PZ has the 18th Circus of the Spineless up:
another collection of gorgeous images of crunchy, squishy, slimy, tentacled, multi-legged, no-legged creatures
Wonderful stuff! As eye candy or, for those so inclined, real candy. Oh yea, if you read the posts you might learn a thing or two as well.
Best Buy apparently has a policy that they will match a price from their internet site in their stores. Unless, of course, they can show the customer on an in house website that the price isn’t better.
That is the allegation and if true Best Buy is committing fraud. We will have to wait for Best Buy to admit guilt or for a court, civil, criminal or both, to declare guilt before we know for sure.
Whichever the case, this thought from Chaos Digest holds no water:
Conservatives who continuously spout ‘less government oversight’ please note: This is the type of thing that would happen much more often if an industry is left to ‘self-regulate’.
First, see above. Until the alleged perp admits guilt or is convicted in a court of law they are, well, presumed innocent.
Second, this has nothing to do regulation and everything to do with a possible criminal act. It is the responsibility of the police, prosecuting attorneys or citizens acting in civil courts to bring this type of activity to an end.
We do not need regulatory agencies to determine whether someone or some thing corporation has committed fraud.
A nifty pencil scultpure:
Via His Nibs who found out that the artist is Jennifer Maestre.
We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?
Do link to the Ark every week!
You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.
Cats
Dogs
Birds
Other Vertebrates
Invertebrates
In Memoriam
Didn’t Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.
Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.
Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 153rd edition, 2/25, is up at Scribblings. The 154thedition will be hosted at Tacjammer on 3/5 (Monday not Sunday this week). There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 3/3-4 by Champaigne Taste . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.
Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 43rd edition is up and hosted by Earth, Wind & Water. The 44th edition will be hosted on 3/8 by The Greenbelt.
For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 17th edition is up at The Voltage Gate . The 18th edition will be hosted shortly by Pharyngula.
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival
Note for Haloscan Users:
Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.
Note for Typepad Users:
Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.
Jim Henley and Jane Galt take offense at having to provide identification and signatures when buying Sudafed and similar decongestants that used to be over the counter:
Jane:
And can I just say that the ritual humiliation of obtaining Sudafed from a drugstore sets every liberty-loving fibre of my patriotic American soul quivering for Revolution? I mean, sure, that would mean even more if I weren’t already reflexively against our nation’s drug laws. But still.
Jim:
Oh God yes. I fairly tremble with rage, and at least once I’ve added a parenthetical “Under Protest” after my name. Reminding myself that the drug store employees themselves didn’t come up with the law barely serves to keep me from launching into a spittle-flecked tirade.
What they both say!
A commenter at Jim’s place notes:
I asked the pharmacy techs about it 3 or 4 times, and they seem to be in total agreement of the need to keep Sudafed out of the hands of the meth chemists.
Why would we not expect a pharmacy tech to be in complete agreement?
First, their job is buttered on the side of government regulation and prescription laws. The more the merrier.
Second, they are no different than most other folks who have drank the drug war kool-aid. I’m sure that they sincerely believe that folks cook meth because they could buy pseudoephedrine in over the counter cold symptom remedies instead of the more realistic view that cooking meth is yet another consequence of the ill-conceived and disastrous ongoing war on drugs.