Thought for the day

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, every wrongful act committed in Britain is also a violation of American law, because NewsCorps is a U.S.-chartered company.

Write your congressman to insist these acts be prosecuted in the U.S., too.

Heh

Email I got from an astrology list today:

As a former writer for the London tabloids, I can tell you this: everyone knew this crap was going on. There are relatively few newspapers that are not involved. Once again we have some evidence that the horoscope is the most honest part of the newspaper.

Irony

They had a post on the Washington Post website last week about long-term unemployment and asked people how they coped. They asked you to include your phone number for a possible story.

So I got this call last night and the reporter (or intern, not really sure) asks me a lot of questions, then asks if I’d be interested in writing a weekly dispatch about being unemployed for the Post.

“I assume this is unpaid?”

He allowed that it was.

“Then I’m not interested. Don’t you think that’s ironic? I mean, I’m an unemployed writer and you’re asking me to write, for free, about being unemployed?”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, I hear you. But we can’t really afford to pay for that.”

“That’s not true, I know that your parent company is doing quite well. Kaplan’s still making a lot of money. And as a writer, I’m not interested in being part of a content farm where writers churn out content for your company for free. No, I’m not interested.”

“I understand. Really. Good luck.”

Heh. Turns out I was wrong, and his paper and their parent company are losing quite a bit of money. I think he’s the one who’s going to need it.