Are you losing your mind over the "everyone goes to work sick because otherwise they don't get paid" article? I am! You should be! It is pretty revolting that in America you have to go wait tables with the swine flu so you don't become homeless. Here is how Randel K. Johnson, the "senior vice president for labor at the United States Chamber of Commerce," downplays America's lack of sick leave: "The problem is not nearly as great as some people say. Lots of employers work these things out on an ad hoc basis with their employees." Here's how the Times follows up his claim: "According to the Bureau [...]

I keep remembering, and then forgetting, that Ralph Nader has just published a novel. It doesn't sound so great, and also a little broad-strokingly Randian, according to Awl pal Seth Colter Walls: "But unlike the author of a tome as worshipfully phallocentric as The Fountainhead, the consumer advocate turned third-party presidential candidate doesn't know from sex appeal. When Nader writes about an 'aroused citizenry,' he means a public eager to fill up its free hours with the business of joining consumer unions." Hilariously, Nader made contact, before publication, with all the people whose names he used in the book. Of course, this resulted in the world's most hilarious [...]