Overnight Open Thread

Welcome all M&M-types to just another Caturday.

The List of Obsolete Skills
Sadly I'm familiar with more than a few of these. And here's just a sample of the skills that were practically standard three decades ago:

• Dialing a rotary phone
  
• Putting a needle on a vinyl record
  
• Changing tracks on an eight-track tape
  
• Shorthand
  
• Using a slide rule
  
• Refilling a fountain pen
  
• Operating a dictaphone
  
• Using the eraser ribbon on a typewriter
  
• Adjusting the timing on your car
  

So Why is Greece Going Bankrupt?
Apart from the general miasma of socialist policies there's this:

Here a sample of policies that led to the crash. After fifteen years of contribution, a person could retire at 110% of his salary. Retirement was possible at the youthful age of fifty. The unmarried or divorced daughters of deceased public servants received a pension. Salaries were paid for a fourteen-month year. Civil servants had protected jobs and at least one person out of four had such coveted status. These people received significant bonuses. Such as for the ability to use a computer, or for the command of a foreign language. The writer’s favorite is a bonus for appearing at work on time. Bloated bureaucracy shows ingenuity to keep people on the payroll. The best job was on a commission that administered a lake that dried out in the 1930s.

Uh Oh: Why is Wikileaks Collecting Military Email Addresses?
No one knows but I'm pretty sure they don't intend anything good for the US military.

Dead Man Posed on Motorcycle at His Funeral
Sadly 22-year-old David Morales Colón was murdered in Puerto Rico last month. And per his wishes his family held his funeral with his body posed on the motorcycle that he loved.

Is Bob Dylan A big Phony?
Well that's what Joni Mitchell says:

“Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.”

Is The Deadliest Catch a drug hotbed?
Well not the ship crews but the TV crew. One show production manager got busted with meth and cocaine and he claims that drugs are rampant and that his boss imports huge amounts of coke for Deadliest Catch parties.

Scientists Find That 7 Hours of Sleep is Optimal
Personally I've always found 8 to 8.5 hours was what I needed to not feel tired. And scientists now believe how much sleep you require is a genetic trait as well as whether you're a morning or night person. Of course a lot of people seem to view needing sleep as a character flaw that you can overcome if you're determined enough. But the people in my family who claim to have trained themselves to only need 5 hours of sleep a night always seem to take a lot of naps. So I'm guessing their real sleep time is closer to 7 hours a night.

The Kitteh Paw Nebula

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. Bla bla bla. And don't forget about the Job Bank.

Tonight's post brought to you by Jack and the Monkees:

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posted by Maetenloch at 09:50 PM

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