Category: Wasting your time
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The Taxman Cometh via Ticketing!
You’ve probably heard that California is in trouble financially. No one wants to cut services and at the same time, no one wants to pay taxes. So what do you do? Ticket ticket ticket! And raise the fines for those tickets. In the years I’ve lived in California, I’ve never seen so much traffic enforcement.…
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Making A Business of Going Out of Business
In Adam Sandler’s 2008 masterpiece, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, the actor is offered a job at an electronics store called “Going Out of Business.” This is a shady operation that constantly makes false claims about products and rips people off. Sandler was mocking a real phenomenon–the liquidation companies named “going out of business”…
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Taxing Cigarette Butts and the Buttheads Who Flick Them
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has proposed a $0.33 tax on cigarettes to address the problem of cleaning up butts! This follows an audit (PDF) of litter in the city that found cigarette butts to be a major problem (along with chewing gum, and unbranded napkins). The cigarette companies are against it: “Obviously we think…
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Harvard Researchers Subpoenaed
This is one to watch. We might all get to learn more about the Harvard-Industrial Complex. The Times reports: Federal prosecutors have issued a subpoena seeking information about the work and statements of three prominent Harvard researchers who have been the focus of a Congressional investigation into conflicts of interest in medicine. The researchers —…
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Nothing But Trouble in Pennsylvania
Does this article about the Pennsyltucky judge who was sending kids to jail to collect kickbacks from a private prison remind anyone of the Chevy Chase movie called Nothing But Trouble?
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Choosing a Medical Specialty V — Match Day!
In two hours I find out where I’ve matched and will spend my residency. It’s a special day for medical students, and may be the one day a year they really, universally cut loose. Much more than graduation, match feels like the culmination of years of hard work. I’ll put up a post at around…
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Denialism Humor
Brought to us by The Onion San Francisco Historians Condemn 1906 Earthquake Deniers: The 1906 Earthquake Deniers, a group reviled by Californians and scholars alike, held three days of lectures and roundtable discussions over what they call a “century-long hoax” of exaggerated seismic activity in the Bay area, and part of a conspiracy to bring…
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For-Profit Fundraising Fleeces the Charitable
Phillip Reese and Andrew McIntosh of the Sacramento Bee report: If you give to a charity over the phone, there’s a growing likelihood that most of your donation will go to the telemarketer instead, according to a Bee analysis of state records. More than a third of California charity telemarketing campaigns sent less than 20…
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Let the Bread and Circuses Continue!
Obama has delayed am important political risk: he’s pushed back the DTV transition. If the televisions stopped working on February 17th, we would probably have an impeachment trial (as soon as the televisions were back on again).