Done! I am truly grateful for your extensive and outstanding analysis!

For those who do use Microsoft Outlook (not Outlook Express), this add-on is a *huge* timesaver:

http://www.caelo.com/

It keeps all messages in a single Outlook Inbox, but allows you to flag them with multiple flags, such as different levels of "To Do" priority. You can then view all of the e-mails with a particular flag as if they are in their own virtual folder.

The other great advantage is that it assembles a complete index database of every word in every message you have ever received, that is automatically updated every hour or so. I have seven years worth of e-mails in my Outlook message stores and, by using this database-based searching method, I can retrieve every e-mail I have ever received that contains, for example, both the words "interview" and "postdoc", in less than 3 seconds. This is orders of magnitude faster than the traditional message search functions of Outlook, Thunderbird, and other e-mail clients.

I don't work for Caelo. Their product has saved me hundreds of hours over the last four years.

I sent the following e-mail to each of my Senators:

Dear Senator:

I am very disturbed about the unanimous Democratic support for Senator

Lieberman's amendment to the defense spending bill (Section 1535). This

amendment recites as "Findings" of the Congress a series of unsupported

(at least with publicly available information) assertions concerning

Iran made by the Bush administration and its politically appointed

military leaders.

Perhaps there are complex and/or subtle political reasons for the

unanimous support of this amendment by Senate Democrats. I assume that

Senator Lieberman has some special degree of power based on the fear

that he could refuse to caucus with the Democratic party. Nevertheless,

by voting for this amendment, the Democratic Senators have given support

to the warmongering elements of the Bush administration and the

Republican party. And as a Democratic voter this horrifies me. Senator

Lieberman's attitudes towards war in the middle east are exactly aligned

with the radical warmongering theories of the neoconservative movement,

are far outside the mainstream of voter sentiment (particularly

Democratic voters), and should not be given credence by Democratic Senators.

At this point in time, consideration of war with Iran is an absolutely

terrible idea. I sincerely hope that Senate Democrats have learned a

lesson from their abject failure to oppose, or even meaningfully

question, the warmongering assertions of the Bush administration during

the runup to the Iraq war, which has, of course, been a complete and

utter disaster for this nation in many, many ways. War with Iran would

be even worse.

Recent polling that I have seen reported in the mainstream media

indicates that an overwhelming majority of American voters are opposed

to continuation of the occupation of Iraq in its current form. This

should give Senate Democrats comfort that staunch unrelenting opposition

to warmongering of the Bush administration and Republican party will be

rewarded at election time, and, correspondingly, failure to mount

meaningful opposition will be punished.

Sorry about the horrible formatting.

(1) If you are not uncomfortable at least some of the time while in therapy sessions, you are wasting your time.

(2) *Everything* is grist for the therapy mill.

(3) Have you considered asking the therapist if you can lie down or otherwise position yourself so that you are not facing her? This eliminates a whole set of automatic visual biological/social response mechanisms that do nothing but get in the way.

(4) What you are paying for in therapy--if it is effective--is not just someone to listen to you or care about you. You are paying for someone to listen to you, care about what you are saying, but have no (or, at least, reveal no) personal interest in you and what you are saying. This is a very difficult thing for a person to provide; it is physically, cognitively, and emotionally draining, and it is why good therapy is worth paying for.

Couples therapy bears little functional relationship to individual therapy. Using the word "therapy" for both is, in my opinion, misleading.

Individual therapy is about acceptance, healing, and personal growth. Couples therapy is about communication and negotiation.

Individual therapists provide a context for a person to confront and, when appropriate, accept his or her own internal world. Couples therapists provide mediation.

I am not denigrating couples therapy; I am just saying that it has nothing to do with the issues raised by the LW.

"Fortunately, Kevin Martin, the Republican chairman of the FCC, seems to be listening."

Hey, finally something that the Republicans might not totally fuck up!

I think there is an implicit misunderstanding in both this article and some of the comments already made.

The vast majority of NYC medallion taxi drivers are essentially independent contractors. Some of them own their own cabs and medallions, others lease their cabs on a daily or weekly basis. In all cases, however, the cab driver is responsible for paying for gasoline, as well as the lease (or car loan payments, if the car is his own and not wholly paid for). Once he pays for these expenses out of his revenues--fares and tips--the rest is his income.

So, the notion that NYC medallion taxi drivers have "employers" is false.

Snow: "assail the concept of executive privilege"

The contempt citations do not represent an assault on the *concept* of executive privilege. They represent a challenge to this particular invocation of the privilege.

And Snow's language is, of course, specifically designed to obscure this important difference. Just like all Republican talking points are specifically designed to obscure some important difference.

"That employer who supplies the tools of employment has the right to make every effort to profit."

The overwhelming majority of NYC medallion taxi drivers do not have employers. They are independent contractors working for their own profit. If a taxi driver spends half his shift driving aimlessly around not picking up fares, the *only* one who loses economically is him.