Random

The beating of breasts could surely be heard even by penguins on melting ice caps.

Perhaps the two most important names in contemporary business were, this week, being criticized by their employees for losing their ethos, for sacrificing their soul, for, dare one utter it, selling out.

When Google's James Whittaker and Goldman Sachs' Greg Smith penned their respective lack-of-respect farewells, strange shivers wafted about the world of business.

Had these people lost their minds? Were they both experiencing some form of cranial trauma brought on by excessive stress? Had their lovers recently left them for, well, impoverished sculptors?… Read more

Once upon a time, fathers and sons hid their Playboys beneath their mattresses. But what did women do with their Playgirls?

Somehow, this is less well recorded, though society--or whatever is left of it--surely frowned more strongly on the notion that women openly read books of steamy intent.

Then along came the iPad and the Kindle. Suddenly, it seems, sales of erotic books aimed at women are looking highly perky.

I find myself excited by an in-depth analysis from the Daily Mail, which offered that sales of erotic novels aimed at women have soared 30 percent.

It cites Mills and … Read more

No one ever said that human beings should be consistent. No one ever said that they should even make sense.

Life is a struggle and the way bosses sometimes treat their workers can be beyond any pale--beyond even the moral code of Vlad the Impaler.

Who can be surprised, therefore, that harassed workers take home confidential files in order to complete their tasks? Indeed, a survey performed by Harris Interactive on behalf of a company called FileTrek shows that 90 percent of people believe that, um, other people take confidential files home with them.

I have managed to obtain an … Read more

Cable companies--like cell phone companies--aren't always keen to explain all the little nickels and dimes that they sweetly extract from your account.

There are so many little charges on your bill that their names mesmerize. You know, like the "Oops, We Made A Mistake, But We'll Charge You To Fix It" charge.

You might not have heard of this one, because it might masquerade under the name "payment reversal." At least this is the claim made by one pseudonymous Comcast customer, who noticed a $25 line item that seemed out of line.

Consumerist reports … Read more

Aw, kids.

Sometimes they struggle to keep themselves occupied. Those little brains of theirs are so active. Those not yet fully-formed emotional avenues of theirs are not quite fully paved.

So they like to play pranks. Like, for example, sending random texts to people saying they've hidden a dead body.

One 15-year-old girl in Northern Arkansas tried this little jape and the random number happened to belong to someone whose sense of humor was occupationally impaired.

For this person happened to be a police detective.

The Associated Press arrested this tale and said that the girl, from Rogers, Ark., … Read more

Perhaps it is unreasonable to accuse the police of being sad virtual beings, when the rest of society is already that way.

The temptation is great, though, when I tell you the story, via The Daily Mail, of the police force that located a missing 12-year-old girl.

You might think that the police in the U.K.'s Bolton East immediately called her mom, in order to soothe her concerns. You might think that raccoons enjoy a fine pinot noir with their trash.

For the first thing the police did was send a tweet. It read: "CHOLE (sic) HAS … Read more

One can imagine that flying up to space can do peculiar things to one's body. And, in the case of a couple of astronauts who have returned, to one's mind.

Yet new research from NASA suggests that prolonged periods in the bluey-black beyond might cause serious damage to your eyes.

Space.com offers a chilling view of brain scan tests performed on 27 astronauts who had spent an average of 108 days away floating up there.

As they used to say in soothing TV commercials, I am not a doctor. However, the conclusion that a third of the … Read more

Complaining is easy.

When 500 bosses and IT managers were asked what they thought of their IT guys, they seemed to have let their feelings depart swiftly from their hinges.

I am grateful to Wired for having corralled this report before too many IT guys got a hold of it and slapped it over the heads of their bosses. For it declared that 93 percent of respondents believe that their IT guys' know-how contains more holes than the average chunk of Emmental.

The report, commissioned by CompTIA, a nonprofit industry association, made my own laptop quiver with indigestion. For the … Read more

The position of guest star can sometimes be abused by sitcoms.

They roll out a movie star for one or two episodes in order to boost ratings, before that star departs, leaving a pitiful normalcy behind.

When it comes to "Big Bang Theory," however, the term "star" enjoys a more celestial quality.

So I know that many will feel a heavenward surge to learn that Stephen Hawking--he of the extremely large brain and extreme suspicion of the goodness of aliens--will be making a guest appearance on the show.

My voracious reading of Entertainment Weekly offered … Read more