Events

Um...

A high court in the U.K. has ordered British Airways cabin crews not to strike over Christmas: The dispute at BA centres on its desire to cut costs by reducing cabin staff on most flights and limiting wage increases. The airline’s pilots and engineers have already accepted austerity measures; cabin staff, notified of the proposed changes in July, are less inclined to compromise (though some have taken voluntary redundancy). On December 14th Unite, the union which represents almost all of the company’s...

Via the Freakonomics blog, the New Scientist has examined the science behind the eternal question, dogs or cats? Utility Dogs can hunt, herd and guard. They can sniff out drugs and bombs and even whale faeces; they guide blind and deaf people, race for sport, pull sleds, find someone buried by an avalanche, help children learn and possibly even predict earthquakes. Cats are good if you have an infestation of rodents. Perhaps that assessment is unfair, though. After all, we love our pets for other...

Parker got a chance to explore Oakwood Park today, the first sunny day we've had since we got here a week ago. The park is huge—I would guess about 75 hectares—and Parker (with help) ran around the whole thing: He also did exceptionally well on come-sit drills, leading me to the conclusion that he knows when I have treats. Of course, so does everyone else, like this beautiful Rhodesian ridgeback who kept sticking her nose into my treat pocket: Parker is now sleeping, which I hope lasts through the first...

Krugman has a good summary: [T]he belief that lower wages would raise overall employment rests on a fallacy of composition. In reality, reducing wages would at best do nothing for employment; more likely it would actually be contractionary. Here’s how the fallacy works: if some subset of the work force accepts lower wages, it can gain jobs. If workers in the widget industry take a pay cut, this will lead to lower prices of widgets relative to other things, so people will buy more widgets, hence more...

In this case, "town" has a State Capitol building: Parker seemed to enjoy the Oakwood neighborhood just east of the state government complex, too.

Even Parker has a level of dignity beneath which he will not sink. This, however, is still above that line:

Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt writes this week about the history and future of the American Drive-Thru: But despite the Stakhanovite quotas being met by the Bluetoothed cadres across the land, all is not well with the drive-through. The facilities saw a 4 percent drop in business in 2008 due to the recession. And—more threatening still—a number of communities have recently passed anti-idling ordinances, some of which implicate even the fastest drive-through windows. ... Meanwhile, people who would...

Want frequent-flyer miles? Try this: At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off. Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments...

A bunch of people went over to Ruckus Pizza on Wednesday for their weekly trivia contest. I do much better at College Bowl-type quizzes, and this one was all pop culture, but that didn't diminish the company and the pizza. All good. The second round featured advertising slogans. See if you can find one product for which all these slogans work beautifully: "The quicker picker-upper" Two for me, none for you Get up to four hours longer Makes mouth happy Stress stinks, ____ works Any time's a good time for...