Darn good question:
Should you keep paying your mortgage?
If you have significant equity in your home, absolutely.
If you don't, it's getting harder to answer that question, especially when our government keeps giving people who owe more than their homes are worth so many reasons not to pay.
Times-are-even-tougher-than-you-thought department:
In this brutal season of cutbacks, the office holiday party is getting downsized, too.
From American Express to MTV to the Bend, Ore., city government, employers are canceling Christmas celebrations because of the gloomy economy. At some other workplaces, last year's catered affair is this season's potluck.
Better sit down for this shocker:
LONELY hearts beware: looking for love at a speed-dating event may leave you feeling unlovable. In big groups, people judge on looks so much that the less stunning may as well forget their clever chat-up lines.
[. . .]
OK, show of hands. Who's shocked, shocked, shocked and dismayed by this?
Reporting from Washington -- Will $700 billion be enough? That question emerged Monday as the Bush administration decided to pump more money into insurance giant American International Group Inc. and lawmakers pushed to extend the government's rescue to the ailing automobile industry.
For those who aren't quite sure yet the economy is really in trouble:
Fewer customers and venti-sized costs for closing stores led to lower sales and profit in the fourth quarter at Starbucks Corp., the company reported Monday.
I love this sentence from the piece about the Internet generation being lousy jurors: "Orality is the crucial ingredient of the adversarial system." Really rolls off the tongue. Anyway:
In a speech, Lord Judge of Draycote, the Lord Chief Justice, said it might be better to present information for young jurors on screens because that is how they were used to digesting information.
The folks at the National Toy Hall of Fame ran out of ideas back in 2005 when they inducted the cardboard box. They did it again this year:
A magic wand, a fishing rod or a royal scepter?
The lowly stick, a universal plaything powered by a child's imagination, landed in the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday along with the Baby Doll and the skateboard.
This is a bad year in a bad decade for newspapers, but at least we're having a good week:
It was a good day to be in the newspaper business. The historic November 5 editions proclaiming Barack Obama's White House victory flew off the newsstands and major newspapers struggled to keep up with the demand for copies.
So much attention was focused on what the presidential election tells us about America that we gave scant attention to a bunch of state ballot initiatives. Those can tell us where we are -- or aren't -- even better. Apparently, we're not ready to be led down the (green) garden path just yet, for example:
