and insulting things but following it with "no offense" or the newer "I'm just sayin'"

If you've ever seen the photo of those black men hanging dead in a tree while a crowd of white men and women grinned happily below and around it, you'll know that the idea of lynching isn't funny...and it happened not all that long ago.

It's never ok to insult people but at some point companies are going to have to start realizing that they're alienating their customers by shunting off their problems on people a half a world away. There's no way people aren't going to get mad about it and since there's no one else to talk to the Indian call center people are going to bear the brunt of the anger.

I've had two nightmare experiences with Indian call centers - one when United Airlines lost (sorry, "delayed") my bag and one, most recently, when Amazon lost ("delayed") my order (apparently the US post office is using mule trains these days -- it showed up on December 27 -- I'd ordered it on December 5.)

And though the call people were as helpful as was possible -- and I didn't yell at anyone -- yes, I was annoyed and inconvenienced and doubly aggravated because these two companies clearly felt that the best way to deal with a mistake was to pawn it off on people who were employed solely on the basis that they were cheap and didn't cost the company much.

Meg...and I've noticed that people who make facile, sweeping generalizations don't have brains enough to fill a spoon.

The problem with women dressing in sexy ways at work is that men (surprise, surprise) view them as sex fantasies not respected co-workers. (Hell, men tend to do that anyway.)

Even highly educated, highly-skilled women in Japan are still expected to act subservient at work (serving tea, etc.) That women agreed means only that they didn't feel they could say no (and that they seemed excited could in part have been giggling embarassment.)

Come on, nothing says romance like the thought of millions of people dying. Kind of like kicking off a Medieval themed wedding with an announcement that the Black Plague had just wiped out the entire neighboring village. They could've done a 40's theme without that.

I also couldn't quite figure out the line in the article that said the couple planned to live apart until their children left school...like graduated? Was this a wedding or just an elaborate costume party?

I think one reason women may have been happier in the 70s was that in the dawn of "women's lib" women were basking in the "you've come a long way baby" mindset. However women gradually realized that while job and career opportunities did in fact open up for them they found that they still were expected to bear the burden of all (or 90 percent of) the responsibilities that "housewives" had -- not just housework and childcare but maintaining social relationships with parents and in-laws, brainstorming and buying all gifts for birthdays and holidays, and, if they're like me, pretty much all the responsibilities for house maintenance as well. (Not to mention kids' doctors and dentist appointments and fulfilling the expectation of benefitting their children by shuttling them to numerous enriching or sports activities.) Oh, and since we'd "won" the sexual revolution, women were simultaneously expected to be sexual playmates at the drop of a hat. That's a lot of pressure.

Good for them -- it might be a bit tricky though if you didn't live very close to work. It really depends on the neighborhood and the climate too. What works in a relatively flat southern California suburb wouldn't work for me in very hilly, often very chilly Connecticut exurbia in the woods. (Where there are no city busses and I imagine any taxis would have to come from a nearby city since I've never seen one here.)

OK, I could do without the song, which I can tell is going to be an earworm for me today but the montage is very clever! (I too have seen more of these than I care to admit!) OK, where's the dedicated soul who will make up the official list of the originals?

It's hardly a superstition that yawning is contagious (that anyone watching will yawn as well.) I'm so succeptible to it that is anyone even *says* the word yawn, I will. (Or yes, even reading the word will set me off.) My daughter thinks it's the funniest thing and will say it on purpose to make me yawn repeatedly. It's even happened when someone says the word "awning." (I've yawned four times while typing this!)