- 100-km Chinese traffic jam enters Day 9
- "Another driver, Wang, told Xinhua he'd been stuck in the traffic jam for three days and two nights. 'We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs,' Wang said." Biking and/or walking might be faster it would seem
- TDSB’s $143 school pencil sharpener just the beginning
- "At one school, Emery Collegiate Institute in North York, a work crew was summoned to hang three pictures one day in March 2011, a job that took seven hours and cost $266. Eight days later, workers were once again called to the same school to “hang three pictures on the wall.” That time, workers billed for 24 hours at a cost to taxpayers of $857." Reminds me a certain several hundred dollar incident that happened during my undergrad where some folks got billed that amount to have someone turn a light switch on one evening and then off the following day as they had to call a separate employee to campus for a 4 hour minimum shift at double time and a half (long weekend) as it wasn't in the job description of the security guard there to flip the light switch.
- They’re Taking Over!
- Somewhat disturbingly the pictures in this article on jellyfish taking over the ocean are from BC.
- I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave
- "My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine." The sort of job that seems likely to be almost entirely automated very soon. It'll leave some people out of work but is that necessarily a bad thing?
- Infertility data show no rise, despite marriage delays
- As summarized by one researcher cited in the article: "Even though the ages at which women in the United States have their children have been increasing since 1995, the percentage of the population suffering from infertility or impaired fecundity has not increased"
- Jail Becomes Home for Husband Stuck With Lifetime Alimony
- "Schochet, who said he worked as a portfolio manager at Citadel Investment Group Inc. and Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG) and once earned $1 million a year, has been jailed for missing court-ordered payments at least eight times in the past two years as he coped with the end of his 17-year marriage. The reason he ran afoul of the law was simple. He was out of work for most of that time, a victim of a weak economy, and he ran through his savings trying to pay his wife alimony and child support that totaled almost $100,000 a year."
- New Zealand bans software patents
- "An [Institute of IT Professionals] poll of members at the time showed that 94 percent of those with a view were in favour of banning software patents." As silly as Apple getting a patent for the use of rounded corners, a lot of software patents seem even sillier.
- Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you
- "Plowing and harvesting were backbreaking toil, but the peasant enjoyed anywhere from eight weeks to half the year off."
- A Scientific Map Of Optimal Food Pairings
- Reminds me a bit of The Flavor Bible, one of my favorite books on food.
- Traveling Without Seeing
- "I’m half a world from home, in a city I’ve never explored, with fresh sights and sounds around every corner. And what am I doing? I’m watching exactly the kind of television program I might watch in my Manhattan apartment." I've never been to Manhattan but I've definitely been guilty of much the same from time to time.
- London skyscraper’s ‘deathray’ reflection is melting cars, burning businesses, but also cooking eggs
- "I was sent out to see if I could fry an egg in the heat, a task that I presumed was impossible on an overcast September day. But, not only was it possible, I had to run out of the death ray that was slowly cooking my egg, because the thinning hairs on my head started to catch fire."
- Now it's wrong
- Some thoughts on the following case which is now headed for retrial: Judge Who Blamed Teen For Her Own Rape Now Thinks the Sentence He Gave Her Rapist Is Illegal. "While the sentence and the judge’s comments are outrageous, they pale in comparison to the irony they spawned. Cases like this one happen all the time, except the abuser is typically female and the victims typically male. It takes little effort to find them. ... For example, Julie Diane Green raped a 14-year-boy by getting him drunk. The judge sentenced her to 30 days in jail. Jenny Lee Mitchell also raped a 14-year-old boy, and the judge in her case completely suspended her sentence because Mitchell was abused as a child, and stating that she had 'been very much a victim.'"
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