I know some of us joke about the Grammar Police, but, jeez:
An Auckland accountant was sacked for sending "confrontational" emails with words in red, in bold and in capital letters.
Vicki Walker, who was a financial controller with ProCare Health, has been awarded $17,000 for unfair dismissal, and plans to lodge an appeal for further compensation.
[. . .]
Finally, a believable sign that this crappy economy may be turning around:
Here's the theory, briefly: Sales of men's underwear typically are stable because they rank as a necessity. But during times of severe financial strain, men will try to stretch the time between buying new pairs, causing underwear sales to dip.
[. . .]
Speaking of gambling . . .
It's interesting to periodically take up the books we read as children and teenagers. Lately, I've been revisiting some of Robert Heinlein's juvenile titles. The one I'm reading now is "Podkayne of Mars," which has, among other things, a skewering of capitalism run amok ala Las Vegas. There is a certain Dom Pedro Casino on Venus that claims to have "EVERY KNOWN DIVERSION IN THE UNIVERSE." It has the following sign outside the gambling sector.
We may already be at the point where so many things are illegal that you will unwittingly become a criminal several times over every time you set foot outside your house. Oh, wait! Now they can get you there, too:
If you're planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you'd best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products.
Just because you have the right to possess in one state, that doesn't mean you have the right to carry in another. No, not guns:
A Michigan man learned the hard way that a medical marijuana card doesn't apply to individual bags and a cereal box of pot in Indiana.
The Indianapolis Star notes in an editorial that the state's two racinos are pleading poverty and asking for a tax break, the second time they have "tried to escape an agreement they freely entered into last year." I have no special love for the racinos, and I think gambling has done more harm than good in Indiana. But I wonder about this reasoning, in the editorial's final paragraph:
A lighting expert says our mandated switch to CFL will probably save "some" energy, but at too great a cost in rampant dissatisfaction with lighting:
Yeah, count me in , too:
If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote.
At Mark Souder's health care town hall meeting Friday, former City Councilman Dr. John Crawford succinctly identified a major problem with Obamacare and similar proposals:
Wonder if the Good Old Boys will start mingling more with the riffraff now, or maybe they have a secret back room somewhere that you need to know the magic handshake to get in:
After nearly 40 years of service, Fort Wayne's Summit Club has closed without notice.
The Summit Club was an exclusive private members club for Fort Wayne's elite business men and women.
Suppose we have a higher percentage of women living in trailer parks than most states?
Third-graders in the Brownsburg school district will be on the fast track to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome:
Got an interesting Charles Krauthammer column on "Obamacare Version 1.0," which he says is dead. I'm not sure if I can find the room for it on the editorial page, so I'll share it here.
My native state has figured out how to solve the problem of atheists -- just legislate them away. The law creating Kentucky's Office of Homeland Security declares that the "security of the Commonwealth" cannot be secured without "reliance on Almighty God."
The language in the 2006 legislation had been inserted by state Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, a pastor of Christ is King Baptist Church in Louisville.
A few people have asked if I plan to write anything for the page or here about Edward Kennedy in the near future. No, I'm not.
I love magazines. When I was in high school, my parents always had a couple of subscriptions -- sometimes Look and the Saturday Evening Post, sometimes Life and Reader's Digest. Cracking open the newest issue of one and devouring it cover to cover was one of my favorite things. (I usually read all the short things first, then went back for the long ones one at a time until I had read them all, too. That's still the way I read a magazine today.)
OK, everybody start chanting and let's all go make some signs: Free James Browning! Free James Browning! Free James Browning!
Congress is on recess and President Obama is relaxing on Martha's Vineyard, so we are at Code Green for economic risks out of Washington. Of course, Nancy Pelosi could tells us that "something must be done" about this or that crisis we never heard about until now, and we'd quickly be at Code Blue. Then will come Code Yellow, Code Orange and the truly frightening Code Red:
Another modern tragedy exposed:
The northwestern Indiana town of Merrillville is requiring its employees to take five unpaid furlough days this year, along with five more in the first half of 2010.
That amounts to about a 2 percent pay cut each year, which isn't bad in today's economy. Indianapolis Star employees have a new two-year contract calling for a 10 percent cut.
