Friday Frippery

This post is almost as ran­dom as my read­ing has been today. I’m spar­ing you excerpts from the fic­tion and school read­ing, at least!

After read­ing this arti­cle, Deal­ing With the Jerk at Work, I find myself want­i­ng to read Robert I. Sut­ton’s book The No Ass­hole Rule: Build­ing a Civ­i­lized Work­place and Sur­viv­ing One That Isn’t. We’ve had a “no ass­hole rule” here at home ever since Sam and I blend­ed our fam­i­lies in 1998, and it makes for a very pleas­ant envi­ron­ment. I’m in total agree­ment with the author that “jerks should be treat­ed as incom­pe­tent employ­ees.” Get­ting along with your cowork­ers is an impor­tant part of every per­son­’s job.

Huh? Chris Bro­gan reports that Face­book showed him boo­bies. I know they’re ad-sup­port­ed, but hel­lo, that’s the clue phone ring­ing! Maybe they did­n’t real­ize that they’re sup­posed to be classier than MySpace? That real­ly did­n’t seem to be a hard thing to accom­plish, con­sid­er­ing the ram­pant trashi­ness on that oth­er site.

A bril­liant school in Penn­syl­va­nia has sus­pend­ed two stu­dents for the hor­rif­ic offense of mak­ing an anti-drug-use pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment. Be care­ful with those dan­ger­ous Smar­ties, guys!

I bet you did­n’t learn this in school, either. Accord­ing to John Stos­sel, the first Thanks­giv­ing would­n’t have occurred at all if the Puri­tans had­n’t giv­en up on their ini­tial Social­ist prac­tices in favor of a plan where­in each fam­i­ly farmed its own plot of corn. I’m not sure that refer­ring to the “tragedy of the com­mons” is apt, but it is an inter­est­ing bit of information.

Also from ABC comes a sto­ry about the grand­moth­ers who hold the Guin­ness records for the world’s longest nails and the world’s small­est waist. Turn off your images if you’re eas­i­ly squicked before going to the arti­cle, though. That wom­an’s nails are tru­ly dis­gust­ing (and appar­ent­ly, the Guin­ness folks agree with me). The waist thing just looks pho­to­shopped to me, as my brain choos­es not to process it as reality.

Do blondes make men dumb­er? Accord­ing to sci­en­tists study­ing the “bim­bo delu­sion,” that is the case.

There it is. I take no respon­si­bil­i­ty for what you do with it.