From this week’s News of the Weird Digest:

On January 31, several hundred Japanese husbands recognized the second annual “Beloved Wives Day” to upgrade Japanese men’s notorious, deeply-ingrained indifference to their spouses. Among the husbands’ vows:  be home from work by the unusually-early hour of 8 p.m.; actually look into the missus’s eyes and say “thank you”; and try to remember to call her by her name (instead of, as many apparently do in substitution, grunting at her). (Divorce in Japan remains relatively rare, but marital estrangement has been rapidly increasing in recent years.) [Taipei Times-AP, 2-1-07]

Ending the tradition of the PostCard of the Week, courtesy of PostSecret:

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You’ll be clapping at the end…if you know what’s good for you.

Hard to believe but it was seven years ago today that INS agents raided a Miami home to retrieve young Cuban immigrant Elián González from his American relatives. Politicians, pundits, critics, and all sorts of people weighed in on the core issue, that being the rights of the parent versus the rights of the government.

I believe now what I believed then: unless children are in some mortal danger, physical and/or mental, the government should not intervene or interfere with parents’ right to do what they think is best for their children. It was a tough call, but the Feds got it right.

This is my favorite quote from the whole affair, courtesy of Wikipedia:

“On April 9, 2000, Richard Cohen of The Washington Post wrote: ‘Elián and Juan Miguel Gonzalez, son and father. The former is an innocent child, the latter a man whose boy was taken from him. Elián has behaved like a typical 6-year-old, Juan Miguel like a typical father. And most of the politicians like typical fools.’”

Continuing the tradition of the PostCard of the Week, courtesy of PostSecret:

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