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Must-hear roast on criminally overpaid CEOs - NPR

NPR aired a brilliant piece today called "Sailing Away on a Golden Parachute."

Day to Day, January 8, 2007 · We offer farewells to departing American CEOs, many of whom make more money by being shown the door than by hunkering down in the board room. Be proud: For every million dollars you leave with, you leave a million mistakes behind.

This piece is hilarious—but the situation isn't. And we shouldn't be satisfied to leave it at something we make fun of and laugh at. These CEOs are criminally overpaid at the expense of their employees, their shareholders, their customers and, by extension, the entire country.

It needs to change. And hopefully the increased awareness generated by things like this will help that happen.

Sailing Away on a Golden Parachute | The Unger Report | NPR

Use this useless, bloated e-mail signature!

In follow up to my previous post about people who insist on including huge, silly signatures in every e-mail they send, I have written the following. I hope my loyal readers will be able to put it to good use in defending themselves (okay, maybe in retaliation) against bandwidh and hard drive space-hogging e-mail signature offenders:

********************************************** This text is intended solely to take up space and occupy as much screen real estate, Internet bandwidth, and hard disk space as possible. If successful, it will also be longer than the actual body of the message itself. Toward that end, it will be attached not only to messages that I originate, but to all replies and forwards, too -- just in case you missed it the first time. If you received this message in error (which of course, would likely be my fault...), you should think of some really scary sounding legal jargon and be worried that my organization will send you threatening e-mails drafted by our cadre of lawyers if you don't delete it straight away. Although we would have no way to know, so it's really just a bunch of hooey. **********************************************

Jon Stewart's book wins Book of the Year award

Thanks for the heads up on this one, Will.  Another sign of intelligence out there -- at least on the part of the good folks at Publishers Weekly, the trade publication of the book industry.

Political satirist Jon Stewart's mock look at a political science college textbook "America (the Book), a Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction," was named on Sunday the book of the year by Publishers Weekly, the trade publication of the book industry.

My favorite part of the article reporting the award is this:

"'America (The Book)' offers more than just humor, however. Beneath the eye-catching and at times goofy graphics, the dirty jokes and the playful ingenuousness shines a serious critique of the two-party system, the corporations that finance it and the 'spineless cowards in the press' who 'aggressively print allegation and rumor independent of accuracy or fairness."'

If you haven't bought the book yet, do so immediately.  It's the Book of the Year, for crying out loud!

America (the Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

Founder of Cuss Control Academy announces surprise resignation

Jim O'Connor, founder of the Cuss Control Academy, announced his resignation this week. The sudden news came as a surprise to the person who bought his book and the seven people that have visited his Web site in hopes of cleaning up their language. O'Connor said he felt compelled to resign after uttering the "G.D. word" (this paper later learned that he said "gosh darn") after hitting his thumb with a hammer while doing some home remodeling. While he feels he has done all he can to make things right, including writing the phrase "Cussing is very bad and I will not do it again" 1,000 times, he doesn't feel he can expect his eight supporters to respect him after such an embarrassing and shameful display of moral weakness. A replacement for O'Connor has not yet been announced.