Finding out you are fired....

This post has some amusing horror stories. My personal favorite:

I walked into the employee's entrance of my building and the security guard said: "Visitors must use the main entrance."

So I had to walk around to the front, trade my (deactivated) employee badge for a visitor's badge, and then walk up to my office to clear out my personal effects - for which the cleaning guy had thoughtfully left a couple black plastic trash bags.

More here. Fortunately, all my horror stories are about the actual work, not the firing.

Quote of the day

The best form of welfare for the troops is first-rate training.
- Rommel

Kissing rules....

I didn't realize it was that formal, but apparently every social group has rules for greeting kisses (as opposed to actual smooching), and sometimes these change. Some of the comments to that post were funny, such as the one speculating on where exactly in a "3 cheek kiss" the third cheek would be.

Careful study of these customs might inform you of where to travel for the maximum number of kisses.

Quote of the day

What about that guy who set up the phony investment company? Can the Treasury make a new one of those, only bigger? He took money away from people and gave it to charities and the needy and the arts and higher education. That sounds like stimulus so why are we sending him to jail? Wasn't he ahead of the curve?

"Tyrone"

Now that it's too late for anybody to get this for ME....

...I can point you to this example of how gift giving can be a form of performance art.



Hat tip: McArdle

Eternal Burning Questions

Such as "Can a Jedi lightsaber cut through Superman?"

(The answer, by the way, appears to be "No" - or at least a convincing argument can be made to support that view.)

Hat Tip? The appropriately named Geek Press.

They need to find a way to plug my fat STRAIGHT into the car....

....instead of only getting it through liposuction. Yes, liposuction fat has been used as fuel for vehicles.

I guess the low tech version of this is called the bicycle.

Statistical Innumeracy

Megan McArdle points out another example of journalists' incompetence with statistics. They reported "Holiday jewelry sales drop 80 percent" when actually 80% of jewelry stores reported some drop in sales.

The Language Log has quite a few examples of the way journalists misreport and distort statistics and science. I guess if they understood this sort of thing, they'd find other jobs.