Interesting read about how Canada has strangely stepped up efforts to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

Now I may not be an expert in terms of retail store growth strategy, but I’m pretty confident that pretty much everything Walmart did in this situation is the antithesis of what you want to do (least if you want to avoid breaking federal law and maintain any semblance of moral high ground. Then again, this is Walmart we’re talking about…)

Burned.

An unrelated followup to the podcast I linked to a few weeks back. The NYT did some of their own investigating into Apple’s manufacturing policies in regards to their products. The publication of the article seems somewhat timely following this week’s news that Apple had one of the most successful financial quarters on record, for any company ever. As an apple exec put it, “There is a genuine, companywide commitment to the code of conduct. But taking it to the next level and creating real change conflicts with secrecy and business goals, and so there’s only so far we can go.”

While I understand domestic surveillance is an unpleasant necessity when dealing with people who may actually pose some sort of physical threat to the country’s well being, the idea that some of my tax dollars were spent financing a 3 year operation keeping tabs on a guy who works at a recycling center and whose biggest claim to fame is he’s an anticorportist protester is a bit ridiculous. As the esteemed Mr. Crow puts it in the article,

‘Mr. Crow seems alternately astonished, angered and flattered by the government’s attention. “I’ve had times of intense paranoia,” he said, especially when he discovered that some trusted allies were actually spies.’

“But first, it makes me laugh,” he said. “It’s just a big farce that the government’s created such paper tigers. Al Qaeda and real terrorists are hard to find. We’re easy to find. It’s outrageous that they would spend so much money surveilling civil activists, and anarchists in particular, and equating our actions with Al Qaeda.”

I’ll admit it’s been far too long since I’ve seen anything on Broadway (perhaps something I’ll have to rectify this year), but there is that part of me that wants to see how badly they screwed this up. 

The New York times commemorating 150 years since the Civil War by running a weekly dispatch as if events were occurring in real time.

hat tip to @whelliston for the link. Also, wtf is a spaghetti taco/ where do I get one?