I have a lot of issues with the way that WalMart treats its employees (go educate yourself). In fact, last month when my family suggested that we stop into a WalMart to look for cheap DVDs, I pulled the whole guilt trip of "oh great, we who can afford to pay a few extra dollars can save those dollars by buying into an exploitative system".

But now WalMart has taken yet another step towards "zomg wtf" labour practices.

"The young (14+) teenagers that Wal-Mart employs as after-school baggers at its Mexican stores earn nothing at all -- paid only in tips. Technically, this complies with local labor laws, while violating the hell out of their spirit.

The company doesn't try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be "volunteering" their services to Wal-Mart and are therefore not subject to the requirements and regulations that would otherwise apply under the country's labor laws. But some officials south of the U.S. border nonetheless view the practice as regrettable, if not downright exploitative."

Lovely. Just downright lovely. As the news story explains, what a great way to cut costs!

This weekend I had a helpful airport security official explain to me how the fundamental states of matter work. You can't make this kind of stuff up.

"Excuse me, ma'am, can I look in your bag?", said the airport security guy, henceforth known as "the scientician".

Out from my bag he pulls a tiny vial of glitter. Yes, glitter. You know, the stuff that kids glue to paper for art projects and then get on their shirt and hair for the rest of the day. Glitter.

"You have to put all liquids in a separate zip-loc bag", the scientician says to me, pointing to the glitter container.

"Actually that's just glitter", I explain, feeling that I have now resolved the misunderstanding and that I can go on my way.

"Yes", the scientician nods, "but all liquids have to be in a separate zip-loc bag."

"It's not a liquid", I continue to explain. "It's glitter. It's just a lot of small solids."

That's when the scientician decided that I needed some learnin'. He looks me straight in the eye and -- I kid you not -- says, "Well, once a solid is small enough, it becomes a liquid."

Once a solid is small enough, it becomes a liquid!

That's amazing, thank you Bill Nye The Airport Security Guy! Here I always believed that the difference between solids and liquids was that the kinetic energy of liquids was strong enough that it began to overcome a lot of the molecular attraction force. But wow was I wrong! Apparently liquids are just very very tiny solids!

"So.....if I brought a bag of sand with me, would that count as a liquid?" I had to ask it.

"Do you have any sand in your bag?", the scientician asks me, suddenly looking quite serious.

I decide that this is not the best venue for us to have a discussion about the fundamental states of matter. I tell him that I do not have any sand in my bag, that I'm sorry about not realizing that glitter was a liquid, and that next time I'll be sure to put any very small solids in the liquid zip-loc.

Who said that airport security fun couldn't be an educational experience?

Let's say that you're hypothetically stuck in an airport for a few hours due to weather delay. And let's say that you pull out your laptop and decide to see if there are any wireless networks for you to connect to so that you can entertain yourself with exciting online entertainment like watching all of the episodes of Will It Blend.

But you launch your browser and you're greeted by one of those "ALL YOUR MONEY ARE BELONG TO US" screens.



So what do you do? Sounds like you have three options!

1. Pay the $9.95 (for the first month!) like a total chump. Hope you remember to cancel it when you get home so you don't pay the $21.95 for the next month.
2. Don't use the internet and sit there, totally bored, for like a million years.
3. Say "firewalls are for chumpbuckets and I'm not a chumpbucket!"

I went with option #3. Here's a little secret for all of you out there who are stuck in a similar situations: most internet firewalls of this type have holes that they leave open. In other words: even though it seems that they're blocking the whole internet, they're not blocking a few webpages -- like information about the airline or stuff like that.

And, if you're really really lucky, they're not blocking certain advertisers' sites so that they can spam you with ads while you stare at the login screen and wish you could browse the web.

In the case of this airport, they left open any URL that begins with https://ads.jiwire.com/JOS.aspx/ so that you could visit ads like http://clk.atdmt.com/goiframe/27759092/jwrxxhsb0160000573msr/direct/01 by going to the URL https://ads.jiwire.com/JOS.aspx/http/clk.atdmt.com/goiframe/27759092/jwrxxhsb0160000573msr/direct/01. See how the advertisers' url is inside of that ads.jiwire.com url? This spells fun for us!

So you're inside the airport's seemingly locked down network. But going to https://ads.jiwire.com/JOS.aspx/http/google.com sure enough takes you right to http://google.com. Without buying their internet.

Going to https://ads.jiwire.com/JOS.aspx/http/insanecats.com takes you to http://insanecats.com. See we're using the firewall hole for advertisers in order to browse other websites.

Add Firefox's Web Developer toolbar with things like POST->GET and IM-on-the-web pages and suddenly you can chat with your friends without buying their internet. For the low, low cost of your login information appearing in their GET logs if they keep them. Nothing's free. ;)

This may be old news, but someone forgot to tell me. Joss Whedon has announced that he's no longer working on Wonder Woman ("I in no way want this to be a slam on Warner Bros., but the fact of the matter is, [Wonder Woman] was a waste of my time. We never [wanted] to make the same movie") and Goners doesn't have a green light yet.

Why do people keep getting in Joss' way? Everything that man touches turns to gold; let him touch more things!

Scornful pointed me to this delightful website that combines a randomized family circus cartoon with a randomized Nietzsche quote.
Awesome. Try it yourself and generate a few. They all seem to make perfect sense in an eerie kind of way.

What do you do when your country's suffering from a birthrate crisis?

Give people a day off work to have babies!

No, seriously. A Russian region has declared Sept 12th the Day of Conception and is giving couples time off work to procreate. The date was chosen because nine months later is Russia's national day.

But how do you prevent couples from using the day off to do not-baby-making things, like playing videogames and finally getting around to cleaning out that attic? There are incentives and prizes for couples who give birth on June 12th: money, cars, refrigerators and more. Seriously.

If Sept 12th, is Conception Day, I think Sept 11th should be called National Day To Reinforce Those Thin Walls Through Which You Can Hear Everything That Goes On Next Door. Just my $0.02.

Whatever you do, don't drink the water.

Brilliance brought to you by vjornaxx's flickr stream.

Anais and I were laughing so hard at this on the Google shuttle this morning that someone literally turned around to tell us to be quiet. Oops. But seriously, how can you not laugh?