Current Affairs

UPS, in an agreement with the New York state's attorney, will no longer ship cigarettes to individuals in the United States. The agreement, it is said, is part of the ongoing efforts of federal and state governments to cut down on underage smoking and tax avoidance. Which do you suppose is the most important to all those regulators? Here's a clue:

One thing I found interesting in reading all the reports about the death of Rosa Parks is that she wasn't the first one to refuse to give up her seat on the bus.

At least three other people were arrested for refusing to give up their bus seats prior to the Parks incident; they live in near anonymity today. Parks went on to become an icon who received a host of awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Why her? What made her so special?

I know we're supposed to be tolerant of others' opinions, but I don't have to include these two, do I?

Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans.

They may remind you another famous pair of singers, the Olsen Twins, and the girls say they like that. But unlike the Olsens, who built a media empire on their fun-loving, squeaky-clean image, Lamb and Lynx are cultivating a much darker personna. They are white nationalists and use their talents to preach a message of hate.

French prisons are described as the worst in Europe, with cells "akin to dungeons in the Middle Ages," hygiene that is "deplorable" and "inmates crowded into filthy, rat-infested cells, leading to an explosion in the number of prisoners with infectious diseases." Puts Gitmo is perspective a little bit, does it not?

Oh, my God! It's Global Cooling, and a new Ice Age is coming! Somebody better call a United Nations conference so we can turn the world economy upside-down. I will alert the media. Of course, we don't want to give up on our warming panic all at once:

Most models of global warming indicate that the Greenland ice might melt within thousands of years if warming continues

Back in July, I wrote about turf, letters to the editor purporting to be original thought on political matters but in reality group-think that is cut and pasted from a form letter. Now there's apparently an editorial version of turf making the rounds, with editors offering seemingly original editorials that are, in fact, cut and pasted from an editorial in one newspaper in a group into the editorial spaces of other newspapers in the group.

I think the saying is, "If you keep doing what you've been doing, you'll keep getting what you've been getting." No, not destruction; federal bailout of people who keep making stupid decisions.

I've known too many people who quit work -- especially those who "retired early" -- and then died within a year not to think there's something to this:

In a prospective cohort study of thousands of employees who worked at Shell Oil, the investigators found that embarking on the Golden Years at age 55 doubled the risk for death before reaching age 65, compared with those who toiled beyond age 60.

Be honest. You, too, went here. Right? Yes, we all did. (Links via blogometer)

If you were planning on heading to Australia while it was still a wild frontier of individualists, free from the entrapments of civilization, you may have waited too long:

A SACKED insurance broker who repeatedly came to work drunk - and even urinated in a wastepaper bin - has been awarded $10,000 compensation after claiming discrimination against his attention deficit disorder.