Today’s lunchtime delicacy is news chum stew with link sausage, being a tasty miscellany of news items I’ve collected over the week’s lunchtime news reading:
The other day, I wrote about ABC Family cancelling the summer series “Huge”. Today’s CNN brings an article about an effort underway to save the series, including an online petition.
California Drivers Licenses are in the news, in particular, the fact they have been redesigned to be more secure and tamperproof. Another article on the subject is here, with links to plenty of pictures. Most interesting is the new vertical format for under-21 drivers.
Some interesting cases of government not doing the right thing: First, in Tennessee, a house burned to the ground because the family didn’t pay the firefighting fee. This is actually common, and it demonstrates the difference between what is right and what is legal. Meanwhile, in South Carolina, the ACLU is suing a South Carolina jail because the only reading material they permit inmates is are softbound copies of the bible delivered directly from the publisher. How they don’t see this as state endorsement of religion is beyond me. This brings to mind something I read yesterday that intelligence is knowing tomatoes are a fruit, whereas smarts are knowning that tomatoes shouldn’t go in a fruit salad.
Another example of intelligence, not smarts, is exhibited at the Tribune properties, including the LA Times. This expose about the shenanigans at Sam Zell’s Tribune properties is quite shocking: it is as if the Animal House fraternity took over a respected publication. Actually, “as if” is wrong, for that appears to be what happened.
Turning to folks that are doing things right: A specialized version of Panera in St. Louis was in the news a while ago for going to a “Pay What You Can” concept. Guess what? They are starting to be profitable. This makes me think of the original notion of Clifton’s Brookdale, which was also “Pay What You Can”.
Another example of doing things right is in this story of cooperation between the US Army and scientists: working together, they seem to have found the reason behind colony collapse disorder in Honeybees. Right place, right time, and all that rot.
Hold on folks, we’re near the end. Here’s an interesting article from the LA Times about clothing: this time, asking if a particular clothing choice is always appropriate. It explores a number of recent incidents where what people chose to wear had larger consequences. Another article in the Times is seemingly related: a number of Islamic women are working on high-fashion hijabs. Of course, this has more fundamental types bothered: If a hijab is something that is worn to promote modesty, isn’t it wrong to make it highly fashionable?
And lastly, an institution is coming to an end. Back in my high school and college days, I have fond memories of programming late in the night over labor day weekend while listening to the Jerry Lewis telethon. No more. They are shaving 15 hours off the telethon, making it a 6-hour production. That takes all the fun out of it: the interesting part was the desparation of finding acts for the wee morning hours, and how bedraggeled the hosts would be in the last hour.
