Q.What's worse than finding a tick on your cat at 3AM?

A. Removing a tick from your cat at 3:15 AM.

Our sweet little cat often comes up to be petted in the middle of the night. I was petting her in the dark and felt a round lump. So, put on my glasses, turn on the light to check, and sure enough, it's a tick.

So I take the cat downstairs to where I keep the tick crowbars. By now, she's getting antsy. Then, I have to find the tick again. Two escapes and 9 scratches later, I had the tick off.

Fortunately, she's very forgiving.

That night gown was getting old, anyways.

Rural or suburban: If you have a non-functioning lawn tractor, farm tractor,

truck or car "out back" because you're going to fix it someday/going to get some parts off it, you're rural.

If you have an "out back", you're rural.

If you have 5 or fewer acres of perfectly mown, fertilized and weed free lawn, you're suburban.


Anyone want to add to the list?

Oh, joy! We're having high winds today, so someone down the road has decided it's the

perfect time to burn that brush pile they have out back near the woods!

More Than 100,000 Hopefuls Sit Samsung Job Test

Source: Chosun Ilbo (English Edition)

Samsung administered a written test, the first hurdle to getting a coveted job with the conglomerate, in 85 test centers across Korea, Los Angeles, New York and Toronto on Sunday. The test is sometimes compared to national bar exam because competition is so fierce.

Over 100,000 applicants sat this round, 80,000 for permanent jobs and 20,000 for internships. But the Samsung Group is only hiring 4,000 to 5,000 new staff in the first half of this year.

Many test takers found the test difficult and confusing as the types of questions changed considerably. A Samsung spokesman said, "We reduced the number of questions about simple facts and increased the proportion that test critical reasoning" and broader interests.

Read more: http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2014/04/14/2014041401769.html

Corn ain't the only answer:

A question about that missing airliner -

would the "ping" from the black box be detectable with sonar?

If so, why haven't we had Navy ships and submarines in the area listening?

Talk about missing a chance to make friends!

I think the Fort Hood shooting may just have been someone "going postal"

It's possible something about the shooter's experience in Iraq will emerge, but I think that connection obscures a greater truth.

Currently, about 1 in 9 people killed in the workplace aren't involved in an industrial accident, but are shot by a co-worker:

https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/workplaceviolence/

Can anyone imagine the outcry should 500 people a year be killed say, by collapsing scaffolds? Yet this number goes unremarked. It's only when violence hit a major nationwide employer that it's more than a local story. The Armed Forces employ 1, 400, 000 people - Fort Hood has 75,000 people on base. There will be all kinds of committees and hearings about what the military needs to do to stop such incidents, but I think what's really going on is that sooner or later any large employer is going to face such an incident.

The problem isn't with the military handling of soldiers with mental health problems; if anything, they are better taken care of than the average civilian. The problem is easy access to guns.

Does anyone here know what percentage of union dues goes to campiagn contributions?

I was talking with someone today who insisted that 20% of all union dues goes to the Democratic Party. I find that number hard to believe, but being from the reality based party I'd like some data.

Please understand - I have no problem at all with unions donating cash to people who will support their objectives. Union members elect their officers, and unions therefore represent a lot of people. $200,000 donated from a union representing thousands and thousands of people is a different kettle of fish than $20,000 coming from one person.

Just a thought -but I am told that many large corporations are sitting on mounds of cash -

and I am also aware that many large corporations not only don't pay income axes, but actually get rebates from the United States government.

So - how much of that money these corporations are sitting on is money from our income taxes?

Edit: the worst part - often a cash rich corporation goes out and buys another company rather than investing the money in new jobs. Given that many buy-outs result in golden parachutes for the execs and shuttered work places for everyone else, we're paying taxes to put ourselves out of work!