This week in 'The Week'

We just got our latest copy of The Week. Here are some interesting tidbits from it.

The Cost of Education:

College students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks.

Quote of the week:

"The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them."
Robert Frost.

I post this in tribute to my father, who had a little hand lettered card that said "I love work. I could watch it all day."

News Flash!

Madonna and her husband now schedule weekly appointments to "keep the spark alive in their marriage."

Oh ye of little faith:

An evangelicial preacher in West Africa told his congregation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus. As a witness put it, "He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head, and he never came back."

I'd be happier if preachers, and all of us, would restrict ourselves to imitating Jesus when he said "love one another. "

And forgive one another:

Mel Gibson sent a $500 bouquet of flowers to the Sheriff's deputy he addressed as 'sugar tits' when she helped arrest him for drunk driving. "She was quite touched" said a spokesman for the Sheriff's Department.

Barbie's a role model:

Little girls can now help Barbie take care of her new pet dog, Tanner, by feeding him little brown plastic "biscuits". They can then use her new, magnetic pooper-scooper to clean up after him when he defecates them.

No, no. This is true. There is a photo of Tanner doing his business and everything (Tanner looks a bit like my friend Oscar's dog, the Little Lummox).

No duh!

Congress is "broken" and needs to be fixed, said David Broder in The Washington Post. The war in Iraq may be the dominant issue in the elections, but the public hasn't forgotten about the lobbying scandals, the "runaway spending," and Congress' "near abandonment of effective oversight of executive agencies."