c-dub: You don't seem to understand Babymech's point. The wording "led to complaint to Swedish parliament" is misleading. He did not "take it much further than was appropriate" - he took it to the *only* place, which is inherently appropriate. As Babymech explained, if you have a complaint to file regarding an employee of the government, you direct it to your ombudsman, whose specific job it is to represent the public interest and receive their complaints. This is what the father did. Critical reading - it's a valuable skill.

As for the kid...well boo-hoo, so two of his classmates didn't get invited, one of whom snubbed the kid in the first place. Would it have been more tactful to not snub them in public? Sure. That doesn't make it the kid's responsibility to avoid it, nor the teacher's to prevent it. Why keep these kids in a bubble? One day, they'll have to learn that that's just how life is; the sooner, the better. Try and 'protect' them, and you're just going to end up with a generation of whimpering weaklings.

@Alex Fear:

Although civility is nice, it has nothing to do with civility.

Anyway, for somebody who had earlier gone all ad hominem in accusing Athon of "lacking an education in the art of communication", you must admit that you rather compound the issue by either being unable, or simply refusing, to comprehend what he is saying. To wit: Athon clearly referred to smoking as a 'contributory risk factor', not the sole reason, nor even necessarily a reason at all, in any given case of cancer.

I think Athon is refusing to answer your questions because, and I don't wish to be unkind, but they're a little silly. But if it will help sort out your indignation, then I'm game. So let's see:

Q: "Hypothetically– what if God was to cure an amputee but that person lost their limb again years later?"
A: Then I guess we can draw two possible conclusions: either that person made God really angry, or they didn't learn their lesson about being careless around the industrial machinery the first time.

Q: "What causes cancer?"
A: IANAO (I Am Not An Oncologist), but I'm pretty sure people who *are* have a pretty good grasp on what's going on there, so I wouldn't worry about it. Oh, or, God does.

Oh dear! So, is it God, or is there something else at work here? Well, applying Occam's Razor and slicing away the bullshit, I think it should be fairly obvious that there's nothing miraculous going on here, viz. instead of an omnipotent, omnipresent spirit being both causing and taking away her cancer, it seems more likely that biological processes are responsible.

There we go, feathers unruffled now?

I guess the drivers just don't understand what "four tightens two" means...

Seriously though, this doesn't look like the WRC, so it's probably some kind of amateur rally where the drivers simply aren't that good.

se7en: I understand 'simple Economics', and I can prove your post is pretty much stupid...

There seems to have been one guy in particular (or maybe several) who specialised in just doodling whatever he wanted...

Singleton? More like simpleton!

Actually, the plane doesn't belong to Iron Maiden but to Astraeus, the UK charter company for which Bruce Dickinson works, as it were, part-time (as a Captain). It's on loan to IM for the tour, and was repainted for the purpose.