James Frey, the Milli Vanilli of memoirists, and publisher Random House will settle various class-action lawsuits filed against them by aggrieved readers of Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which was billed as "nonfiction."

How readers will be compensated:

A word to librarians: lock up this title now, before the patrons start ripping up your circulating copies.

(Via The Consumerist.)

Update, 10 am, 9 September: Chase at Taste the World thinks this is a good enough idea to extend to other forms of deception.

This can't be good:

The House of Mouse is late again: we've had this sort of "technology" in Oklahoma City for years. If you take NW 36th westbound from Kelley to Lincoln at exactly 47 mph (which is a tad in excess of the speed limit, so don't do that), you get a pretty fair transcription of Ron Bushy's drum solo in Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida".

John Owen Butler finds one saving grace in this scheme:

Think we could interest the makers of Accutane^® in sponsoring the pockmarked surface of NW 50th between Pennsylvania and May?

Say, from 1 to 100.

(Suggested by Venomous Kate.)

This is a ride worthy of an X Games event:

Yeah, but just imagine the sheer volume of her CV.

The New York Times Company will sell its nine television stations and refocus on its print and Internet properties.

The official company statement:

And they've been expressing concerns to investors:

Even allowing for the fact that all such statements to investors are primarily intended as CYA devices, it's no particular secret that NYT Class A stock has been tanking for almost a year, and the divestiture would put some cash in the company coffers while investors are staying away.

NYT operates television stations in eight mostly middle-sized markets, all of them solo operations except in Oklahoma City, where the company owns KFOR-TV (an affiliate of NBC) and KAUT (an affiliate of MyNetworkTV). There is no indication so far as to whether the stations will be dealt as a group or sold off to individual buyers.

And if you're in China, you've probably got 'em:

And to think we complained because our ads said they tasted good, like they should.

If you didn't trust Diebold voting machines before — I didn't — this won't make you feel any better about them:

Yes, really:

This isn't quite as stupid as setting the default password to PASSWORD, but it's close.

These machines, and the people who tried to pass them off as secure, should be locked away — and the keys should be thrown away.

(Via E. M. Zanotti.)

Update, 19 September: Tim Blair sees an upside: "Presumably Diebold voting machine keys can open minibars. That was probably the plan all along."

Conventional wisdom says that the camera adds ten pounds. (Which, of course, makes me ask: "How do I get these nine or ten cameras off me?")

The standard solution, as Katie Couric knows, is good ol' Photoshop. But Photoshop is expensive — even Photoshop Elements, the stripped-down version with about four-fifths the functionality, isn't exactly cheap — and the learning curve for either is steep.

Hewlett-Packard has a workaround: cameras that can adjust the ratio between width and height to create a "slimming" effect which might, under certain conditions, be somewhat convincing.

Remember when photographs used to be good enough for evidence? Fuggeddaboudit.

(Via Salon.com's Broadsheet.)

A fairly typical Ann Coulter paragraph, as such things go, found at Townhall.com:

Human Events Online ran the same Coulter column, with one notable excision. Here's the same paragraph:

Coulter's copy at her own site reads like the Townhall.com version, so it's probably safe to assume that Human Events Online excised the "fag-hag" reference. Not that the deletion bothers me particularly — I suspect most people who know John Warner know about Liz and don't really give a flip — but it is an indication that, to some editorial eyes anyway, some cheap shots might be too cheap after all.

A commenter named "carlitos" reported this discrepancy in a thread at Patterico's this morning.

The University of Illinois student newspaper, the Daily Illini, is dropping its editorial commentary:

Now if only [fill in name of paper] would take this advice and follow suit.

(Via Hit & Run.)

You know, sometimes bait actually works:

(Via Autoblog.)

I frankly do not understand the appeal of embossed toilet paper: it's not all that attractive, generally; I doubt seriously that the addition of textural elements substantially improves the surface area (and therefore the useful area) of an individual sheet; and inevitably, it makes the roll stick out farther from its cardboard tube.

Which latter explains this:

Scott's sheet has shrunk from 4 inches to 3.7 inches; on a thousand-sheet roll, this is a reduction of 25 feet.

There are two ways to look at this. If you count off X number of sheets for the task, this won't affect you much, and indeed you're performing an exceedingly-tiny kindness on behalf of the environment, since you're using (and flushing) 7.5 percent less paper. If you grab a specific length, though, this is going to cost you, and you'll probably think the guys who run Scott Paper are a bunch of, um, asswipes.

(Via The Consumerist.)

Wonkette happened to mention a Traditional Values Coalition release titled "Will Cross-Dressing Activists Come To Your School?"?

Just in case, here's a list of schools in the Oklahoma City district which require uniforms.

Now I know why I prefer the drive-thru:

This is, I presume, a relatively recent development, as I worked for Mickey D's in the early 1970s, and I was just as far out on the weirdness asymptote then as I am now. (Aside: A Google search for weirdness asymptote puts me at #2. Also #3.) But there's definitely some sort of artificial-cheese-spread atmosphere in back of the counter these days: if they rendered this bunch at the processing facility, they'd wind up with Soylent Grey.

And when you get right down to it, I don't think I really want to know what goes into a McNugget.

As Marvin and Kim (or a host of others) could tell you, sometimes it just takes two.

There was a time, for instance, when it took two hands to handle a Whopper.

And speaking of beef, it's probably going to take two of you to tip a cow.

The Oklahoman arrives on my driveway (too close to the curb, but that's another issue) with its special sections wrapped around the outside, protecting the tender, fragile news in the middle. And given this packaging technique, I tend to glance at the wraparounds before I dig seriously into the news.

Today's Real Estate section had a profile of Kanela Huff, whose name appears on rather a lot of yard signs around town: she's the owner of Kanela & Co., a major player in the local real-estate market. (I remember her vaguely as Kanela Voegeli, when she was working for the old Zedlitz company, and, well, how many Kanelas can there be?) I thought this might be worth a browse, so I started out on the front page, duly turned to page 24 for the continuation — and there were the opening paragraphs again.

Sections of this sort tend to go to press a few days before the actual distribution date, so I'm guessing that the Real Estate tab got printed, and only then somebody noticed that the cover story was rather badly botched. So the entire story was picked up again, correctly this time, for the back page of the Business section, with the following Editor's Note:

Two items of interest, one of which is mentioned in the article:

1. The company is relocating Pearl's from its 63rd Street location (which will be swallowed up by the Chesapeake Energy Acquisitions Blob) to a new development north of Belle Isle Station on Classen.

2. "Kanela" is Greek for "cinnamon."
   

Still: "irreparable errors"? Naw. They theoretically could have fixed them, though it almost certainly would have cost far more money than it was worth. I just wonder what got scraped off page 6B to make room for the reprint.

(Link to an online version.)

Caterina Fake is one of the co-founders of Flickr, which ought to have made her famous.

Instead, she can't even sign up for Facebook, and, she says, Northwest Airlines automatically deletes her ticket purchases.

What to do? Ordinarily I'd suggest the Hyacinth Bucket technique, but stretching "Fake" into "fah-KAY" seems a bit counterproductive, and it wouldn't fix her Facebook issue either.

Whoever said this was a boring game?

I've heard of guys bashing the bishop in the bathroom, but they weren't playing chess.

Deadspin comments:

Geez. And I thought the most exciting thing to ever happen in chess was Alexandra Kosteniuk.

The Supreme Court has declined to hear Acosta v. Texas, in which Mr Acosta sought to have overturned a Lone Star ban on the manufacture, sale and advertising of "obscene devices," otherwise known as sex toys. Counsel for Acosta had pointed out that similar laws in other states had already been declared unconstitutional.

A Texas appellate court had previously ruled that actual use of the items was not forbidden, prompting this remark from Matt Rosenberg:

I think I speak for rather a lot of us guys when I say "Ewwwww."

Incidentally, if you're going to smuggle these contraptions into Texas, you might want to stop at six: possession of more than half a dozen is construed as intent to promote, which is a misdemeanor.

The single largest collection of dildos in Texas, of course, is in Austin, at 11th and Congress.

The government of Mongolia wants to trademark the name and image of Genghis Khan:

In fact, the Ulan Bator airport is being renamed for him (as noted here during the summer). But the Mongolians (I guess we don't call them "Mongols" anymore) don't want outsiders appropriating Genghis:

It won't stop there, says Lemuel:

In the best of all possible worlds, this would be the result:

"Adolf Hitler," "Nazi" and "National Socialist," or any combinations including same, are registered trademarks of Mike Godwin. All rights reserved. Use without prior permission strictly forbidden.

But I suspect Godwin probably doesn't want anything to do with this sort of thing.

Which leaves me only one question: which Third World hellhole — Iran, Cuba, or the Gaza Strip — will be the first to name a landmark for Jimmy Carter?

Ethnic diversity, we are told, is a Good Thing, and to some extent, I have to agree: I have no desire to live among a bunch of people who are exactly like me, assuming that there exists a bunch of people who are exactly like me, which is something I don't really want to assume.

But there's always been a serious downside to it, and now it's being quantified:

My vestigial leftist reflex immediately came back with "Yeah, so there are xenophobes out there. We're not like that." Which suggests further research — say, busing churchgoing NASCAR fans into Berkeley.

And Putnam isn't by any means calling for re-isolation:

This strikes me as fatuous. "Us" is already under construction, and always has been; these things happen on their own, and efforts to direct the process are not guaranteed to produce the desired results, as Putnam's own research presumably shows.

Or, as Rachel says:

Think of it as the Law of Unintended Consequences in action. Or you can just snicker at this:

Some choice. "Ghazanfar" is evidently Arabic for "Morton". And while we're on the subject, veils suck.

Remember when there was always room for this stuff?

As biohazards go, this is inarguably small-scale. Had this been spinach salad with mayonnaise, there'd be Chernobyl-level anguish.

(Via The Consumerist.)

I should point out that a friend of mine sent me this; despite a certain resemblance, personality-wise, I did not write it.

This goes on for quite a ways, inasmuch as it deals with life in the Groves of Academe, which is similar to The Industry only in that it goes out of its way to accommodate people who in the real world would be asking you if you wanted fries with that. This is, incidentally, another way you can tell I didn't submit that question: the idea that I'd be looking for something "meaningful" for my last decade is wholly foreign to me. Not being one of the nine people on earth who have their actual Dream Jobs, what I look for is something I can put out of my mind the moment I walk out the door.

Or, better yet, the moment I walk in the door.

Miriam is on the road, and I have to assume she's packed plenty of shoes:

This caught my eye because for the World Tours I pack, yes, four pairs of shoes. These are, however, sixteen-day trips, which leads to the next question: in the unlikely event that I ever acquire a real live traveling companion of the female persuasion, will I have to get a larger vehicle just to accommodate her wardrobe needs? (I currently drive an Infiniti I30, which is considered more-or-less mid-sized.)

Dave Dial, a former Oklahoman transplanted to Los Angeles forty-odd years ago, explained this to me, and it rang truer than I'd prefer to admit:

Besides, a lot of those humongous consoles had old B&W sets in them; if not necessarily more cost-effective, it was a lot more appealing to buy a color set and park it on top, and if you were lucky enough to have one of the high-end consoles with a picture tube that hid behind sliding doors or louvers, no one need ever know your dark, deep secret.

Actual Curtis Mathes consoles probably suffered less from this syndrome than some other, better-known brands: the tiny Texas-based manufacturer's long-running slogan was "The most expensive television in America, and darn well worth it," and they meant it. But by the 1960s, parts were relatively cheap, and labor relatively expensive; if you were unwilling to mess around with the high-voltage innards of a television, you either wrote a large check or bought a new set. (This reality was ultimately reflected in the Curtis Mathes warranty: one year on labor, ten years on parts, still in effect when I bought one of their sets in 1981. I wrote about the experience here. That set, incidentally, was still working when I donated it to Goodwill in 2002, though the picture was a little greener than spec.)

I know the syndrome well, though. I had replaced the original factory radio in my old Toyota Celica with a radio/cassette unit. Eventually, the tape mechanism quit working, in a truly fascinating fashion: the transport had somehow locked itself into a position where it thought there was a tape already in there, which meant (1) you couldn't insert an actual tape and (2) it automatically cut off the radio. Faced with the possibility of having to crawl back under the dash and replace the factory unit, or buy a whole new stereo, I shoved a plastic dowel (actually part of an old Bic pen barrel) just far enough into the tape transport to defeat the radio-off switch, which left me with a dead tape unit but a working radio. This ad hoc fix lasted six years, two years longer than the duct-tape job on the exhaust manifold. (Don't ask.)

Conversely, I once had a fairly crummy $200 shelf-unit stereo whose turntable failed, which I replaced with a real live Dual 1215 hi-fi unit, thereby guaranteeing myself high-quality reproduction right up to the point where the signal entered the amplifier. In automotive terms, this is dropping a 351 Cleveland into a Kia Sephia.

Is there an inverse correlation between BMI and IQ?

In other news, Nicole Richie will be receiving her doctorate this spring.

This phenomenon has been called by some the "Homer Simpson Effect," to which R. Alex Whitlock replies, "Homer Simpson effect? They're getting a crayon lodged in their brain?!"

Not the kind you go to for a spot of ale, either. Tam explains:

The rain started here Saturday night, and might let up by tomorrow; I have the general feeling that I'm going to dissolve right onto the sidewalk and they're going to have to bring a 55-gallon drum of Dawn for Dishes to scrape me away. I certainly won't be able to walk my way out of it — not with these knees.

Two weeks ago I had an unscheduled trip to the dentist, the result of not looking too closely at what might be lurking in the bottom of that bowl of trail mix. (Whatever it was, it was petrified, and for all I know might have come from the Oregon Trail.) There was much discussion when I arrived, mostly over whether my insurance would cover the repairs. I pointed out that this would not be an issue, inasmuch as I didn't have any.

"Now here's a man who knows how to count," said the dentist.

And I suppose I do. I get three cleanings and one set of X-rays a year, at a cost of somewhere around $350. Dental insurance worthy of the name would cost me rather more than thirty bucks a month, and it wouldn't cover all of that stuff in full. Admittedly, I don't have teenagers in need of orthodontia, and the damage repaired that day didn't require crowns and such, but in the absence of some major catastrophe — and now you know why I'm getting three cleanings and one set of X-rays a year — I don't really see the need for buying dental insurance, unless I can find something that covers only major treatments, which presumably wouldn't cost so much.

I thought about that while reading this piece by Arnold Kling:

James Joyner took on this premise and drew some interesting comments:

For the record, my scheduled medical expenses each year (unscheduled ones are, not surprisingly, harder to forecast) run about $2200 a year; actual copayments are around $600. I couldn't tell you how much my actual health coverage costs, though I suspect it's around $3500 a year; I can't help but wonder how much it would be if I were to pick up that $1600 (the difference between the copays and the actual price of the services and prescriptions) myself.

I don't see, though, any great demand to switch to health care that covers only the hyperexpensive stuff, no matter how little it might cost in comparison, and until there's a demand, I have no reason to expect there to be much of a supply.

Only words matter today, apparently:

Not on your life. Flesh wounds eventually heal. But cruel words cut straight to the heart, where they fester for all eternity.

At least, that's what we're told to believe, usually by the same people who quote Matthew 7:1 and manage to miss the rest of the chapter.

Or so I assume. In Japan, you can buy spray cans of oxygen, in case you can't find any of the stuff in the actual air. This might have been a big hit in Los Angeles in the Fifties, when the air had this vaguely meringue-like texture; I'm not sure how well it would go over today, though if you turned it loose at 42nd and Treadmill, they'd use it to blow cookie crumbs out of their keyboards.

The way to get America's attention, says Tam, is to invoke the sacred Middle Class:

I suppose I should look for where I stand. The Bureau of the Census has Median Household Income tables only up to 2003; I'm above the state level for '03, but below the national. (I'm waiting for the Democrats to announce a platform plank which calls for all 50 states to be above the national median. The GOP, for its part, will simply tell me that it's my own damn fault I'm not rich.)

So who is the true middle class? Tam says:

My car is older, and my grind longer, but otherwise that pretty much sounds like me.

And Her Majesty's Government plans to make bloody sure it costs you:

And how will they do this? By computer, of course:

Under the current tax system, which dates back to 1993, the council tax, as it's called, has eight brackets or "bands": the highest band, H, is for structures valued (in 1991, the standardized base) at more than £320,000. Each governing council levies at its own rate, but the bands are consistent throughout England; Wales and Scotland have slightly different bands.

It should be noted that in 1991, when the bands were set, the average English home sold for £73,000; it's now over £180,000.

And there's this:

A few local notes:

• Leonard Sullivan, assessor for Oklahoma County, says that by the end of this year every single piece of real property in the county will have been visually inspected by his office. So far as I can tell, they were here in 2003, slightly before I moved in; state law requires a reinspection every four years.

• Taxes on the palatial Surlywood estate for this year come to $824 (£443).

• Online records go back only to 1993, at which time the tax was $253 (£133).

• During those years, assessed value (11 percent of market value) increased from $3702 to $8508, subject to a cap law in some of those years.
  

Much as I feel for the Brits, or indeed any overtaxed folks, they're apparently not getting hit with anything we haven't seen Stateside.

But now this is interesting:

Make of that what you will.

They told me when I was younger I might be "too smart for my own damn good." Being unable to extrapolate from my own experience — I'm hardly an unbiased observer — I've never been quite able to explain what that means.

Until perhaps now. Buddy is a Border Collie, as dogs go incredibly bright, but there's a downside:

Dogs, of course, don't actually get Alzheimer's. But if we've learned anything about incredible simulations, they can be just as scary as the real thing. Maybe more so.

The latter half of my life has been spent unlearning fears, one at a time. I still have entirely too many of them to go.

Dame Judi Dench assures us that Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, is ... oh, hell, just read it:

This seems rather unlike Dench, whose couth is unquestioned; according to Defamer, it's also rather unlike Craig.

For my part, I remain neither shaken nor stirred.

Donna proposes the following minor change for elevators:

It might be more comprehensible than "Maximum capacity X lbs.", where you just know that guy over in the corner all by himself weighs X-50.

Baby strollers and such, though, will complicate matters.

News Item: Iran has said it would offer cash incentives to travel agencies to encourage Western tourists to visit the country, giving a premium for Americans, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Tuesday. The proposal is Iran's latest bid to reach out to ordinary Americans in an attempt by the Islamic Republic's political leadership to show that its quarrel is with the U.S. administration — not U.S. citizens.

The old American Embassy will hold 66 persons, more or less indefinitely.

(Via Francis W. Porretto.)

The idea seemed sane enough: if we (by which I mean "they," since this didn't happen to me) actually had a car here, we could sell more car stereos, since shoppers would be able to hear the equipment in its proper environment.

A deal was struck with an automaker, and as the new store began to take shape, the contractor was called in to remove one of the pillars near the entrance so that the car could be moved into the store.

He declined, and of course store staff wanted to know why:

"You don't have a car."

Patiently the staff explained the deal with the automaker and how everything was supposed to go.

"But you don't have a car."

"It will be here soon."

"Uh, no, it won't. It's on the bottom of the ocean."

Last I heard, salvage operations were continuing.

Perrigo Company, which makes store-brand equivalents of name-brand over-the-counter drugs, some of which I use, is recalling 11 million bottles of 500-mg acetaminophen caplets after discovering metal fragments in about 200 individual pills.

The company blames premature wear of its pill-stamping equipment. No injuries have so far been reported, and no severe injuries are expected.

Acetaminophen is the generic form of the drug sold as Tylenol^®. No Tylenol-branded products are affected by the recall. The affected batches are listed here.

I am normally not one to wish ill will upon an energy company — I live in the shadow of the oil patch, after all, and anything collected in Oklahoma Gross Production Tax is a sum the state won't ask me to pay — but after twenty-seven spams touting the over-the-counter stock of Cana Petroleum (symbol: CNPM), I can only hope that these people end up with dry holes, and not in a good way, either.

"Women must not show their femininity in their social interactions."
       — Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, as quoted here

To further this goal, Snoopy the Goon unveils (so to speak) a true Pan-Islamic Gown. It provides the proper protections against that which is seductive, yet it is remarkably inexpensive.

Best definition I've ever heard:

I can also vouch for this one:

A whole boxful of tools here.

(Via Tam.)

Update, 4 pm: pdb traces this list to the nonpareil Peter Egan.

Me, about two years ago:

And there's one other issue, which may be summed up as "Flying's just no fun anymore." Justin Bond (yes, this Justin Bond) may enjoy the Shortbus, but he draws the line at the Airbus:

This isn't exactly my vision of a successful flight, but it's a hell of a lot closer than any of us are likely to see any time soon; God forbid the TSA should find anyone bearing unguents. Where's Braniff when you need them?

(Found in The Out Traveler, Winter 2006.)

McGehee tests the Hydra of razors, the five-blade Gillette Fusion, and does the cost-benefit analysis:

Which explains my ongoing loyalty to the Schick Super Twin, a disposable with a meager two edges — a Hyundai among the Benzes and Beemers of razordom — but with a little white tab which, when pushed, forces the accumulated stubbly bits out of their hiding place, giving this razor unmatched rinsability and, by extrapolation, substantial extra life. A bag of ten ($8 or so) will last me all year. (Your mileage, of course, may vary, especially if you have a beard like Fidel's or legs like [pick a name, I'm trying to concentrate here].)

In Europe, at least, you can see it with your own two eyes:

Advantage: cocaine, which sticks to your currency without dissolving it.

(Via Lemuel Kolkava.)

Were I five instead of fiftysomething, if I were to mention today that both my parents smoked, I'd expect to see representatives of the State at the door within minutes, their jackboots temporarily replaced by "sensible" shoes, their court orders demanding my removal to a foster home angrily brandished, their Utter Horror undiluted and obvious.

So I tend to yawn at things like the Great American Smokeout. And I yawn further when I reflect on the tendency of present-day media to pretend that tobacco doesn't exist as an actual plant, only as an Evil Cartel, and to attempt to expunge any and all references to it that might possibly come into the field of vision of someone not yet old enough to vote.

A yawn, though, doesn't count for much, which is perhaps why artist Sean Gleeson is presenting a gallery of Great American Smokers. He explains the motivation thusly:

Besides, it's cold outside, and as Al Gore reminds us, lighting up contributes to global warming.

The palatial Surlywood estate now carries a Zestimate of $93,730, which might even be reasonable. (I've been saying that somewhere in the middle 90s was plausible, more or less ever since they came up with the startling sum of $117,695 back in the summer, a figure which, I felt, couldn't possibly be justified.)

Not that I'm particularly upset; it's just a number, and I'm not planning to sell anyway. Others might take umbrage, and some actually have: the National Community Reinvestment Coalition has filed a complaint about Zillow.com with the Federal Trade Commission. Says NCRC:

Curbed.com's San Francisco blog finds this a trifle amusing:

I dunno. I've never met any dishonest appraisers, but obviously this doesn't mean that they don't exist. I suspect, though, that more people are using Zillow as a get-a-load-of-this site than as an actual valuation oracle. Certainly I've done my part to encourage this sort of thing.

When did "full" become the opposite of "wide"?

Expiring European patent: "A device for collecting flatus gas from a human or animal subject, the device comprising a gas-tight collecting tube ... for insertion into the rectum of the subject and retaining means comprising a pair of O rings ... locatable in the subject's inter-sphincter groove...."

I don't know about the rest of you, but this is not this old fart's idea of "in the groove." Maybe you can sell it to Jumpin' Jack Flash.

David Hermance, Toyota's head of Advanced Technology Vehicles — the Prius is essentially his baby — was killed over the weekend when his private plane crashed off the California coast.

I fear Tam may be right:

(Offer made by Tamara K., Knoxville, TN. Not valid in places where ownership of ammunition is prohibited, but if you live in such a place, for God's sake move!)

Mrs. Bluebird tries to connect with her class by bringing in a subject they know, with dismaying results:

The teacher admits that no, she doesn't own any of the gaming systems. The students gape open-mouthed: they'd never dreamed it was possible that anyone over the age of 10 didn't have at least a PS2.

Wait until she tells them that there were times in the distant past, when dinosaurs still walked the earth, when nobody had video game systems.

Isaac Schrödinger suggests that one benchmark for liberty in Islamic countries will be pornography:

I'm not sure I buy that last paragraph — we're awash in smut here in the Civilized World, and I fail to see any substantial lessening of sexual tension — but it's got to be awfully hard to hide the average explosive belt under a tight tank top.

Jacqueline Passey has disappeared from Wikipedia, and she's not exactly upset about it:

D-listers like myself aren't likely to be included either. But after reading this, I did sit down and ponder the question: "Do I know anyone who might rate a page in Wikipedia?"

Specifying as a condition of "know" actual physical existence in the same room at the same time, I decided that there might be two.

And I was right, sort of.

Venezuela is raising customs taxes by 15 percent on a number of imports, including Scots whisky, razor blades, sailboats — and toilet paper.

Fausta suggests a plan which will benefit both suffering Venezuelan consumers and an ailing US newspaper:

And just how, precisely, will they save money?

The downside? The Times, so far as I know, is not known for its absorbency.

Burbed.com has a listing for a condo on Male Terrace in Fremont, California. That's a condo, not a condom.

Then again, I could be wrong:

For someone's sake, I hope said transit isn't, um, rapid.

Fayetteville, Arkansas is enlisting children to look for city code violations:

Or, inevitably, inform on their parents.

They deny it, of course:

The operative term here is "blown."

Remember, children: your first duty is to the government. You are pwned from the day you are born.

Then again, this is a town that doles out specific quantities of trash bags per year, and should you need more than that, it will cost you.

(Via Hit & Run.)

Try the Easy-Bake Meth Lab.

(Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

Belhoste found this on craigslist:

Which implies, at least to some extent, that they don't have to be actual female voices, so long as they sound female.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

The Environmental Protection Agency will propose a new national emissions standard for lawn and garden equipment, following approval of new California standards.

This has actually been in the works for some time, but Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) has been trying to block the move. Briggs & Stratton, the largest manufacturer of small engines for lawn equipment, has two plants in Missouri, and has said that major engine redesigns could result in the closing of those plants.

Bond finally signed off on a measure which would prohibit other states from copying the California standard, as usually permitted by the Clean Air Act, but which required the EPA to introduce a national standard, which might be weaker than California's.

The Autoextremist reports that California-bound mowers will have catalytic converters — an EPA study, demanded by Bond, determined that the smog gear introduced no additional safety risk — and that the California Air Resources Board expects the price of a push mower to rise between $37 and $52.

And, California being California, I assume they will come up with some way to appear to mitigate these costs on behalf of the undocumented workers who actually cut the grass.

Some of this might be plausible, but I have reasons to be suspicious:

Well, duh. Anybody who knows anything about dachshunds, which these guys manifestly don't, will patiently explain that the original dachshund was the classic smooth-coated wiener dog. The wirehaired variety was developed by careful crossbreeding with terriers, particularly the Dandie Dinmont, which has the same low-slung carriage. And terriers, while they didn't invent canine attitude, act like they own the trademark. Longhaired dachs come from ancient dachshund/spaniel mixes; it's the spaniel contribution, not the coat itself, that produces their relative mellowness.

What's more, Labs don't necessarily breed true to color; it's not all that unusual to have a puppy a different color from its parents, unless both of them are yellow.

But let us continue:

And all the other variations fall somewhere in between?

Helpful hint, guys: You want to perform a service to all of dogkind? Figure out a way to keep a Dalmatian from sulking.

(Via Scribal Terror.)

The townsfolk of Fjuckby, Sweden are tired of being the butt of jokes and have petitioned the country's National Heritage Board to change the town's name, preferably back to "Fjukeby," which was the usual spelling up until the 1930s or so.

Fjuckby apparently has the worst of two worlds: not only does it contain the English F-word, but it also contains the Swedish equivalent thereof.

Possible candidates for future name changes in Sweden: Anusviken, Arslet and Dicken.

(Via Fark.com.)

Steve Patterson analyzes on-street parking in St. Louis:

This made a certain amount of sense to me here in Oklahoma City, and also to Michael Bates in Tulsa. But encouraging those hateful car owners will never fly in Seattle:

And if shoppers decide to vote with their steering wheels and spend money in the suburbs? "Ni!"

(Via Sound Politics.)

"Weird Al" Yankovic's Straight Outta Lynwood contains a track called "I'll Sue Ya," which contains lines like this:

A regular litigatin' fool, this guy. And as always, Weird Al was prescient; while the CD was still playing, I dialed over to Fark.com and found this:

Once again, Yankovic demonstrates his sure grasp of the fine points of American culture. (And you thought he was just white and nerdy.)

This goes for both the guy in the Chevy who was driving up the wrong side of the remains of the Classen Circle at a quarter to seven this morning — he didn't hit anything, far as I can tell — and the person who left the typo in the Climatological Data for Bethany/Wiley Post Airport this month, indicating we had 999 inches of snow back on the first.

While laughing my way through another screenful of Iowahawk satire, I found myself pondering this Tale of True-ish History, not least because I was born not so far away from Chicago, geographically and chronologically. And being the geek I am, I naturally zeroed in on the least-compelling aspect of it:

Snopes hasn't addressed this, so I decided to look at the map, which looks something like this:

A quick glance indicates that this distribution isn't quite as weird as it sounds: if heading west from 4 to 6 is offputting, clearly heading west from 3 to 7 should be more so, and no one seems concerned about that. If the 3000 potential Illinois Zips were reassigned to the 5 range, you'd have to pull 3000 out of the rest of the region somehow, and the only way to do that and still maintain the appearance of continuity is to reassign Montana and the Dakotas to the 6 range. (Of course, Montana looks like it should be an 8 no matter what, but that's another issue.)

As for 606 in Chicago specifically, the numbers there follow a standard USPS pattern: lower numbers in the 'burbs, the higher ones in the city. (Atlanta, for instance, is 303xx; it's surrounded by 300 through 302.) 600 and 601 are to the north; 604 and 605 are to the south. (602 and 603 are Aurora and Oak Park respectively.) New York and Los Angeles don't follow this rule, but this is because their specific post offices cover only a small part of their cities; mail from the San Fernando Valley is postmarked Van Nuys. If they really did rig this setup, they certainly made it look ordinary.

A really rigged deal: In Canada, Santa Claus has his own postal code — H0H 0H0.

Do you know what would be incredibly freaking cool? A sink stopper for a garbage disposer with a grab handle on either side, so that it could be easily retrieved in circumstances like, oh, being knocked into position upside down as the water starts flowing into the sink and simultaneously the telephone rings.

Okay, so I'm easily pleased. Deal with it.

One of these days, I'm going to have to figure out which came first: the five-bladed Gillette Fusion razor, or the three-bladed (or so it appears, judging by the grille) Ford Fusion sedan.

Last month, McGehee reported getting one of these in the mail. The Gillette, I mean, not the Ford. At the time, I proclaimed my loyalty to a lower-tech scraping device, which probably has nothing to do with the arrival of a Fusion at my door today. The Gillette, I mean, not the Ford.

At first glance, I don't see the appeal: this thing looks like something you'd use to disassemble constant-velocity joints, and industrial-strength auto-service tools are generally something I'd like to keep at a safe distance from my face. They did throw in a bribe — $4 in store coupons — but of course, as McGehee has already noted, "Gillette is giving this shaver away because they hope to make the real money selling ... the blades." I thought of offering this to a woman with gorgeous legs, but it occurred to me that she might think that I thought that she needed it, which would be counterproductive in the extreme.

But then there's the question of washability, in which case the Fusion rules. The Ford, I mean, not the Gillette.

The first clue came when the birthday cake proved unusually hard to cut:

What it was, was Styrofoam:

And Sam's made good: they made up a new cake, a real one this time, refunded the price of the foam cake, and gave the Kavalaris family a $100 gift card.

(Via The Consumerist.)

Trini and I were talking allergies the other day, and she's got a bunch of them: peanuts, some soaps, inadequate operating-system documentation. To my knowledge, I'm not allergic to anything at all, and I attributed this bit of good fortune, mostly tongue-in-cheek, to an unscheduled visit to the middle of a Texas cesspool in the early 1960s. "If that didn't kill me," I quipped, "what can?"

Maybe I wasn't kidding:

I don't know if I'd go that far — surely the Murphy's Oil Soap can't be good for the tiger — but as P. J. O'Rourke noted, pain is the body's way of showing us we're boneheads, and if you don't learn that early, you will surely learn it late, when it hurts a heck of a lot more.

The new AT&T, like the old AT&T, is woefully behind the times. After the seventh call in twenty-four hours from 866-801-8623 (whoever you are, go perform an unnatural act with a diseased goat, and don't call me back to tell me you've completed the task), I went looking for blocking services, and this is what they came up with:

Hello? "Local numbers" aren't the issue here. I want a blocking service that can reject any number I can see in Caller ID, plus all "Out Of Area" numbers, and I'm willing to pay more than the $3 a month they're asking for their existing service. (The Privacy Manager service, which costs $4, will take care of the numbers with no Caller ID tags, but does nothing to callers who have a number listed, even if it's bogus.)

I suppose what I want is a passworded phone: you dial in, you're asked for a PIN or something, and if I've assigned you one, you get through; otherwise, you get dead air. But I'll happily accept a dumber system that simply blocks 8XX toll-free numbers.

Kissing cousin to "fake but accurate" is "correct but meaningless," and here's a splendid example of the latter, courtesy of CNN:

The problem with this is that the comparison gives you no useful information:

And are they American football fields, or, since this happened in Canadian waters, Canadian football fields?

Farther down in the CNN article we find this:

Now we're getting somewhere. How about "a giant ice shelf roughly the size of Evansville, Indiana"?

It is no particular secret that rather a lot of people who lined up at the stores to grab the first PS3s and Wiis (somehow "Wiis" just looks funny, and throwing an apostrophe in there would make it look worse, quite apart from being wrong) did so with the express intention of immediately selling them at a profit.

But with over 90,000 auctions posted, how do you draw attention to your own? Exactly: throw in a little sex.

(Safety for work questionable; improvement in sales figures even more so.)

A couple of decades ago, 7-Eleven stores took it upon themselves, with a nudge from nudnik Donald Wildmon, to stop selling Playboy and its ilk. Playboy responded with a "Women of 7-Eleven" feature; I responded by taking my business elsewhere. And I am legendary for the sheer persistence of my grudges, so I wouldn't have noticed what Dave Munger noticed:

I don't know if this extends to Oklahoma 7-Eleven stores, which are not actually owned by Southland Corporation or its Japanese parent company, but around here, just about everyone has been insistent that you pay first ever since the first glimpses of $3 gas.

Last week, with the able assistance of Tamara K., I made some snide remarks about how we're approaching mandatory bubbles for boys (and, for that matter, for girls), lest they get an owie somewhere.

Andrea Harris points out that the grownups apparently yearn for bubbles of their own:

As a card-carrying member of the Vainest Generation, I have to concur. Fortunately, I didn't get much coddling early on, so it's not like me to expect any today, although my capacity for whining is at least average for my demographic cohort.

With this in mind, I'd like to borrow a hat, and then tip it to the Ethiopian army, which, in the traditional American spirit and with the assistance of some traditional Americans, fought a passel of Islamic nutjobs on a truly level playing field: if you got onto the field, you got leveled. Truly.

There are still places that will sell you an 800 or other toll-free number, and I have to believe that the proprietors are desperate to move these things, since the entire long-distance market is about to become obsolete, thanks to cell phones and VoIP. Besides, any time I see such a number on Caller ID, I know it's a waste of time even to pick up the phone.

So when the new industrial-strength blocking device comes in, rather than force everyone to get an ID to call me, I'm simply going to block every single toll-free number in North America, be it 800, 888, 877 or 866. The machine can handle 175 database entries; this procedure will use up only four, leaving me plenty for future use.

Jeff Jarvis thinks he got ripped off by Burger King:

Which, if nothing else, lends credence to the following:

• You should never assume that prices will be consistent at franchised fast-food joints;
  
• There is no incident so trivial that someone won't blog about it;
  
• There is no blog post so trivial that someone won't link to it.
  

Oh, and Jeff? Wendy's nuggets are better.

(Seen by Rachel.)

Diane's son brings home a note from class, and