$15M suit for burns from java

New York Daily News – Home – $15M suit for burns from java

The 1986 McDonalds coffee lawsuit was widely mocked, but the woman suffered third degree burns. That’s serious, like having your clothes set on fire kind of serious. And McDonalds had the hottest coffee in the fast food industry and had already settled out of court many lawsuits involving previous customers burned by their coffee (including previous incidents of third degree burns) and consciously chose to keep the coffee that hot for the sake of taste.

This incident also includes third degree burns, and 200 degree coffee (comparable or greater in temperature to the McD’s coffee).

I hope this woman doesn’t become a national joke too.

Ask the Administrator: Stopping the Cycle of Abuse

Confessions of a Community College Dean: Ask the Administrator: Stopping the Cycle of Abuse

This cheers me up considerably about not having stuck it out and gotten a Ph.D. in Classical Languages.

On the flipside, I have several friends who did become professors and are pretty happy with their lives.

And it’s not like I got a real job till I was about 30 anyway.

Penny Arcade on Rails

Penny Arcade:

This week Penny Arcade is turning seven years old. We decided to celebrate by alienating our readers with a new website design. I’m kidding, we’ve actually had this design in the works for just over a year. Obviously we’re big fans of the look, I especially like how PAX, Child’s Play and PA all have a unified design now. Penny Arcade has something like four million readers though, and there’s no way we could ever come up with a site that would appeal to everyone. If you don’t like it I apologize, hopefully it will grow on you and you’ll be sending me hate mail in another three years when we change it.

Along with the slick new visuals the guts of the site also got a huge upgrade. Penny Arcade right now represents one of the largest implementations of “rails” on the intertron. I went and looked at a website about rails and then I got a headache. From what I gathered it’s either some kind of cutting edge programming language, or a way to liquefy a man’s brain inside his skull. I’m told that it means the site looks better and loads faster regardless of whatever hippy web browser you decide to use. Fuck M$!

For me, it feels like I was given the keys to a brand new hot rod.