So if you are making minimum-wage as a cashier and at the end of the day, your drawer is missing $20, you probably get fired, because losing a twenty is either stealing or incompetence. But if you’re making a huge salary as a CFO, and large amounts of money disappear from your bank, the government will come in with lots of money to help you out!

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Economics According to Meg

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The other day, Stick saw my throwing-star picture and called me “the worst ninja ever”. Turns out, I’m not even the worst ninja in Essex county.

CLIFTON — Two “modern day Ninjas” calling themselves Shinobi Warriors on a quest to rid the area of drug users and drug dealers have been put out of business by police.

On Wednesday at 2:35 a.m. police officers approached a car parked in the left lane of Route 46 east and found two Clifton men dressed in black claiming to be Ninjas. The men were wearing tactical vests and armed with knives in sheaths at their waists along with Ninja throwing knives, Chinese throwing stars, four-pointed tacks, swords, bows and arrows and nunchucks, said detective Capt. Robert Rowan.

The two men, Jesse Trojaniak, 19, and Tadieusz Tertkiewicz, 20, told police they were “modern day Ninjas” also called Shinobi Warriors on their way to deliver warning letters to known drug dealers and drug users to stop their “impure” activities. They told police they planned to leave the letters on the front doors of these individuals they had singled out.

Apparently these kids took the war on drugs literally.

Via “Clifton Police arrest Ninjas” in the Clifton Journal, thanks to Pandapassport‘s recent tweet for tipping me off to the story in the first place.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

New Jersey Ninjas

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Stick and I were in a taxi last night, when the taxi driver turned around and told us he knew we were British (This happens a LOT… we were actually on the way to a restaurant where the waitress through we were British. I’m going to hope it’s the good manners and not the bad teeth). When we told him, no, we’re Americans, he told us he knew about America.

“In America, if the policeman stops you, you have to — ” Here he put his hands on the back of his head, while driving, in a way that only Beijing cabbies can “– and if you move, they will — ” He made a gun with his non-horn hand. “Pow! Pow! And then game over! Dead!”

“That’s not American life. We’ve been stopped by police and we’ve never even seen the policeman’s gun,” Stick told him. “You have to pay a fine, and listen to a lecture, but no one shoots at you!”

“No, it’s true.” our driver said. “I heard it on the radio AND it was in the newspaper.”

I thought maybe he was referring to a specific case of a trigger-happy cop, but he insisted it was all American police, and if you move your hands when you’re pulled over? Then POW! Game over! This lasted until we got to the restaurant.

“I think America is too dangerous — Watch out!” he shouted, as Stick tried to open the sidewalk-side door, into an oncoming bicycle.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Traffic Cops

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Short but awesome post on Assumed Knowledge from Teaching Game Design about being a game designer:

If you tell people you’re a game designer, one of the two typical reactions is “hey, I have this great idea for a game…” (the other reaction is “what’s a game designer?”). Basically, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Junior Designer on your first gig or if you’ve got twenty years experience; everyone you meet thinks they’re a better designer than you.

The My Favorite Spelling Errors from Adventures In Teaching

1. “Defiantly” for “Definitely”: This one is an artifact of spell-check. I do find “definitely” sort of hard to spell, so I have some sympathy for getting the red wavy line on it. But if your best guess has the letter A in it, then the computer’s first suggestion is going to be “defiantly.” If you remember your hooked on phonics and sound it out, you’ll realize you want choice two–but most people don’t bother, which leads to sentences like, “I defiantly recommend this book/movie/thingy to anyone,” or “I defiantly didn’t want to be working for minumum wage the rest of my life.” It amuses me to imagine someone defiantly making these declarations.

Jerry Spring Vs. Harper Lee on Rockstar Mommy

So, I’m at Target [Ed. Note: In New Jersey!] and the cashier is ringing me up and I look up at his name tag to see that it reads: Radley with a B handwritten in front of it in black Sharpie. And I’m all, “Wow! Boo? Is your name really Boo? Please tell me that your name is Boo because that might just be the single coolest thing I ever heard.”

He looked up at me in amazement, like I was magic, like I was here to give him all the answers to all the questions he would ever have in this world.

….

“It’s my nickname… How’d… How’d you know that?” he asked.

“Well, ummm, I, you know, read.”

“There’s a guy in a book named Boo Radley?”

I asked him “No one’s ever told you that?” instead of the real question I wanted to be asking him which was, “Please tell me you’re not allowed to register to vote…?”

And I swear to you, on every guitar I’ve ever owned, he responded by saying, “No, I just thought it was a nickname my baby’s mama gave to me.”

I’m really beginning to love New Jersey.

The Weifang Radish talks about American Midwest and Chinese Hinting-Hua

American Midwest:
“I guess the newspaper will be here by now.”
Translation: “Go get the newspaper.”

Chinese:
“I wonder what’s in the news today.”
Translation: “Go get the newspaper.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

In My Bookmarks…

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The story about Mattel’s factories in China has been floating around China news and blogs almost as much as the cardboard-filled baozi.

I first heard of it when my dad sent me a link to this New York Times article, about Mattel’s Chinese factories being the “gold standard” for toys and quality control. If you don’t want to register for NYT Online, the blurb for this article is: Concerns about product safety and workplace conditions have driven the toy-maker Mattel to become a role model for how to do business prudently in China.

I was pleased and surprised to see a positive case study of China factories, and besides, who doesn’t love Barbie?

Then Imagethief said something along that lines of “I hope that doesn’t come back to bite Mattel,” as Mattel announced a massive product recall because Dora and friends have a little too much lead paint. (Just a side note, has anyone else noticed that Dora and Explorer don’t rhyme?)

It’s bad news for Mattel and fans of Elmo, but it’s just one of the many made-in-China issues popping up in the news recently. Tainted food, knockoff namebrands, dangerous toys, clothing with straps that don’t survive one encounter with a drunken maid-of-honor who just loves us bridesmaids SO MUCH!!! (hic!) Ok, maybe that one’s just me.

In Xinhua’s article, Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said “some foreign media reports told of Chinese boys as young as six growing moustaches and girls aged seven growing breasts after eating hormone-tainted food.” He’s talking about the recent tainted-food scandals, not the unsafe-toys scandals, but believes that “some [foreign]media fabricated safety problems in campaigns to block imports of Chinese goods, which he described as de facto trade protectionism.”

That seemed like a weird spin, but today I saw China Daily’s article on the same thing. It begins:

Toy-maker Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys – including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters – because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead.

The recall announced yesterday involves 967,000 plastic preschool toys sold in the United States between May and August.

The article goes on, but one thing is suspiciously missing. There’s no mention of these products being made in China.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Sicken-Me Elmo?

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